THE STATION, built as the Union Depot in 1876, played an important role in the economic development of Berea for some 75 years. This depot replaced an older, smaller and deteriorating wooden station located between the tracks, opposite the end of High Street a half mile west.

As the sandstone quarry industry grew, thousands of tons of building stones and grindstones came to the station via privately owned narrow gauge trains. With the old depot inadequate to meet the growing needs for sandstone shipping, it was also considered unsuitable for passenger use. Entrepreneurial Bereans determined that a new depot would meet both freight and passenger travel, would be profitable and would serve the community well. One such businessman, A.W. Bishop, owned much land in this area and he convinced officials to buy this parcel and build the new depot.

When it was built, it was widely acclaimed as outstanding and elegant, especially for a small village. The Plain Dealer describes this Victorian Gothic structure as the "finest passenger facility outside the big cities."

By 1870, about 400 tons of stone were being shipped out daily in season. 93% of all grindstones in the world came from Berea quarries. The railroad employed more Bereans than any other industry except the quarries.

At the same time, some Berea and Cleveland entrepreneurs had decided to build a horse-drawn rail line from the town center to the railroad. More people desired to go by train to Cleveland, rather than by carriage, over roads that were often muddy and slow.

On May 3, 1876, both the new Union Depot and the local I mile rail line were inaugurated with a large day-long community celebration. The local paper reported that, "the entire day passed off with a general good feeling and will long be remembered by the citizens of Berea with satisfaction and pleasure."

After 1900, quarrying declined as alternatives to stone products, particularly concrete were developed. The station was closed in 1931 and it fell into disrepair. It was later modified somewhat by freight delivery companies. Its future was cloudy until 1975, when local businessmen Ellis and Frank Lovell purchased and remodeled it as a restaurant. Today, under the direction of Bob and Tammy Sutton, fine cuisine is the order of the day.

Enjoy the food, history and surroundings as you experience dining at THE STATION.

Stanley Maxwell
Berea Historical Society

Berea, Ohio: The Grindstone Capital of the World

Jarod Hickox, who came from New England, first settled Berea in 1809. In 1836, settlers gathered to choose a name for their community. Tabor and Berea, names of biblical places, were suggested and by the flip of a coin, the village became Berea.

In 1842, John Baldwin discovered a rich sandstone vein near Berea. Soon Berea became known as the "Grindstone Capital of the World."

Berea stone was shipped to build the parliament Building in Canada and the Palmer House in Chicago. At one time there were five quarry companies operating almost one hundred acres of land and employing more than three hundred men. In 1946, the quarry industry came to an end, and the quarries were turned into parks and lakes for the enjoyment of future generations.

Berea is the permanent home of the Cleveland Browns Training and Office Complex. The $13,000,000 facility is one of only 28 in the country, and is considered state of the art. It is the center of the First Avenue Revitalization area, which was planned to bring greater development into the city.

The staff of THE STATION welcomes you and hopes you enjoy your meal.
Adapted from information obtained from the Chamber of Commerce

MICHAEL O'Malley
Plain Dealer Reporter

Berea - Andy Inserra squints westward through a set of binoculars, fixing his sight on the nose of an oncoming eastbounder.

"Canadian National," he says. "Pretty rare in this area. Probably hauling pickup trucks from the Ford plant in Minneapolis."

The locomotive rolls closer now, and Inserra and others along the edge of the track can see she's moving at a clip, 7,000 tons of metal gunning hard on an earth-shaking run.

The track-side watchers click cameras and mark notebooks as the big engine charges by with an air-horn blast, spewing hot gusts of wind and diesel fumes.

In a minute, the show is over. And the train-watchers look down the tracks, this way and that, hoping for another inbounder.

"It gets in your blood," says Inserra.

Inserra, a civil-engineering student, and his father, Joe, a software engineer, have traveled all the way from their home in Minneapolis just to watch trains in Berea.

They belong to a large network of people who watch, log and take pictures of trains. They are known as "rail fans," and they congregate wherever they can catch a glimpse of a working track, spur or switchyard.

The best places are called "hot spots," and Berea is known nationally as such a place.

The Cleveland suburb, which has been featured in train magazines, is one of the few places in the region where the two major Eastern railroad lines - CSX and Norfolk Southern - come together.

A story in the December issue of Railfan & Railroad magazine shows a photo of a locomotive passing the Berea train tower and refers to the city as "the fan hot spot of the Cleveland area."

Berea is to train-watchers what Hawk Mountain, Pa., is to bird-watchers.

The place to watch is along Depot Street, next to The Station restaurant, a former train station built in 1876. More than 100 trains pass this roadside hot spot every 24 hours.

"Any train from the Mississippi River Valley to the Atlantic seaboard has to go through Berea," said Dave McKay of South Euclid, who has taken 45,000 photographs of trains.

To non-railfans, locomotives might all look the same. But there are hundreds of styles and models, and fervent train watchers know the guts of each one - its horsepower, weight and age and how many were built. They know what the train is hauling and where it's going. They even know if it's running on time.

They come equipped with cameras, field glasses, log books and radio scanners to listen to :be dispatchers, engineers and yard men.

Sometimes an engineer tosses a souvenir - yesterdays rolled up work order - out of the cab window atop the locomotive. To a railfan it's like catching a foul ball in the bleachers.

On a recent day, Carl Luther of Canton is at the Berea hot spot watching the lead engine - an SD60M - on a Norfolk Southern train working westward with a line of piggyback trucks on flat cars.

"That's an old Conrail unit repainted," he says. 'I can tell by the sound of the horn."

Nearby, Ed Krejny of Strongsville is in his car with a scanner, listening to a yard master in Cleveland. "That's Joe talking," he says.

Railfans are attracted to the power and speed of these giant machines, for few would agree that todays snub-nose, bulldogugly locomotives are things of graceful beauty. They don't come with names like Mustang or Skylark. They are a C40-9W, an SD70MAC or a GP38-2.

Norfolk Southern engines are black with horse logos painted on the noses. Railfans facetiously call them "black beauties.`

Western trains - Union Pacific or Burlington Northern Santa Fe - generally have more color. And when one of their locomotives comes through here, it is referred to as "foreign power.

On a recent day, two big, red SD60s of the former Soo Line poked into Berea. catching the eye of Dick Croy of Westlake.

"Hello, hello," he said, greeting the train as if a beautiful woman were riding on the cowcatcher. "This is a rare one."

Some railfans are daily addicts who read train magazines and talk in railfan chat rooms on the Internet. Others get to trackside whenever they get a spare hour.

Jim Smigelski, a retired telecommunications engineer from North Royalton, is somewhere in between. He said trainwatching is a good way to kill time and is cheap entertainment.

"I try to get out a couple times a week," he said. "I'll call my cousin and say, 'You got some time? Let's go see what's runnin'. ,

And that usually means a trip down Depot Street.

Railroads and Berea - A review of their impact
S.H. Lustig, Berea Historical Society

The history of Berea and the railroads have been intertwined for over 150 years. Beginning with the Cleveland, Columbus & Cincinnati Railroad (predecessor of the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad better known as the "Big Four") in 1845. This community became an important service point and junction on the railroads, which passed through it. The importance of the local industry to the railroad can be seen by the construction of a spur which ran alongside the Rocky River and actually crossed it 4 times as it reached southward to the various stone quarries and local businesses. Murphy's Quarry, Steams Quarry, S&G Mill, Cuyahoga Stone, Diamond Quarry, Ensign Quarry, Berea Stone, and Baldwin Quarry were among the consignees of this industrial spur line. The volume of business here was such that the Cleveland, Lorain and Wheeling Railroad in 1893 built a connecting track from their mainline to reach the Big Four spur and to serve such other customers as Goette Coal Co., Curtis Slaughter House, and the F&H Oil Co. as well as to interchange freight with the Big Four itself.

The mainline of the Big Four was met by that of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern as that line was built from Cleveland's lakefront through Elyria to Toledo and Chicago. This carrier also did some local business in Berea, but did not have the equivalent facilities of the Big Four, which had a passenger station, freight house, and engine house, which was the terminal for the crews that worked the Quarry Spur. The original wood Big Four Station was replaced by the extant sandstone depot in 1876 and was moved to a location bordering Front St. where it served as the freight house until it was itself replaced by a larger facility at the same location between the rail lines.

Unfortunately, the Quarry Spur proved to be an expensive piece of railroad to operate. While there was only a single fatal accident (which was caused by a broken rail), the line was washed out at least 5 times by floods between 1870 and 1924. Today, there may be a few bare traces of the right‑of‑way still visible, but the site of the original station and engine house along Depot St. have been covered for many years.

An electric streetcar line, the Berea Street Railway, also served Berea. This company later (in 1894) became part of the Cleveland Southwestern Traction interurban line, a route which served Ohio cities such as Seville, Creston, Wooster, Ashland, Mansfield, and Bucyrus. The CSW had car barns and a power plant in Berea that were active until the line shut down in 1931. Surprisingly, the CSW crossed the LS&MS mainline at grade along Eastland Rd., but it went under the Big Four at the same Eastland Rd. underpass that is in use today.

The final railroad proposed for this area was a stillborn line called the Lake Erie & Pittsburgh. This was a joint venture of the Big Four and the Pennsylvania, and it was intended to provide access for these lines to the then‑booming port of Lorain and its two steel mills. Designed to handle eastward‑bound traffic for the Pennsy (as that railroad also had a joint venture with the Erie RR for westward‑bound traffic called the Lorain, Ashland & Southern), only the east end of the LE&P between Marcy Jct. (E. 73rd St. and Grant Ave. in Cuyahoga Hts.) and Brady Lake (northeast of Kent) was actually completed. The original route surveyed in 1903 in this area ran through marsh and bog lands and proved impossible for the contractor to build a stable roadbed. The line was rough‑graded west of Berea, and the right‑of‑way is visible in some locations. The bridge piers in the West Branch of the Rocky River are clearly seen from Bagley Rd., and the CEI high‑voltage transmission lines are on the right‑of‑way from Olmsted Falls to Lorain. For a brief period, it was contemplated for the LE&P to run over the Cleveland Short Line and the Big Four to a point south of Bagley Rd., but this became moot after the Big Four was leased by the New York Central, thereby killing its relationship with the Pennsylvania.

Fortunately, there have been very few serious railroad accidents in this area. In addition to the fatal wreck on the Quarry Spur, perhaps the better known ones are a head‑on collision on the Big Four in which westward passenger Train No. 25 collided with eastbound Freight Train No. 74 between Sheldon Rd. and Holland Rd. (Feb 23, 1903) which resulted in 4 fatalities, and a grade crossing collision (Jan 24, 1930) in which a westbound Lake Shore passenger train struck an occupied school bus at Sheldon Rd., killing the driver and 8 of the 9 students on the school bus.

Fortunately or not, all things change over time. The Cleveland Southwestern disappeared in 1931. The Cleveland, Lorain & Wheeling became part of the Baltimore & Ohio RR, which in turn became part of CSX Transportation. Both the Big Four and the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern became part of the New York Central System.

Berea was one of the two best‑known junction points on the entire New York Central System the other being the Mott Haven Jet. located in the Bronx and serving as the entry point into Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal. Berea was literally the crossroads of the western half of the NYC. Traffic moving over the Water Level Route between New York and New England on the east and the Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati gateways on the west moved through Berea. The interlocking tower controlled the double‑track Big Four Ohio Division mainline leading to Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and St. Louis; the four‑track Lake Shore Toledo Division mainline leading to Toledo, Elkhart, and Chicago; the triple‑track Cleveland Union Terminal mainline leading to downtown Cleveland; the four‑track Lakefront Line leading to the Cuyahoga River bridge and Collinwood Yard; Belt Jct. (near Brookpark Rd.) which was the west end of the Cleveland Short Line and the entry into Rockport Yard, and the Toledo and Indianapolis connecting tracks. In conjunction with the Cleveland Union Terminal project, the trackage was re‑configured so that the main route through BE was from the C.U.T. to the Toledo Division. At the height of the passenger service, Berea saw nearly 80 passenger trains per day such as the 20th Century Limited, Commodore Vanderbilt, Pacemaker, Chicagoan, New England States, Paul Revere, Ohio State Limited, Cleveland Mercury, Southwestern Limited, Prairie State, 5th Avenue Special, Fast Mail, Knickerbocker, Missourian, and many others. Local passenger services declined so that Berea was served only by a pair of accommodation locals that operated between Toledo and Cleveland via the Norwalk Branch (which was the original mainline). Experimental lightweight trains such as the Xplorer and the Great Lakes Aerotrain did nothing to stem the loss of passenger business in the late 1960's. Added to this mix was another 60 or so scheduled freight trains, not counting various extra trains that also operated. Berea saw a tremendous amount of railroad traffic.

In 1968, the New York Central merged with its arch-rival, the Pennsylvania, to form the ill-fated Penn Central, which lasted barely three years before going bankrupt in 1971. In turn, under intervention by the Federal government, Penn Central and 5 other bankrupt Eastern carriers (Jersey Central, Reading, Lehigh & Hudson River, Lehigh Valley, and Erie-Lackawanna) were included in the formation of the Consolidated Rail Corp. (Conrail) - auspiciously - on April 1, 1976. With deregulation of the industry and some very good management, Conrail became both profitable and sought after by other carriers. It lasted until 1999 when it was divided between CSX Transportation and the Norfolk Southern.