This photo from the Allen County Historical Society shows the Erie station, which stood on the southwest corner of South Main and First streets, around the turn of the century. The station was constructed in 1882 and served as a passenger station until 1970. During the early years of the 20th century, a city trolley connected it to the cluster of train stations at the crossing of the Pennsylvania and B&O railroads off East Wayne Street.
Courtesy of Allen County Historical Society
From the mid-1940s until the mid-1950s the most popular worker at the Erie passenger station in Lima had a tail.
“Spot, a 17-year-old mongrel dog, is a faithful ‘worker’ on the Erie Railroad,” the Lima News wrote in a March 25, 1954, story. “He meets every passenger train at the South Main Street station, protects the United States mail and is kind to and considerate of passengers. In payment for these services, all Spot asks is that the dining car stewards be kind and considerate of him.”
An accomplished moocher, Spot hung around the station at the intersection of South Main and First streets for a dozen years, eventually making it his permanent residence after his owners moved from the neighborhood. “He now sleeps in the ticket office and meets all trains, day or night, rain or shine,” the News wrote. “When asleep he becomes wide-awake the minute the agent closes the window, which means only one thing: a train is coming.”
The passenger trains are no longer coming. Amtrak, the last vestige of passenger rail service, made its last stop in Lima 34 years ago. The Erie station, like all but one of the half dozen or so railroad passenger stations which once dotted Lima’s landscape, is long gone. All were built between 1880 and 1900 and bustled at the end of the 19th century and during the first decades of the 20th century. Only the former Pennsylvania station, which is now home to the Lima utilities department, is still standing.
In a chapter on transportation in the 1976 history of Allen County, local historian and former railroad employee John Keller wrote, “it is astonishing to note the passenger service available in 1920 on the steam railroads of the County in addition to that of five electric interurban railways.”
A December 1923 railroad timetable in the Lima Republican-Gazette showed the Pennsylvania Railroad, the major east-west line, offered 11 eastbound and eight westbound trains daily while the Baltimore and Ohio, the major north-south line, had four northbound and four southbound trains daily. The Erie had three trains going each way, the Lake Erie and Western (later the Nickel Plate) offered two eastbound and two westbound daily trains. The Detroit, Toledo and Ironton, which was basically a north-south service, also had two trains.
Although there was talk as early as 1880 about a “union” station to accommodate some or all the passenger trains, nothing ever came of it.
In a column on its wishes for the new year, the Allen County Democrat on January 3, 1880, listed “A new union station in place of the old rattletrap in our city,” referring to a station which stood at the intersection of the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago (later the Pennsylvania) and Dayton and Michigan (later the B&O) railroads. In September 1882, the Democrat reported a “scheme is still working” to build a new passenger depot at the corner of East Market Street and the crossing of the L.E.&W. (Lake Erie and Western) and the D&M (Dayton and Michigan) railroads. “It is said that all that is necessary now to make the scheme a success is for the Chicago and Atlantic (later the Erie) to join the two above named roads in the enterprise,” the newspaper wrote.
The Chicago and Atlantic didn’t join. “The new depot building of the Chicago and Atlantic railroad is being finished,” the Lima Democratic Times reported November 25, 1882. “It is a very pretty little building and is very conveniently arranged.”
In 1887, Lima’s first and busiest railroad, the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago (later the Pennsylvania), built a new brick station just west of its original “rattletrap.”
“The new depot was opened this morning at 7 o’clock, and the old depot with its dust, dirt and coal atmosphere is a thing of the past,” the Democratic Times reported November 18, 1887, adding, “Now the depot is furnished with natural gas for heating and artificial gas for lighting, is as neat and clean as a pin, and to sum the whole matter up in a few words it is ‘just a dandy’ and no mistake.”
Four years later, the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton (former D&M and future B&O railroad) opened its new brick passenger station just southeast of the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago station. In a less glowing review than that given the new Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago station, the Lima Daily Times wrote, “Civil Engineer Wood, of the C.H.&D., inspected the new depot yesterday and pronounced it o.k.”
Meanwhile, the Lake Erie and Western, set up its waiting room and ticket office in the Hotel French, directly across the tracks from the C.H.&D. After the hotel was razed in the early 20th century, the L.E.&W. sold tickets from the baggage room of the C.H.&D. In later years, the L.E.&W. (by then known as the Nickel Plate) also used a passenger station close to its shops and roundtable near the Lima Locomotive Works in south Lima.
The city’s newest railroad, the Lima Northern, one of the predecessors of the Detroit, Toledo and Ironton (D.T.&I.), opened its passenger station in 1895. “The first train will leave the new depot at Bellefontaine Avenue next Wednesday morning,” the Lima Time-Democrat reported December 14, 1895. “It will be a mixed train, for both passenger and freight traffic…” A grander station was on the way.
“The Detroit & Lima Northern will open their handsome new depot on Wayne Street, just east of the L.E.&W. and C.H.&D. tracks Monday morning,” the Times-Democrat wrote July 10, 1897. “The building is a beautiful piece of work and will be the best furnished station in the city.” The depot was reached over a 0.7-mile connector track from the main line. Described as the “handsomest depot in the city,” the limestone station also had the shortest life span.
By the early 1930s, the Detroit, Toledo and Ironton had suspended its passenger operations north of Springfield. By then, the Wayne Street passenger station had already closed, with the waiting room and ticket office moved back to the Bellefontaine Avenue station for the last few years of D.T.&I. passenger service.
The Bellefontaine Avenue station, which survived the grander Wayne Street structure by decades, was razed in 2015. Today, a car wash occupies the site.
Passenger service on the Nickel Plate (former L.E.&W.) through Lima ended October 17, 1959. “The last train eased sadly out of Lima and continued to Coldwater where it turned around and returned to the Lima yards,” the Lima Citizen wrote, noting there were few passengers on board to keep the engineer and fireman company on the final run. Keller, the local historian and former Nickel Plate employee, boarded the train for the leg of the final trip from Findlay to Lima.
For the Erie, the old haunt of Spot the dog, the end came in January 1970. “Making its final New York-to-Chicago run before being discontinued, the ‘Lake Cities’ discharged five passengers here, then pulled wearily from the station,” the News wrote January 6, 1970. A little more than a year later, on April 30, 1971, the last passenger runs were made on the B&O-C&O. “For the first time since August 1858, Lima was without north and south rail passenger service,” Keller wrote in 1976.
The Pennsylvania station received a reprieve after the railroad suspended passenger service in April 1971. Beginning in 1975, Amtrak used the station for its Lima stop until November 11, 1990, when the last passenger train departed the station for Chicago.
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SOURCE
This feature is a cooperative effort between the newspaper and the Allen County Museum and Historical Society.
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See past Reminisce stories at limaohio.com/tag/reminisce
Reach Greg Hoersten at [email protected].
