Northern Ohio Railway Museum

Northern Ohio Railway Museum The Museum will be open every Saturday, 10 - 4, through September 26th. Cars will operate on the 2nd & 4th Saturday of every month. We will reopen in May 2023.

We always welcome new volunteers. Check our Website if interested. NORM was founded in 1965 and incorporated in 1976 as a not-for-profit education and historical organization. Located at 5515 Buffham Road in Medina County, Ohio (near Chippewa Lake), the museum is working towards its goals to collect, preserve, restore, display and operate streetcars and other railway equipment for use by the publi

c. Members of the Northern Ohio Railway Museum have collected over thirty Streetcars and Interurbans. From a simple beginning we have constructed a carhouse and restoration facility as well as a preservation barn. In the future our collection, restored to it original, elegant condition, will carry visitors on a two mile section of former Cleveland and Southwestern Interurban right-of-way into a fading, bygone era - The Trolley Era. We have closed for the 2022 season. Dates will be announced soon. Please visit our web site for additional information.

Fare Collection II: Last week, we discussed early fare collection methods and the problem of ensuring that all fares we...
06/21/2026

Fare Collection II: Last week, we discussed early fare collection methods and the problem of ensuring that all fares were received and passed on to the company. In response to this concern, increasingly elaborate fare collection devices were developed, by a large number of manufacturers.

Initially, these boxes included just a slot for depositing a fare, a visible enclosure which allowed both the conductor – later the motorman -- and the passenger to see the amount deposited, and a “safe,” a locked box into which, by pushing a lever, the conductor could cause the fare to drop.

However, later designs allowed tabulation of the fare deposited, totaling of fares collected, a means whereby the fact that the fare was honestly collected could be observed and, in time, boxes that could accept paper money.

The first boxes were hand operated but in time they came to use an electric motor and, eventually, electronic tabulation.

Pictures: 1)An early MacDonald box that simply received fares. 2) And early Cleveland box – built, guess where? 3) A Johnson “D – Manual box” (“cranker”) replaced late 1940’s by electrified equipment. 4) A Johnson K 50. 5) A GFI “Cents a Bill” box that could accept paper money. All pictures are of boxes in the NORM collection.

Work progresses on at the Museum.Our painting elf has snuck in sight unseen and gotten more of our future ticketing stat...
06/20/2026

Work progresses on at the Museum.

Our painting elf has snuck in sight unseen and gotten more of our future ticketing station painted. The overhead line crew is busy out in the field, installing ground anchor lines, and at the workbench, prepping more parts. The track department was gathering, sorting and distributing materials for the next track work session. Finally the car department did some work on CTS 109 with the heating dampers. They got them all exhausting resistor heat outside, instead of into the car.

Some other things were underway, but we'll save them for another post. Busy times at the Museum.

If you like the progress happening at the Museum, please consider joining us to volunteer or donate financially. Visit our web site for more info on how YOU can help support us and keep work like this happening.

https://www.northernohiorailwaymuseum.org/support/

Thank You.

TRACKWORK, PAINTWORK AND HOMEWORK. HURRAH! ! !Our track gang was out out working on making our track holier. No they w...
06/17/2026

TRACKWORK, PAINTWORK AND HOMEWORK. HURRAH! ! !

Our track gang was out out working on making our track holier. No they were not blessing it, but they were putting some holes in it! Holes for track bolts were being drilled. These holes take a drill a bit bigger than anything you would find in your neighborhood home center. Our drill is powered by a gas engine and turns relatively slowly with a with a very large drill bit. It is a 3 person job. One steadies the drill, another slowly cranks the drill bit into the rail, the third drips oil onto the drill bit to cool and lubricate it as it cuts. One hole completed, drill 3 more to complete the job!

Elsewhere at the Museum, our future ticket office, build to replicate a small Southwestern station, continues to get painted. Enough paint is on it now that the paint scheme and colors are discernable. Stay with us Mother Nature so we can get the job done.

Then away from the Museum, our HOMEWORK contingent of this report, another volunteer is building a complete new sign to advertise our hours and open dates. All this work was done at a home workshop. The sign supports are done, so it's time to transport it, in kit form, to the museum. Stay tuned as this gets transported, in multiple trips. Only so much can fit at a time in a sedan!

If you like the progress happening at the Museum, please consider joining us to volunteer or donate financially. Visit our web site for more info on how YOU can help support us and keep work like this happening.

https://www.northernohiorailwaymuseum.org/support/

Thank You.

Fare Collection I: In the days of horse cars and the early electrics, fares were collected in the same way they had bee...
06/14/2026

Fare Collection I: In the days of horse cars and the early electrics, fares were collected in the same way they had been collected on the steam railroads. Passengers boarded the car and the conductor moved through the car collecting fares. Although this arrangement worked well for the steam roads on which there usually was considerable time between stops, it created problems on street railways where stops were frequent, sometimes with large numbers of passengers continuously boarding and leaving. Under these conditions, it was very difficult for conductors either to keep track of who had paid and to get to all passengers before they left the car.

In response to this problem, companies introduced fare boxes, into which passengers placed their fares when boarding. The earliest of these boxes were used on some horse cars in place of conductors. With this arrangement, passengers placed their fare into a slot by which the coins rolled forward to the driver. However, this arrangement made it difficult to ensure that all fares were collected and allowed things other than money to be deposited as "fares."

So, although the arrangement saved the cost of hiring conductors, the loss of fares more than outweighed this advantage. Thus was adopted the arrangement in which a conductor, on the platform, either watched the passenger deposit the fare in the box or actually received the fare and made the deposit. However, although an improvement, there still remained the possibility that not all fares were collected or, if collected did not all reach the company.. More next week !!

Pictures: Early tools of the conductor’s trade, a ticket punch (1) and a coin changer (2). NORM pictures.

06/10/2026

Check this out!

Monday is a day that most Museum volunteers take off to rest or attend to life's other duties and interests. Today a ma...
06/09/2026

Monday is a day that most Museum volunteers take off to rest or attend to life's other duties and interests. Today a majority of the volunteers were out all in pursuit of one objective. They did it at a wide variety of locations across northeast Ohio. One volunteer decided to do this extra curricular activity where they also could enjoy seeing RTA Rapid Transit trains rolling along. Oh yes, they also did manage to catch what everyone was out and about to see. We are talking about the Union Pacific Big Boy 4014. It passed through the area today. For several miles of that journey it paralleled the RTA rapid. As much as we had hoped, a meet between the Big Boy and a rapid train did not happen in front of our lens. In one image, the Big Boy and a rapid car can be seen. In the same frame, but not really a meet. Note the catenary structure above the Big Boy from the Cleveland Union Terminal electrification.

It's time for a trolley ride. The Northern Ohio Railway Museum will be operating our historic trolley and rapid transit...
06/07/2026

It's time for a trolley ride. The Northern Ohio Railway Museum will be operating our historic trolley and rapid transit cars for public rides on Saturday, June 13th. It is a trip back in time.

The museum will be open from 10 am to 4 pm. 5515 Buffham Rd., Seville, Ohio. Only a mile from the junction of Interstates 71 and 76 in northeast Ohio. Take a walking tours of its collection of over forty streetcars, interurbans and rapid transit cars. They date in vintage from 1895 to 1970. A tour typically takes about thirty minutes.

Also available for viewing, on an hourly basis, is the 46-minute film THE TROLLEY. Originally produced for IMAX screens, it is shown here in large screen HD video. We are the only place you can see this film in Ohio. It is a cinematic experience not to be missed.

We will be giving rides on our vintage trolley and rapid transit cars. Cars operate half-hourly, 11:00 am to 3:30 pm. Available to ride is 1914 built Car 12. This car had a long career on the city streets of Cleveland and the Shaker Heights Rapid Transit. Also available is Car 109, an ADA accessible, 1954 rapid transit car built for the Cleveland Transit System. Rides take about 20 minutes each.

Museum admission is $7.00 for adults, 13 and older. Children 6 to 12 are $3.00. Those under 6 are free. Museum members are free. Admission includes tours, the film and unlimited rides.

See you on the trolley.

The Spring Switch: When a railway car reaches a facing switch – in which the switch points face the car – the car is di...
06/07/2026

The Spring Switch: When a railway car reaches a facing switch – in which the switch points face the car – the car is directed over one or the other branching track, depending on which way the switch points are set. When a car reaches a trailing switch -- one in which the points face away from the car, the car can proceed only if the switch points are set for the branching track on which the car is operating. If it approaches on the other branching track, it cannot proceed until the switch points are set to the position for that track.

But there is a special type of switch in which, when a car comes from the branch for which the points are not set, it’s still able to to proceed. This is the spring switch. On such a switch, although the points are set for one branch, they are not rigidly locked in place as they are on a normal switch. Rather they are held in place by a very stiff spring, strong enough to hold the them in place for directing the wheels onto the track for which they are set but able to allow the wheels of a car coming off the other track to force the points over to allow them to pass.

Clearly, because the points are not held rigidly in place, a spring switch would not be safe for cars operating at high speeds. But it is quite safe on installations, such as an ordinary street railway, where speeds will never be high. On such lines, a spring switch can be very useful. On a single track route, where periodic passing sidings allowed cars to operate in both directions, switches could be set to direct cars to one or the other siding depending on direction of travel. Once the cars had passed one another, the spring feature would allow them to continue onto the single track with no need to set or reset the switches. The same advantage occurred when a car reversed direction using a wye or when reentering a line coming off a loop track.

Pictures show a spring switch. You will note that the switch still can be set, as with an ordinary switch, so as to allow cars to be directed along either track. NORM photos.

We took the NORM education program on the road yesterday to visit the Northeastern Ohio Live Steamers Railroad Camp. Our...
06/06/2026

We took the NORM education program on the road yesterday to visit the Northeastern Ohio Live Steamers Railroad Camp. Our team had a great time talking with the campers and inviting their families out to see our electric railway in action.

The perfect final touch to the afternoon was running into Sara Phillips and her crew. They were on-site filming an episode of the wonderful new children's show, "Mrs. Phillips Finds," for Brunswick Area Television.

Fill in the blank. . . The family that builds track together, YOUR COMPLETION TEXT HERE!See what kind of fun happens at ...
06/05/2026

Fill in the blank. . .

The family that builds track together, YOUR COMPLETION TEXT HERE!

See what kind of fun happens at the museum, any other families want to join in?

If you like the progress happening at the Museum, please consider joining us to volunteer (the entire family!) or donate financially. Visit our web site for more info on how YOU can help support us and keep work like this happening.

https://www.northernohiorailwaymuseum.org/support/

Thank You.

Address

5515 Buffham Road
Seville, OH
44273

Opening Hours

10am - 4pm

Telephone

(330) 769-5501

Website

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