NELSONVILLE, Ohio — Decades have passed since the last commercial train left from Nelsonville, but the spirit of rail travel remains in the form of the Hocking Valley Scenic Railway.
“I think heritage railways are important because they help save a piece of yesterday for tomorrow,” said Isaac Miller, the railroad’s secretary and marketing assistant.
The 22-mile railway between Nelsonville and east Logan is the remainder of a once-thriving network of rails that connected southeast Ohio with the central and northern parts of the state.
The Hocking Valley Scenic Railway traces its lineage back to the Mineral Railroad, chartered by local investors in 1864 to transport coal and iron ore from mines in the Hocking Valley to Columbus. By the turn of the century, the Hocking Valley Railway operated 881 miles of track within the state. A decade later, the Hocking Valley fell under the control of the neighboring Chesapeake & Ohio.
Things remained relatively unchanged until 1930, when the Hocking Valley was absorbed by Chesapeake & Ohio. While the route from Columbus to Toledo prospered under Chesapeake & Ohio ownership, over time the Hocking Valley’s route to Athens became something of a backwater in a vast system. By 1980, the Chesapeake & Ohio discontinued all service to Nelsonville.
But rather than taking its ball and going home, the railroad sold the line to a group of local railroad enthusiasts. Five years later, the Hocking Valley Scenic began operations out of Nelsonville.
Trains are in Miller’s blood: His grandfather worked for Baltimore & Ohio for 38 years before retiring. His family would ride the Hocking Valley Scenic Railway during the summer, which inspired him to begin volunteering at the railway in February 2016 while he was still in high school.
“I got started in the engine house, then I started helping out on the trains,” Miller said. “I took tickets, helped people on and off the train; I tried to help create a friendly image for the railroad.”
Miller took a 10-month hiatus from the railway after graduating from high school, but the allure of the railroad was too strong for him to ignore; he resumed volunteering in October 2017. In 2019, Miller became editor of the railroad’s bimonthly newsletter, The Valley Flyer. Miller’s volunteer work at the railway complements his work at Rural Action, where he is the social enterprise marketing and communications manager.
The railway is “one of the top attractions in Athens County and Nelsonville,” he said. “Having the railroad in town helps local businesses because odds are our passengers are going to go and check out what there is to see and do in Nelsonville.”
In addition to the revenue it generates for local businesses, the railway gives back to Nelsonville in other ways. Between 2010 and 2018, the railroad helped raise money to renovate Downtown Nelsonville by running special “Valentine’s Chocolate Choo-Choo” trains in conjunction with the Historic Downtown Nelsonville Association and the Nelsonville Chamber of Commerce.
At present, the railroad runs charter trains for local schoolchildren, who learn not only about the history of railroads and canals in the area and how they work but also about railroad safety.
“We know some of the kids in the area are below the poverty line and not everyone can enjoy a nice field trip like [this],” said Chris Hartley, the railway’s vice-president of operations. “Because we want everyone to enjoy this experience, we charge a reduced price.”
Hartley first got involved with the railway while attending Hocking College in September 2012.
“One of my classes ended early and I walked down to the engine house,” he said. “I thought I’d see what they’re doing and the next thing you know, I had a paintbrush in my hand and that was the end of that.”
As vice-president of operations, Hartley oversees the railway’s volunteers.
“We have different options for everybody,” he said. “Some people like talking with people, other people like being behind the scenes, working on things. And some like a mixture of both.”
In addition to his role as vice-president of operations, Hartley also takes the throttle in the railway’s locomotives.
“A good engineer can feel everything. You feel everything in that seat — you can feel every little divot, every tie that needs to be replaced,” he said. “When you get a nasty switch or a nasty section of track, you’ll definitely feel it.”
Working with a fleet of vintage locomotives is difficult at times. “Iron horses,” as railfans call them, can be every bit as stubborn and temperamental as their flesh-and-blood counterparts. Hartley recalls an incident while behind the throttle of Chesapeake & Ohio No. 5833.
“I got through the crossing and all the sudden she died. It was not like a slow little whimper and she went out,” Hartley said. “It was like someone flipped a switch and turned it off.”
After a trip to the engine house, the railroad’s mechanical staff found that water had leaked into the locomotive’s air box, suffocating the engine. This is far from the most serious incident involving No. 5833, however.
“A farmer was teaching his daughter how to drive and cross the tracks at one of their field crossings and wasn’t paying attention,” said conductor Bert DuVernay. “It was a nice, modern tractor with air conditioning, a stereo and an enclosed cab. So even though the engineer was blowing the horn and applying the brakes, the farmer didn’t know anything was wrong until we hit the tractor.”
Thankfully, there were no serious injuries to the crew, the farmer and his daughter. No. 5833 received some minor damage, though the tractor was a write-off. Even though the railway doesn’t operate at speeds over 20 miles per hour, the sheer weight and forward momentum of the train prevented the locomotive from stopping in time.
DuVernay said the incident reflects a broader unfamiliarity with trains and how they work.
“I think that people don’t pay as much attention to them anymore, because they’re not as big of a part of people’s lives as they were 75 years ago,” DuVernay said. “I don’t know what the exact statistic would be, but (out of all our passengers) it would certainly be a minority of people that have ever ridden a passenger train anywhere.”
Unfamiliarity with train travel can lead to unusual questions, Hartley explained.
“I’ve gotten people that have asked, ‘Does the train run when it’s raining?’ It’s not like an airline where we have to cancel our excursions because of inclement weather like snow or sleet,” Hartley said. “And it’s from people who have never ridden a train before.”
Hartley doesn’t begrudge them, however. In fact, he said he relishes the chance to impart his wisdom onto the railroad’s patrons.
“You can’t walk into the cab of a locomotive on Amtrak and ask the engineer: ‘What does this button do?’ Whereas we can show people what does what and teach them a little bit,” he said.
The main person who interacts with passengers traveling on the railway’s trains is not the engineer, but the conductor.
“One of the things that is important is to provide good service and make it a pleasant experience, because anybody in marketing will tell you that your best pool of customers is your current customer base,” said DuVernay. “And of course, things spread through word-of-mouth.”
In addition to assisting passengers, the conductor’s job is to be responsible for the safe movement of the train. An engineer will not move a train until the conductor says it’s safe to do so.
“If I’m conductor, the first thing I do is get to the engine house about two to three hours before the scheduled train,” Miller explains. “Once the engine and crew are ready, we do our brake test (and) head to the depot for the day’s trains.”
After punching passengers’ tickets, the conductor will take down a passenger count for emergencies.
Once the line is clear and the passengers are in their seats, the train can depart the station. Aside from the incident with No. 5833 and the tractor, conductors on the railway have dealt with fallen trees on the line, hotboxes (a railroad term for when an axle bearing overheats) and having to call emergency services for a passenger who was suffering from abdominal pains.
For the most part, the railroad and the city of Nelsonville have coexisted peacefully, although there was a bit of friction between the two in 2019 when the city implemented an entertainment tax.
“We have quite a bit of overhead compared to, say, Stuart’s Opera House,” said Hartley. “Sure, they have a big building, but we have quite a long section of track that we’ve got to constantly maintain.”
Fortunately for the railway, the law made an exception for religious, charitable and educational purposes.
“We are educational and charitable and so that thereby exempted us from it,” Hartley said.
In addition to its regularly scheduled services, which operate on weekends from May through October, the railway offers a variety of themed trains, including fall foliage trains, Santa trains and robbery trains.
In 2019, the railroad purchased a former Southern Pacific Railroad dining car from Amtrak and began doing monthly dinner trains. Miller said the railroad intends to use the dining car to add new services to its repertoire.
“Aside from our elegant dinner trains, we’ve also done some ‘barbecue and brew’ trains with Starbrick BBQ,” Miller said. “We did a couple of murder mystery trains; we did an ice cream train. We have a lot of opportunities with this dining car.”
At present, the railroad can host around 100 people on its dinner trains. It seeks to increase the number of people by converting two passenger cars into table cars. According to Miller, one has already been converted, while the second is still under construction in the railroad’s shop.
While Nelsonville may no longer be served by the likes of CSX, it remains a railroad town. Many of those who volunteer on the railway are retired railroaders, who not only keep the traditions of railroading alive but pass them down to the next generation.
“There’s a bit of camaraderie. We’re a nonprofit, scenic railroad, but we’re still a railroad,” Hartley said. “I like hearing stories from people that have worked for the railroad. I like hearing their stories and swapping some of the stories I’ve heard.”
Those on the railway will doubtless have many more stories to tell, for the story of the railroad and the town it serves is still being written.
Gabriel Scotto is an Ohio University student.
