Just opened a letter from the President of the Akron, Canton & Youngstown RR Historical Society, Robert Peacock, announcing the decision of the BOD to dissolve the society as it currently exists - as a membership based organization. The intention is to remain as a web-based presence. The Society's archive will be donated to a suitable regional facility, along with the remaining funds in the treasury, to help preserve the collection.

Guess this goes along with other discussions as to the future of traditional railroad preservation organizations/efforts. I don't believe this item belongs in the "railfanning" section, as it concerns the heart of what this forum is about. The AC&YHS had created a small, but very professionally run (by the volunteers) archive in a climate controlled facility in Akron (in part of the old B. F. Goodrich factory), of materials ranging from photographs, movies, and artifacts, to employee and company records, including many that had gone to the N&W after the 1964 take-over of the railroad. The long-term economics of an aging and declining membership, and the difficulty of getting help from the remaining membership to physically work on things like the archive, led to the decision to dissolve in an orderly fashion, rather than wait for the situation to decline to the point of the sheriff evicting the group from the facility for lack of rent payment, and putting the archive in a dumpster, or have it scattered to various member's homes. I think this is being handled about as well as can be expected. After spending the past 20 years writing and publishing about it, the Akron, Canton & Youngstown Railroad has probably been as well-documented by the Society as any defunct railroad of it's size in the U. S., which isn't a bad legacy for a railroad special interest group. If anybody is ever interested enough to do it, there is certainly enough research material available for a very complete corporate history volume along the lines of Rehor's Nickel Plate Story or Hirsimaki's Lima book.

It always boils down to who's willing to do the work and if anyone is willing to join.
Not all small RR fan groups are dying out. For example, the East Tennessee & Western North Carolina Railroad association is doing very well with a small (yet highly dedicated) group of enthusiasts. This specific RR is enjoying a popularity that keeps growing. Once, interest was limited to people who lived in the area the RR ran in, but now the group has members all over.
Interest in specific RR's waxes and wanes, there's no way to judge when and how it'll happen. While I was not a big fan of the Akron, Canton & Youngstown RR (and honestly wouldn't be able to tell you much about it at all), I'm saddened to hear this news...

I'm guessing that the membership is generally an aging group that is shrinking. Would you list this as the primary reason for the dissolution? Are there others?

This thread brings up an interesting question. How best to preserve the memory of a particular railroad? In the case of the AC&Y, how many pieces of equipment from the railroad are preserved? Any depots? Other major artifacts? Paperwork is important only as long as someone is interested in it. How much interest will there be 25 years from now? Fifty years?

Les

The membership is aging/declining. I think the last time it was brought up, paid membership was around 200 (down from a high of around 400), which sounds healthy for a SIG, but was probably over 50% out of the region, which means that they were effectively reading-members only. As for the truly active, probably countable on slightly more than than two hands. Clearly the single biggest reason for the dissolution. At this point I want to publicly thank Robert and Melanie Peacock for rescuing the Society from the brink four years ago, and straightening things out as much as they did. Also, other officers Bob Lucas, Ed Kirstatter, Carl Lantz, Larry McClure, Michael Bradley, John Bozick, and Matt Woods; and Contributing Editors to the society's newsletter Tom Davidson, Chris Lantz, Ralph Schiring, and John Wheeler.

Clearly, in terms of attracting energetic support for a railroad SIG, it helps to have remnants of the railroad's equipment that still exist and can operate. I think that the only piece of equipment from the AC&Y that is operable is a track speeder that shows up at events in the region, like ORHS Depot Day in Orrville. Other extant equipment includes one of the last steel cabooses built, on display with the Copley, Oh depot off SR. 162 in Copley beside the railroad (not it's original site). The only existing AC&Y FM Diesel is in Galveston, Tx - heavily flood damaged and for sale for scrap, if not already scrapped, ex-AC&Y Ten Wheeler #304 - at Steamtown as Dansville & Mt. Morris #304, also the oldest existing NKP steam locomotive; plus probably a few scattered box cars from the last order bought before the N&W take-over in '64. I believe one or two of the other stations on the line may still exist in dilapidated condition. Most of the right-of-way still exists in use by the "new" Wheeling & Lake Erie from Mogadore to Carey, Oh, and is totally gone West of there to the original terminus in Delphos. The preserved station in Mogadore was, I believe, the Wheeling station, not AC&Y, but I could be wrong about that.

The AC&Y was typical of marginal carriers in the Midwest. It was put together from two other operations (this is incredibly simplified, the full "family tree" of the railroad looks more like a plate of spaghetti), the original AC&Y was started largely by the Seiberling family of Goodyear fame as a seven-mile long industrial switching railroad in Akron, with a friendly connection to the original W&LE at Mogadore; and the Northern Ohio, which ran from downtown Akron, West to Delphos. The AC&Y acquired the assets of the Northern Ohio when they went bankrupt in 1920. At this point another wealthy Akron family, the Stewarts, came in and took over majority ownership until the N&W takeover.

Passenger trains were always pretty much an after-thought with them (the daily mixed train ended in 1950). They largely used hand-me-down power at the beginning, until they acquired their famous Lima-built Mikes; took advantage of the economies of Dieselization early (steam was totally gone by '53), but made the unfortunate (for maintenance and reliability) choice of going with FM for locomotives, although at the time it seemed to make sense, since FM had the highest HP locomotives available for their purposes, so they didn't need as many locomotives as they would have with EMD's. From the end of the Depression to the merger they were reliably profitable, serving the industries of the Akron area, as well as a lot of clay and stone operations to the West. If the bottom line is the measure of success for a company, they were successful.

As for surviving AC&Y depots there are a few left,all were built by the PA&W RR in the early 1890's.The Copely depot is restored and very nice and has it's train order signal. Next going west you have one at New London,Ohio with train order signal wich is restored and moved to the towns recreation park. The original New London AC&Y depot burned down at the turn of the century and afterwards Greenwich's depot west of there was moved by train/flatcar to New London to replace it. The depot at Plymouth survives but is looking poorly, the only thing saving it from the elements from rotting away is it's slate roof.

The next surviving depot west of there was at New Washington, Ohio. I dismantled that one in the fall of 1998 and have it rebuilt behind where i live in rural Norwalk, Ohio and am restoring it. I posted a picture of it a few years ago on RPN. The only other AC&Y depot that i'm aware of that still survives is the one at Bluffton, Ohio but it is a totally different style than the other 4 that survive and was used as a antique store and ice cream stand over the years. I'm not sure of it's current use status.

It appears this is pretty much the natural order of these things. I applaud the society leadership efforts to place the collected materials where they will be preserved; I hope they can find an institution that will accept them. Often historical societies with a broader focus want the pictures but not the paper.

I might point out that the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas closed a couple years ago. Not germane to the issue? Well, maybe more so than you think.

As much as we don't like to admit it, all of our railroad "historical & technical" societies combine the function of a fan club with the loftier goals of preserving history. People who are causally aware of a railroad because they ride it, or it runs through their town, come to us to find answers to questions that come to mind, learn a little background and a few interesting facts. When a railroad shuts down or loses its corporate identity, these people wander away, never to return.

Those who have a somewhat deeper interest, often modelers, linger on, but at some point it becomes evident that everything that there is to know about the road is known; there is not going to be many (or any) discoveries of new information, and questions that remain at this point are likely to remain forevermore unanswered. At this point it gets really hard to work up the enthusiasm to keep researching.

Hopefully by this point there have been a couple good books written about the subject road that distill what is known into a form that is likely to survive and be accessible in the future, because there will be no one left to maintain the basic archives.