Marion Union Station’s unsung hero

If you sat down with pencil and paper and decided you were going to design, from scratch, a nearly perfect place to watch trains in the Midwest, you’d likely come up with something a lot like Marion, Ohio.

Want lots of trains? Check — maybe 60 a day on three Norfolk Southern and CSX lines. Perhaps a nice depot? Check — Marion’s handsome Union Station has a 1902 pedigree and a museum inside. A secure place to hang out, close to the action? Check — the spacious platforms are protected by low fencing and completely open to the public; no hassles from the railroads here.

And how about a rich history? Check — in its postwar heyday, the city pulsed with the trains of the Erie, New York Central (Big Four), Pennsylvania, and Chesapeake & Ohio, all under the watchful gaze of the operators in AC Tower, a tiny box set atop steel supports. Some of the more celebrated trains that stopped here included C&O’s Sportsman, NYC’s Southwestern Limited, and Erie’s Erie Limited. 

The fact that all of this — well, maybe not the postwar stuff — is available to fans and the public every single day is due to a lot of hard work by a lot of people, but one of the most important was a modest, low-profile guy named Joe Slanser. “He literally saved the depot,” says Pete White, current president of the Marion Union Station Association and himself an Erie Lackawanna and Conrail vet, including several years as an operator in AC. 

It’s been a sad few weeks for Pete and other friends of the station following the death of Joe Slanser. The 85-year-old lifelong Marion resident died peacefully on July 3 after a long illness and was remembered in a memorial gathering at the depot on August 2.

Slanser was born September 25, 1932, in Marion. He later worked briefly for the Erie, then served in the Army in Korea immediately after the war there. Rather than go back to the railroad, he made the prudent decision to hire on with the local phone company, GTE, later a part of Verizon. He ended up having a 36-year career in telecommunications. 

But he never let go of that early association with the Erie. His love of the railroad figured heavily in his later role as a founder of the station association in 1986, as well as his astounding level of financial support. Although he was a rank-and-file technician at GTE/Verizon, he was also a lifelong bachelor who was diligent about saving his money and intelligent about investing it.

Slanser was part of the group that arranged financing to secure a mortgage for purchase of Union Station, and he later made a substantial contribution to pay off the mortgage early. Once the building was paid for, he continued to make monthly gifts to cover the cost of various capital improvements. Upon his death, a final gift of $3.45 million was made to the Marion Community Foundation, to be divided between the station association and his church, Epworth United Methodist.

In many ways, Marion Union Station is a monument to Slanser himself, along with another major benefactor who prefers to remain anonymous. 

And what a monument it is. In addition to the depot and its exhibits of local railroad history, the facility includes renowned AC Tower, originally an Erie installation; Erie Lackawanna bay-window caboose C-306, lovingly restored; and the Marion Model Railroad Club, housed in the station’s former baggage room and railroad police office.   

The latter is also part of Joe Slanser’s legacy. He was a prolific model railroader, credited with a number of innovations in ground throws and switch machines, thanks in part to his day job. The National Model Railroad Association named him a Master Model Railroader.

“He had a brilliant mind that understood ohms, amperages, A.C./D.C., how to reverse currents, all kinds of electronic stuff,” says Pete. “Long before we had DCC on model railroads, he had his own system that was very complex. He was as well known as a modeler as he was a railfan.”

The Erie was a big part of Slanser’s hobby. In its November 1978 issue, Model Railroader ran a big feature about his layout of the Erie’s Mahoning Division. The author, Mike Schafer, was quite taken with Slanser’s handiwork.

“Joe’s layout captures that Erie Railroad atmosphere,” Mike wrote. “It’s all there, from semaphores to stone viaducts and from dingy urban scenes to weathered K-5 class Pacifics, to names that stir memories of an Erie that now belongs to the past: Meadville . . . Buchanan . . . Shenango.”

Just two weeks ago, Marion hosted the Summerail multi-media exhibition. This annual show, the Midwest’s answer to Oregon’s Winterail, was headquartered at the nearby Palace Theater, but visiting railfans also spent plenty of time on the platforms at Union Station, where CSX and NS put on their usual show. It’s hard to imagine a better place to enjoy railroading, and it’s hard to imagine it without Joe Slanser.

“Joe Slanser was a unique individual, someone whose whole life was wrapped up in trains,” says Pete White. “Here we have a station that’s completely owned and completely controlled by railfans. He helped us get there.”

Although Marion Union Station doesn’t have a website, you can find its own page on Facebook. The station building is open Tuesdays and Thursdays 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and also by appointment. The platforms are always open.