If you fish much on Todds Fork you are bound to run unto the remains of one of the old railroad bridges spanning the river. Some you can see easily from the road but others like the two that carried the railroad across the great horseshoe downstream of Middleboro Road towards Roachester Oseola can only been seen by those willing to get off the beaten path.
The Cincinnati & Muskingum Valley Railroad ran from Morrow thru Wilmington, Washington Court House, Circleville, Zanesville and Trinway. The C&MV was incorporated in 1851, and was completed from Morrow to Zanesville by 1856. bankrupt only seven years later, the line reorganized into the Cincinnati & Zanesville. In 1870, the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) took control over the C&MV, and extended the railroad to Trinway. In 1911, the C&MV consolidated into the Cleveland, Akron & Cincinnati Railroad (CA&C). In 1924, the Zanesville Division was absorbed by the PRR Cincinnati Division, which consolidated into the Pittsburgh, Ohio & Detroit Railroad one year later By 1968, the line had become the Morrow Branch, Zanesville Branch, and Twinway Branch of the Pennsylvania Central Columbus Division.
The line west of Wilmington was dismantled in 1976 when the southern end, the Little Miami railroad, part of the Pennsylvania's Cincinnati & Xenia Branch, Cincinnati Division, was abandoned. Unlike the Little Miami which was turned into a bike trail,
this road was simply abandoned and everything from old spikes and ties to these gorgeous old bridges abound. From what I can tell, and please correct me if I'm wrong, there were six of these big main bridges on the Fork,
That portion of the line did have six bridges. There wasn't another one until right outside of Clarksville, where the railroad went over East Fork.
ReplyDeleteI remember No.6 as being the highest one on the line. I reached it by going to the overhead bridge on Fischer Road, and then going left down the tracks.
I grew up in Clarksville, in the 50s. When I came back in '95, it was the day they were pulling up No. 8 with big cranes.
I don't know if the PRR actually numbered them, but the numbers matched up.
I took a picture of the one down in Morrow when I was back in '91. It's gone now. A website from 2006 had a picture of No. 2. Maybe they didn't care about scrapping the ones that weren't near the towns.
Thanks for writing about it. That old line was and is dear to my heart, and me and my friends spent a lot of time down at the old depot and the grain elevator in Clarksville. The pipe factory there did a good business, and they had three trains a day through there in the 50s.
Would you like to see it converted into a recreational and bike trail? If it's the same corridor from Morrow to the Warren-Clinton County line, then that's what may be happening.
DeleteLooks like it may be converted into recreational/bike path. ODNR awarded a 247k grant to purchase the rr corridor.
ReplyDeletehttp://ohiodnr.gov/portals/0/pdfs/news/2014-Clean-Ohio-Trails-Fund-Awards.pdf
Wow, that would be great, if they converted it to a trail. It ran through such wild country, that there was little build-up on the ROW.
ReplyDelete