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HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY 391
front of the Wayne Hotel on Water Street. The depot of the Baltimore
& Ohio Road was for many years in a wooden house on the south side
of Market Street, just west of the track of the Baltimore & Ohio until
about 1910, when the present modern depot between Market and Washington
streets was constructed.
The following account of the old Mansfield & Sandusky Railroad was
originally published in the Railroader of August 12, 1882, and found
in an old scrap book formerly belonging to Eleutheros Cooke and now
in the possession of Fred Frey:
"Thinking perhaps a few lines in regard to railroading in the olden
time may interest your younger readers, I will try and give you a few
items of the first railroad built in Ohio, the Mansfield & Sandusky City
(now The Baltimore & Ohio). When this road was projected the Avriter
was a small boy living at Shelby, now an important point on the road,
and he well remembers the first meeting held at the old schoolhouse in the
interest of the enterprise. Among the speakers present was a Mr. Purely
of Mansfield, who made the astounding declaration that if the road was
The First Steam Railroad Passenger Train in America.
built they could start a train from Mansfield in the morning and run it
through to Sandusky, forty-seven miles in one day, and that the locomotive
could haul ten cars, and each car carry one hundred 'and fifty
bushels of wheat, making fifteen hundred bushels of wheat that could
be hauled in one train of cars. Everybody was invited to take stock,
and everybody did take stock and the work was begun and pushed forward
wifh commendable zeal. The road was laitl with strap rail in this wise:
First timbers called mudsills, 8 by 12, were imbedded in the ground
lengthwise the track, then crosstics were laid on these mudsills, the ties
were notched over the mudsills, and stringers 4 by 6 inches were laid in
the notches and wedged fast. Then •another strip 2 by 4 inches called
ribbons was spiked to the stringers and the iron rails (somewhat heavier
than the ordinary wagontire) was spiked on to the ribbon and the road
was completed. Time and space will not permit me to give a full
description of the locomotive and cars used on this road. Suffice it to say
that the locomotives were not as large as those now in use on our narrow
gauge roads, while this road was wider by several inches than our standard
gauge. The passenger cars were about one-third the size of our present
ears. A Mr. Jones was one of the first passenger conductors, and was a