Nickel Plate RR Overpass Coming Apart – Sept. 1953

I've mentioned many times that I grew up on the west side of Lorain in the 1960s. And if my family was going to drive west of town – perhaps to Huron or Cedar Point – Dad would head north on Leavitt Road and turn left on W. 21st Street as a shortcut to access Routes 6&2. He had no reason to go all the way down to West Erie. It would just waste time.

Coming home was the same thing; he'd take the West 21st Street exit from West Erie. When Dad did have a reason to keep going east on West Erie and drive under the railroad overpass, it was interesting to me as a kid, especially at night. It was kind of like driving through a tunnel.

And my interest in the 'undercut' (as it was often called) continues to this day. Why? Because that location has a lot of history, being located so close to the Pueblo and the Lorain Country Club. Sadly, back in the interurban days, it was the scene of terrible accidents as it was difficult to navigate the 'S' curve at high speeds. 

To improve safety overall, a cloverleaf traffic pattern was constructed there in the mid-1950s, with a four-lane West Erie Avenue and a westbound W. 21st Street overpass parallel to the railroad overpass.

Here's how it looks today.

But in 1953, the widening of the highway to four lanes and other improvements hadn't happened yet, as you can see in the article below, which appeared in the Lorain Journal on Sept. 18, 1953. The photos and captions note that the Nickel Plate Overpass is "coming apart at the seams."

"The above pictures show the break in the reinforced concrete which is now four-and-a-half inches wide and is widening at the rate of half an inch every 15 to 20 days," notes the article. "The part that is cracking away is a slab of concrete weighing many tons.

"The underpass is being pushed away from the rest of the structure towards the Lake Road. Pushing it is pressure from the Nickel Plate roadbed which it was holding in place."

Anyway, the railroad overpass was largely rebuilt, according to articles about the cloverleaf construction. But it's looking a little beat-up again, judging by my photo taken yesterday.