It was back to Cleveland again for an open house at the Midwest Railway Preservation Society. Springtime in Cleveland can be interesting depending on which way the wind is blowing, as it was this day. Twenty miles from the lake it was 70 degrees, but with the lake water still cold it was a brisk 44 downtown.
The Midwest Railway Preservation Society has a rail yard at an old roundhouse in the Flats, which in this area is all old industrial. The cold cloudy day, coupled with the industrial landscape was a perfect setting for the rusty old rail cars.
To be fair the group has done an a good job in restoring some cars and engines, and continue to restore equipment for themselves, and others. The problem is the cost is substantial in attempting a restoration and that much money is hard to find. They are proud one of their passenger cars was used in the movie The Natural.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer (a newspaper) had featured an article on the open house, and it seemed as though much of Cleveland had read it, as the place was packed. We lucked out and got a parking space close by and headed in.
After paying our entry fees, we waited with a large group to start the required tour. As with the stop in Marion, all of the volunteers are very enthusiastic about railroading. Our tour guide, complete in coveralls, was clearly into railroads. Unfortunately he was very verbose, and our tour took forever (we were actually passed by the tour behind us).
Next door was an active rail yard that had a number of parked cars, many of which had significant amounts of graffiti, some of which was quite good.
All in all it was an interesting couple of hours, and provided some interesting photo ops.
