The Cincinnati Railroad Club & Fred Steiner Presents – 115 years ahead of its time, or what are those rails during under Bluffton’s Main Street?

PowerPoint presentation with maps, photos, timetables, and interesting stories, focusing on three railroads intersecting in Bluffton, Ohio, located in Allen County, between Lima and Findlay. The story reveals how railroads helped a small village grow during the Oil Boom of the 1890s-1900s and expand it connections in the United States.

The three rail lines are:
• Lake Erie and Western, later Nickel Plate Road, today Norfolk Southern
• Northern Ohio Railroad, eventually Akron, Canton and Youngstown Railroad
• Western Ohio (interurban)

Railroad Program includes:
• Paper handouts listing historical data involving railroads in Bluffton

About the speaker:
Railroads became a fourth grade obsession with me, when my teacher handed me a list of all the Class I railroads in the U.S. Soon, when other friends were memorizing sports statistics and collecting baseball cards I was writing to railroads, collecting timetables. As the editor of my hometown newspaper and later an on-line news website that I created I researched news articles about these railroads and interviewed men who worked on them. I’ve authored five history books on Bluffton, Ohio, and have included several railroad references in them.

All Cincinnati Railroad Club meetings are held in the Newsreel Theater at Union Terminal/Cincinnati Museum Center and are open to the public at no charge. We’ll begin the evening at 7:30 pm with brief club updates & announcements, followed by our featured program presentation at 8:00 pm. Parking will be validated for attendees parking in the Union Terminal/Cincinnati Museum Center parking lots.

Directions to Newsreel Theater at Union Terminal:
Enter through Union Terminal’s main entrance into the rotunda, turn left toward the Cincinnati History Museum, and the Newsreel Theater doors will be on your left between the escalator and the History Museum. Just look for our club banner outside the door. Again, the meeting begins at 7:30 pm with our featured program starting at 8:00 pm