Many Sets of Tracks
As we mentioned in one of our most popular posts “Ellwood City 100 Years Ago“, Ellwood City owes its birth to the railroad. Ellwood’s founder H.W. Hartman heard the railroad was planning to build the tunnel to bypass the slower railroad line through Hazel Dell and put his plan for an industrial resort town into action.
The railroad did indeed play a vital role in the growth of Ellwood City and at one time ran four main lines wide through town. There were places it looked like the tracks ran eight wide as there were a number of side tracks owned by the various industries in town. We have heard from a number of people that recall the freight yard from Sixth Street to Blanks Cement that ran six to eight lines wide.
There are numerous pictures from many different angles of the Union station that was used by both the P&LE Railroad and the B&O Railroad as a passenger station. The beautifully ornate building that sat so prominently beside the subway on Fifth Street is no longer there. The P&LE Freight Station is still standing today, however the B&O Freight Station was torn down in the 80′s. As you can see from the 1908 map of Ellwood City, The B&O freight house and the Union Station are not the only buildings associated with the railroad that are long gone. The first P&L freight and Passenger station used to stand in front of “Mill B” of the tube mill on Sixth Street. Another structure that many people did not even know existed was the engine turn table behind the old B&O Freight Station. Unfortunately, there are no traces of any of these buildings today.
The trains came through town so often and so fast, a number of people were severely injured or even killed just trying to cross the tracks. Mrs. Kathy Blank shared a memory… “It was during one of those days (when the circus came to town), that I broke away from my Mom and wondered toward the railroad tracks. I can still hear my Mother screaming for me to “stand still”-”stand very still” as she lay on the ground and I was in between two moving trains. I can still feel the wind blowing my hair, as those trains moved. My dad was at work at the “Little Tube mill” and someone must have gotten him ’cause when those trains ended and left town there stood my Dad on one side and Mom on the other crying. That was when I started to cry, never realizing the danger I was in, but crying because my parents were crying. I received many hugs and kisses and a scolding and a BIG smack across, you know where!!!”
Today there is only one main line running through Ellwood City. A train might come through two times a day with no stops, or anywhere to stop. There are only two side tracks but they rarely, if ever get used. Only shadows remain of what was once there along what is now the Buffalo & Pittsburgh Rail line.
I encourage you to join me in giving thanks to Mr. Ben Davis for this excellent historical resource. This web-site has many unique benefits. Todays railroad feature represents one of the most valuable…it captures the value of what no longer exists. Railroads, bridges, and places of youth only left in photos come alive with stories like the one Mrs. Kathy Blank shared.
I’d give a nickel to know where new recruits boarded the train for basic training during World War II. Right there in Ellwood City?
By the 1950′s passenger trains still stopped in Mahoning Town (West Pgh. station) but not, as I recall, in Ellwood City. It’s a double-forehead slap to realize Ellwood City was once a resort town. That was lost on many of us in the 1950′s, but if you look at the reader comments, many of us look back on a town that was all that America could be to us, resort, a.k.a. home town.
52 years ago, when I left, there was a crossing guard “shack” at the tracks by the Ellwood City VFW post. It was manned, to look after kids like Dale Brown who trucked home from Hartmann that way. For North Side kids, we passed under the 5th Street “subway” as Mr. Davis calls it. Silos, we walked in silos. I never gave thought to the tracks above my head. Six tracks ran by the Tube mill. Wow. Probably more rails added to move military stores out during WWII.
Mr. Davis, thank you for keeping the memories blossoming this Spring.
I concur. Great Job Ben!!!
As to where trains stopped, my Mom & Dad treated me to a train ride from the Wampum station to Pittsburgh to view “Meet Your Neighbor” on KDKA TV for my 10th birthday 6-6-1956. We also use to pick up at the Wampum station my great aunt Lucia Helling Thompson in the early 1950′s when she visited my grandmother in E.C. from her home in Hammond,IN.
Yes Ben, a great job. The tracks is all part of my growing up in EC. I went to BVM school from K to 8 grade, and the walking short cut was to cross the [ instead of using the overpass..yes there were a lot of tracks to cross to get to school……but finding “slugs” made the day for us young kids…a lot of tracks crossed in my young years!
Mr. Geniviva’s comment triggered memories of BVM school. I went to Kindergarten at BVM in 1951 and “made it through” part of 3rd grade in 1954 when I was “transferred” to 3rd grade at North Side Elementary School. BVM is why I know Eddie Fosnaught and Bill Bresnehan as BVM “alumni.” Unlike Mr. Geniviva, I didn’t walk to school. I rode to BVM on the bus from Hazel Avenue.
In the Fall of 1954, once the weather got colder and the heater was on, I’d fall asleep on the warm bus. On a few occasions I would sleep through my stop and wind up back at BVM, causing my father to come get me after work. I guess that’s as good excuse as any for my parents to move me to North Side Elementary. It’s the one I use. Another reason may be that I threw up on Sister Zita. I had my hand raised to go to the rest room but she wouldn’t let me, saying “you can wait until the bell rings.” I should have shouted “I’m sick,” but you didn’t yell at nuns. So I burst out of my seat, racing towards the door. She blocked me at the door and I threw up all over her habit. I’ll bet somewhere in the books that gets me automatic points for a hot place in eternity.
Who knows, as a 3rd grader, what’s behind parents’ decisions? I know I was happy. Once I made the transfer to public school at North Side I got to walk to school with my neighborhood friends, have snowball fights on the way to and from school, and come home for lunch. All were a big deal. Think about it…you can’t come home for lunch again until you retire! To get someone to have lunch ready and waiting for you, you might need to be with St. Peter.
To Dave Larson,
I get the nickel, Dave! During WWII I lived in Chewton, across the river from the Wampum train station. It was the station to leave from as the tracks had Pittsburgh to the south and Youngstown to the west and all points beyond.
It was the thing to do to go to the bridge when the train was stopped for soldiers. There would be a crowd half way across the bridge and on the street and parking lot in Wampum. Girls and mothers would throw coins to the soldiers along with many kisses.
Years later, in 1958, I was home on leave at Christmas time and had to go back to Utah by train. I left from Wampum. By then you had to wait at the station until the train was coming and wave it down in order to get on. Nobody there but my mother, my brother and sisters and my girlfriend. I remember thinking about the crowd when we put three of my uncles on the trains during the war.
In 1954, a month after graduating from ECHS I left for Virginia from Beaver Falls with my Army Reserve Company, the 475th Quarter Master Company. We paraded down the main street of town to the train station with a crowd of family and friends. I had my mother and brother and sister and a girlfriend. A different girlfriend than in 1958 but the one I am now married to.
TO: Bob Woods
Bob, I have a 1945 nickel I want you to have. If you will email me a surface mailing address, I will get it to you. If you email me your email address I will ask you a Chewton railroad question. Thanks for the answer above. I have a nephew who will shortly be going to Fort Lee in Virginia for Quartermaster Corps A.I.T.
Dave Larson
mainelarson@yahoo.com