Cleveland Union Terminal - CUT - Restored Service- Opportunities?

[WilliamKiesel]

Suppose that a significant number of long distance passenger trains were restored to the former NYC east west mainline through Cleveland. Included would be restored service from Pittsburgh through Youngstown. And there would be restored servicefrom Akron.

Could the Cleveland Union Terminal return to being a long distance passenger station? What is the staus of tracks leading in and out of the station for return of long distance passenger trains? Have key connections been removed? What tracks exist? What would be the problems for returning passenger trains to the Cleveland Union Terminal? Who owns the terminal today? The Cleveland RTA?

 

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

There aren't a significant number of east-west trains running across Ohio on any route so any proposed re-opening of CUT just isn't going to happen.

[MidlandMike]

Here is a link to a discussion thread that seems to indicate the RR infrastructure is to far gone.

http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=11674.0

[NKP guy]

Yours is a series of sincere questions, if fantastical.  To begin, I'll second the idea that there will not be "a significant number" of passenger trains through Cleveland for the rest of anybody's lifetime.

 Sorry, but we need to start with the blunt truth.  Ohioans are completely used to everything declining and decaying.  We don't care.  It saves us money.  As for train service to Pittsburgh, let alone Akron, fuggedaboutit.  The Ohio Department of Automobiles is broke.  There is not one red cent for highways or bridges, to say nothing of trains.  

Now, could the Cleveland Union Terminal return to being a train station?  Sure!  Anything can be done if there's enough leadership, will, and.......money.  Ah! there's the rub!   

The station concourses today are, as you no doubt know, a giant indoor shopping mall.  When Tower City (that's the mall's name) was being planned, the only possible space that could be given over to station purposes was given instead to housing the mall's movie theaters, which are there to this day.  The space beneath the mall was turned into a giant parking lot.  Now, can anyone seriously imagine a mall which is already aging and withering giving up its parking lot and movie theaters?  Neither can I.

As for the right of way, it's still there sans tracks.  There are no major obstacles to running the tracks from east side to west side right through the Terminal.  Not only were "key connections...removed," the tracks were, too.  To rebuild the tracks, look at a map of the CUT.  You'd need new tracks from about East 34th Street to about West 65th.  The impressive CUT viaduct over the Cuyahoga River valley is still usable and I'm sure Cleveland's RTA rapid transit people would be delighted to have a partner in the maintenance of this enormous concrete and steel structure from 1928.

The terminal area is today owned by the Forest City Company.  While generally a nice bunch of folks, they have never demonstrated any interest in further train usage of their property.

Another problem: Any new CUT station would need a parking lot.  Remember the parking lot?

I'm sorry, but the battle for the Cleveland Union Terminal was lost about 1974.  The city didn't care, the buildings' owners didn't care, the traveling public didn't care, no one cared.  Like so much else in Ohio, we simply threw it on the scrap heap because to do anything costs money.  And Ohioans have had about 35 years now to get used to feeling poor.  And by now we like it.  Because it's cheap.

 

 

[WilliamKiesel]

CSSHEGEWISCH:

Thanks for your opinion.

I was looking for objective information

[WilliamKiesel]

MidlandMike:

The link was very useful.

Reuse is possible but perhaps a new design altogether would be more suitable for the contingency of restored passenger rail service.

Thank-you

[WilliamKiesel]

NKP guy:

Your information was most helpful.

It confirmed in a concise way what the link provided by MidlandMike taught me. The CUT could be a long distance passenger train station once again. However, there have been other design proposals for contemporary facilities to serve restored passenger rail service. The contemporary, say last 30 years, ideas have merit as well.

Thank-you

 

 

[MidlandMike]

I'm sure it didn't help things when Ohio's gov turned down fed HSR money for the Cleveland-Cincinnati project.

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2010/12/feds_to_ohio_your_high-speed_r.html

[daveklepper]

The through trains that bypassed Cleveland did not go through the Terminal and going through the Terminal would add mileage and slow the schedules.   The Lakefront location can be a good station location, now with light rail connections directly to the downtown area (connections that did not exist until recently).

[NKP guy]

You're right on all counts, Dave.  

I know the 20th Century Limited  didn't use the Terminal.  If there were any other trains that didn't stop in Cleveland (except for servicing, of course), I'm unaware of them.  

I'll bet that the current Amtrak station on the lakefront is a huge pain in the butt for dispatchers or whoever aligns switches these days.  Only one track can be used at the station; no freights in either direction can move when a passenger train is in the station area.

The RTA light rail system doesn't even have a stop at the Amtrak station, but instead goes right by it.  Then, considering that all 4 Amtrak trains call at Cleveland in the wee hours when the rapid transit is not operating, the light rail system might as well not be there at all.

As I've mentioned here before, the lack of any canopy over the station platform is inexcusable.  Waiting in bad weather on the Cleveland lakefront in the middle of the night is a miserable experience that Amtrak ought to rectify.  They might also want to work on the signage telling people how to physically get to the station; the number of people invoking the Name of the Lord as they look in frustration for the parking lot entrance must be large, indeed.

I sure do miss the Union Terminal and the great way it treated passengers as they departed or arrived at Cleveland.

[MidlandMike]

Amtrak "Empire Service" has several daytime trains between Buffalo and NY City.  Yet there is not a single daylight train on the other half of the "Water level Route", Buffalo-Chicago.

I suppose part of the problem is that most corridors are within a single state like NY, IL, MO and CA.  I'm sure it's harder to get multiple states to coordinate.

[dakotafred]

NKPGuy, the westbound New England States was middle of the night and also passed through Cleveland without picking up passengers or calling on CUT, at least in the 1960s, when I did so much train riding out of CUT. Its opposite number DID stop at CUT (in late afternoon or early evening) and was one of the two eastbound Chi-Cle NYC trains that kept up standards that late. The other was the excellent  Fifth Avenue Special.

Westbound on NYC, you wanted the  Chicagoan,  period.

[NKP guy]

fred, thanks for your informative and provocative reply!  

I looked into two NYC time tables and I'm amazed.  You are quite correct that the westbound New England States (no. 27) passed right through Cleveland without calling for passengers.  And you're correct again about the eastbound (No. 28) stopping there.  It turns out that the same timetable (April 24, 1960) shows the Commodore Vanderbilt (nos. 67 & 68) not calling in Cleveland at all.

I'm lucky enough to have a small collection of timetables.  My NYC timetable from December 5, 1948 shows even more of this operational pattern of skipping Cleveland in the middle of the night.  From that timetable I see that trains skipping Cleveland in one direction or both included: No. 2 The Pacemaker, No. 28 The New England States, No. 66 The Advance Commodore Vanderbilt, No. 68 The Commodore Vanderbilt, No. 26 The 20th Century Limited, perhaps most surprisingly, No. 22 The Lake Shore Limited, and No. 27, No. 1, No. 65, No. 67, No. 97 The Paul Revere (never heard of that one before!), No. 63 The Water Level, No. 25, and No. 59 The Chicagoan.  Whew!

You have really opened my eyes, dakotafred and midlandmike!  I had fun researching this, using my schedules, and learning something new.

Just imagine, The Great Steel Fleet fielded so many trains that they could afford a raft of them to skip Cleveland because passengers there were better served at reasonable hours!  Lord! How I miss those days!

 

 

[MidlandMike]

I would think an additional reason for a train bypassing CUT back in the day, would be to avoid the change to electric and then back, that a trip thru CUT would entail.

[dakotafred]

Indeed, NKP, those were the days. Old Al Perlman may have hated passengers and their drag on the bottom line, but into the 1960s he maintained crack trains where they were reasonably well patronized. The NYC still had a lot of mail trains, too, that helped support the passenger overhead. When the Post Office withdrew the first-class mail in 1967, that turned the bleeding into an intolerable red-ink hemorrage on more than just the Central, and was the effective killer.

NKP, I've got a lot of old timetables too, saved from my trips of 50 years ago. I don't take them out much anymore, though -- they make me too blue!

I had the good fortune to be born in Cleveland, to grow up there in the 1940s and '50s, and still have my parents there when I went off to college in 1960. Many train trips back and forth! Since my folks moved to the West Coast in 1965, I've never been back. So my mental picture of CUT is unfuzzed by subsequent changes. I was disappointed and a little incredulous when a Trains feature of a few years ago on the old CUT failed to show a picture of the grand old waiting room and the heroic mural. It was like a feature on the Mona Lisa that didn't show the smile.

Your NKP also did a heck of a job for as long as it could, turning the full Chicago-Buffalo fleet, 2 trains in each direction, over to the N&W in 1964. I especially loved (and rode) the overnights between Chicago and Cleveland. The NKP opened the diner-lounge car and sleeper a couple of hours before the late-evening departure and was otherwise first-class in every way! 

Thank you for the good info and sound sentiments! 

[bill613a]

The NKP only turned over one set of trains to the N & W in 1964 (The City of Cleveland and the City of Chicago).  The Westerner and the New Yorker were discontinued in the summer of 1963.

[dakotafred]

Thanks for the catch, Bill. Guess I'm getting rusty.