ORHS today successfully moved an original PRR block station cabin to our rail yard. The cabin was originally built at block station “Shale” at Summitville, Ohio on the old Cleveland & Pittsburgh Division of the PRR. Judging by the architecture, it appears to be of late 1800s or early 1900s vintage before PRR removed the fancier details from their standard plans. Some 20+ years ago, it was purchased from Conrail by a private owner and moved to their property. The owners have donated the cabin to us along with an Erie (their hometown road) concrete phone booth, other line side items and quite a few antique railroad related artifacts.

It’s in very good condition for its age though it needs a few minor repairs and a thorough scraping and painting back to standard PRR colors.

I have a few photos that I need to resize and I’ll post them in a day or two.

A few images:





Delivered on site. It will be set on a new railroad tie foundation.

Hello.

Wonderful structure!

In a world where some of us have been working remote for 1-1/2 years, it would make an ideal COVID office.

I know of one rival to this, it’s restored, a little larger and I was just in it.

Cheers!

Randy

Hello group! I forwarded the link of this topic to a good friend Chip Syme. He emailed me 2 photos of the block station in service. Photos from his collection.



Rob Sundberg

Thought I'd post a little progress on our "Shale Shack". We're using it as our ticket office. So far: scraped, primed and painted in PRR colors from the top of the windows down with second coat of maroon still needed on a few areas like the window sashes (next is the tedious scraping and repair of the ginger bread above the windows); metal roof, electrical installed; interior lighting (working on an old station platform lamp for outside) as well as internet. We're getting there...

PRR used manual block a good bit; enough that interlocking tower operators were known as "Block Operators" on PRR, even in automatc block territory.

Of course in 251-254 territory (ABS with the current of traffic) you used manual block against the current of traffic.

Phil Mulligan

Eric,

If I make a trip up to you guys, can I get inside? I may want to build a duplicate on my property.

Thanks,
Paul

Paul - shouldn’t be a problem. I’m there at least every Saturday and there is usually a crew working somewhere most other mornings. Just let me know if/when you’re stopping by. We haven’t worked on the interior. It’s still the “institutional green” painted bead board that who knows if it’s original or not.

Be sure to send a full article to the PRR T&HS journal, "The Keystone". This is a great little piece of Pennsy architecture which might have otherwise gone overlooked and lost forever. I love the extra ginger-bread touch above the windows. That's so indicative of the era when industry often added art and beauty to functional structures.
Wonderful save!