So, how does a museum celebrate sixty years? Bake a cake with sixty candles? Lay sixty feet of track? Restore a sixty-foot-long trolley car?
As our president says, that all requires work. Instead, we invite you to explore the decades of passion, planning, and perseverance that built the Northern Ohio Railway Museum.
Our story is a classic tale of “Who’da Thunk It?” It began in the mid-1960s not with a grand plan, but with three friends, Anson ‘Red’ Bennett, Lee Smith, and Walt Stoner, who wanted a caboose and ended up with an interurban car body.
The history is organized into six chapters, from our founding in the 1960s to the present day. For each decade, we highlight the pivotal acquisitions, the infrastructure, and the volunteer spirit that defined the era. You’ll see how a two-mile strip of abandoned right-of-way transformed into a 63-acre campus, how a collection grew to over fifty pieces of equipment, and how a dream of operating trolleys became a reality in 2017 after decades of laying track and wire.
At the end of each chapter, a set of metrics on cars, members, acres, and track shows the tangible progress through the years.
This is the story of a community building something extraordinary, piece by piece, decade by decade. We invite you to explore each chapter below and discover the foundation of every ride and restoration we offer today.
Begin the Journey: Explore Our History by Decade