Reid Avenue Railroad Crossing Then and Now

Today's vintage photo is not from 1986. It was sent to me by blog pal Drew Penfield, the man behind the www.lakeshorerailmaps.com website, which is the website to go to if you want to learn about the Lake Shore Electric interurban line.

The photo above is of the four track railroad crossing at Reid Avenue, looking east. In the background further down the tracks is the Broadway crossing, as well as the Lorain train depot that I featured a few days ago on this blog. Drew believes that the photos was taken either in the late 1940's or early 1950's.

And here's the 'now' shot – which is a lot less busy.

It's rather sad to see the one lonely track, a poignant reminder of the end of railroad dominance.

Incidentally, you may have wondered (like I did) what that steel tower is to the left of the tracks off in the distance in both photos. So I put the question to a man mentioned in this blog many times, local historian and archivist Dennis Lamont. According to Dennis, "It's the anchor tower for the 13.8kV AC line that runs through there down and over to the steel plant."

Oh. Thanks for clearing that up, Dennis!