Amtrak service to Fostoria terminated

Today Amtrak officially announced that the Three Rivers will no longer run west of Pittsburgh, therefore ending service to Fostoria and it's railfan hangout station.

I guess we can only hope that the area doesn't turn into a giant storage or waste facility now that there will be no more Amtrak there, and that the parking lot remains railfan friendly.


http://www.toledoblade.com
http://www.amtrak.com/press/atk20040903087.html

I can't believe their going to cut yet another train, makes me happy I got to ride the Three Rivers at least once (Hammond Whiting, IN-Altoona,PA) round trip and in a sleeper to boot. Hopefully, I'll get in another run before the end.

It does sound like the Pennsylvanian will be returning to northern Ohio for awhile, anyway.

I think they should have it a CHI-CLV-PGH-NYP Run that leaves CHI at 10am to provide reasonable Service to CLV and cut the Sleeper and put it on the Cardinal to make it Daily.

AmtrakFan

From what I know, Ohio isn't very willing to pony up any money for service. Right?

Why was Fostoria a stop to begin with? How frequent did passengers board the train there?

I am not happy that some Amtrak service in Ohio will be discontinued. However, I just wondered why some places were included before.

In Western NY, where I grew up, a City named Batavia has a similar positioning to nearby cities as Fostoria has. Batavia is between Buffalo and Rochester. Just as Fostoria is between Cincinatti and Toledo. Passenger service in Batavia was discontinued in the 1960's. (Let me mention that the NYC Batavia station was rebuilt in 1957 when trackage was moved out of Main St. and closed in the 1960's). But Fostoria seems to have kept service for almost 40 years later. Why?

A little background on how Fostoria ended up being an Amtrak stop. At the inception of Amtrak, there was only one Chicago-East coast train that passed through Ohio - The Broadway Limited. The Broadway operated via the ex PRR through Fort Wayne, Lima, Crestline etc, leaving Toledo and Cleveland without any passenger train service. This was rectified with the start of the Lakeshore Limited in 1976.
When Conrail was making rumblings about downgrading the ex PRR west of Crestline in the late 1970's, the initial thought was to re-route the Broadway via Alliance up to Cleveland and on westward, and to move the Lakeshore via the ex NYC across Ontario (which did have a Detroit - Buffalo Amtrak run for a while in the 1970's). This of course did not come to pass with Amtrak forcing Conrail's hand to maintain the now single track ex PRR so the Broadway would stay on it's original route. The idea of moving the Lakeshore up to the Ontraio route died at this time as well with the uncertainty of the routes future after being sold by Conrail.

Around 1985/86 the Capitol Limited became a seperate Chicago - Washington train (it had previously operated combined with the Broadway from Pittsburgh eastward) running via the former PRR.

In the late 1980's, Conrail was once again making noises about the viability of the former PRR west of Crestline, and with the original agreement between Amtrak and the freight railroads set to expire, Amtrak realized that they could very well be footing the entire MofW bill for the former PRR west of Crestline. It was at this time the decision was made to vacate the former PRR. The Capitol Limited was re-routed to operate via Toledo & Cleveland (using the former PRR between Cleveland and Alliance). Amtrak got Conrail to install a new connection in Cleveland so the Capitol would not have to make a mainline backup move to get to Cleveland Station.

As for the Broadway, the decision was made to operate on the former B&O from Pittsburgh (later moved to Youngstown) to Chicago. This allowed Amtrak to serve Canton from Youngstown or Akron, Lima from a community on the B&O to be determined and Fort Wayne from Garrett IN.

For the replacement Lima stop, there were 3 communities that were seriously considered: Defiance, North Baltimore & Fostoria.

Defiance lost out for two reasons, the first was the insistence that the former B&O depot be used (Amtrak wanted to put an "Amshack" and platforms up on the east end of town near Defiance Yard). The former B&O depot would have required much money to renovate, and being a multi level facilty it had handicap access issues. The second issue was that Amtrak felt a Defiance stop would "steal" business from nearby Bryan.

North Baltimore had the advantage of direct access to I-75, but in the end, Fostoria tipped the scales in their favor by taking on the station refurbishment and maintenace themselves (Amtrak loves "free" things).

In 1995, the Broadway was discontinued in one of Amtrak's many downsizing efforts - only to return in 1997/98 as the "Three Rivers" to handle the growing mail/express business that Amtrak was going after at the time. The only location that lost out with the resumption of service was Garrett Indiana, which was placed in the unusual positon of being an Amtrak crew change point but not a passenger stop.

Michael Schwiebert

WNYRailfan wrote:Why was Fostoria a stop to begin with? How frequent did passengers board the train there?

I am not happy that some Amtrak service in Ohio will be discontinued. However, I just wondered why some places were included before.

In Western NY, where I grew up, a City named Batavia has a similar positioning to nearby cities as Fostoria has. Batavia is between Buffalo and Rochester. Just as Fostoria is between Cincinatti and Toledo. Passenger service in Batavia was discontinued in the 1960's. (Let me mention that the NYC Batavia station was rebuilt in 1957 when trackage was moved out of Main St. and closed in the 1960's). But Fostoria seems to have kept service for almost 40 years later. Why?

Are you sure the Lake Shore was started that late? Over the last several years I have had fun hanging out at the Amtrak station in Fostoria. In May, 2000, I got up in the middle of the night and actually videotaped the east and westbound THREE RIVERS at the station along with 20 or so freight trains. It will be a shame to see this service go, but I wouldn't be surprised if it returns in the near future.

About the Broadway; the single-tracking on the PRR main started around 1984 west of Crestline, OH. Every other set of block signals was removed west of Bucyrus, OH, with the occasional passing siding. The segment west of Fort Wayne, IN was single-tracked in the summer of 1985. The Capitol Limited began operating as a separate train west of Pittsburgh in 1986. Both it and the Broadway were hampered by speed restrictions on the Indiana segment due to deterred maintainance by Conrail and the PRR PL signals dying during thunderstorms.

In November, 1990, Conrail announced that it would no longer maintain the PRR main for Amtrak's standards, and the Capitol and Broadway vacated to their new routes as mentioned earlier. The station at Lima was still standing in 1998, but it was in poor shape. I hope the Fostoria depot is maintained by CSX. Hopefully the vandalism does not catch up with it.

You may be right about the startup date on the Lakeshore. I have an old Railfan magazine somewhere that has an article about the trains startup. Part of the article talked about taking night shots of a new P30CH at Erie PA. I thought that they were built in 1976, but upon further checking the early ones went out the door in 1975 so it could have been the earlier date.

As for the delays on the former PRR due to weather, I got to experience that first hand. I took a spring break trip back in 1988 to Washington DC getting on @ Lima. The train was 2 hours late coming into Lima and we had to do a stop and proceed at every signal from Lima to Colsan. We managed to lose another couple hours because of this and I almost had to ride a bus from Pittsburgh to DC because of it.

As for the amount of passengers using the Fostoria stop... the article in The Blade stated that there were an average of only 2.2 passengers per train either boarding or de-training at this stop. The number was about the same for the other Ohio stops as well. So I guess it's kind of clear why it was cut. Unfortunately, with two trains already running through northern Ohio to Chicago, they needed much high numbers than just 2.

Still the people of these towns do not lile losing their rail service.

I'm with you on that, I hate to see Amtrak cut service too. But as a business, and one as grossly under-funded as Amtrak is, they simply can't afford to keep paying so much to move so little.

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but people just need to become educated on the importance of a rail transportation system and be vocal to their representatives about supporting such a system.

Just in case anyone is interested, the previously mentioned Lima Station, has been restored. The city is using it for water and sewer department offices. It even has a drive-thru for paying your bill!!! The restoration is not exactly back to what it used to look like, but it looks very nice and thankfully was not torn down.

I was in Fostoria this morning railfanning. It is so neat to be able to photograph trains when they are only traveling 5-10 mph because they were stopped and are acclerating across the diamonds or are stopping at a red signal.

From the railroad station historical society webpage, I found the address of an abandoned tower in Fostoria. I went to look at the tower this morning and found that it was in good shape. The tower is on E. Jackson St. just before the CSX tracks.

1. What trackage did this tower govern?
2. What was the call letters on the tower? (they have since been removed)
3. When was the tower abandoned and tracks removed?
4. Who currently owns the tower?

The tower would be a geat rail museum because it sits on an abandoned ROW where trackage could easily be placed and on it could sit someones rail collection (cabeese, diner cars, etc.). It looks to be in good shape, although looks can be deceiving. It is abandoned accept for the large bee hives that are inside (I can only imagine the large size of the hive, bees are all over the outside of the structure, moving in and out of the cracks in the plywood).

I have posted pictures on my website:
http://photos.yahoo.com/BugBoy1998_1999

You are referring to the Jackson Street tower on the Old T&OC Eastern Branch, the site of the first Centralized Traffic Control in our nation.

Read a little more here.

http://www.fostoria.org/history/skoneck ... eb_02.html