New Harry Christiansen LSE Book – March 1965

As I've noted before, I don't write too much on this blog about the Lake Shore Electric (LSE), the interurban system that ran between Cleveland, Toledo and Detroit. It's a specialized area of interest that I leave to the experts: Drew Penfield and his Lake Shore Rail Maps website, and archivist and historian Dennis Lamont. If it wasn't for their hard work documenting the history of the LSE on Drew's website, much of its story would be lost to time. Sadly, there just aren't a lot of people these days who remember the LSE from utilizing it to travel.

But that wasn't the case in 1965. The LSE system had only ceased operations in 1938, so it was less than thirty years earlier. Memories were still fresh, and there was enough interest in the LSE and interurbans that Cleveland transit expert Harry Christiansen wrote several books about it.

Back on this post, I wrote about the release of his first book, The Lake Shore Electric, which came out in the spring of 1964. Well, in March 1965, Mr. Christiansen issued his second book, with the rather cumbersome name Northern Ohio's Interurbans and Rapid Transit Railways – Trolley Trains Too!! (That's the cover at the top of this blog post.)

The Lorain Journal featured a nice article about the book by Ralph Neumeyer, which was published in the paper on March 4, 1965.

The photo in the Journal article is of the Beach Park pavilion, located where Avon Lake's now demolished power plant was formerly situated.

Since the Journal photo of the pavilion is a little dark, here's a better photo of it from Drew's Lake Shore Rail Maps website. 

It's exciting to contemplate how the site will revert back to its pre-power plant days. The first step was the demolition, which took place back on December 19, 2024.

Here's a series of screen grabs of the demo. If I was still living in Sheffield Lake, I would have wandered over there to see it in person.

By the way, the Harry Christiansen book is on eBay right now (several copies in fact) and is pretty cheap.