Carillon Park Rail Festival
What: Celebration of Dayton's rail transportation history, including live steam engines, model train displays, miniature train rides and historical exhibits
When: Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Where: Carillon Historical Park (directions)
Cost: Adults (18-59): $8, Seniors: (60+): $7, Children (3-17): $5, Children Under 3: Free, Dayton History Members: Free
Whether it’s by stagecoach, train, bus or airplane, the Dayton region has a rich history of transit.
More than a dozen different modes of transportation are on view at Carillon Historical Park's James F. Dicke Family Transportation Center. Some interesting facts, according to Carillon Historical Park:
- The first public transportation system in Dayton in 1870 was a horse-drawn streetcar line that ran along West Third Street to Findlay Street.
- Dayton has the longest continuously running electrically propelled transit line in the United States. The first electric street railway in Dayton, the White Line Electric Railway Co., started on Aug. 8, 1888.
- In 1924, the first gasoline-powered buses started running in Dayton. They were used to move passengers from remote areas to existing streetcar lines.
Learn more about Dayton's transportation history at the Carillon Park Rail Festival on Saturday and Sunday at Carillon Historical Park.
Here are views of the ways Daytonians used to travel at the park's transportation center:
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Stagecoach
This is the Abbot and Downing Concord Coach, built in 1870 for A.F. Downing of Montpelier, Vt. The stagecoach could hold up to nine people and was designed to be drawn by three horses, two abreast and one in front. It has the original paint, and the horse hair stuffing is visible in the seats.
Locomotive
The oldest existing locomotive built in the United States, the B & O No. 1, is on display at the James F. Dicke Family Transportation Center. Named the "John Quincy Adams," the locomotive was built in 1835 by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and used until the 1890s. It was used on the East coast between Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
Passenger car
The interior of the Detroit & Mackinac Passenger Car No. 100 built by Dayton's Barney and Smith Company in 1903. This wooden bodied combination coach and parlor car is lined with mahogany and inlaid with cherry. It features stained glass windows and red mohair upholstery.
Interurban
Students walk inside the Toledo, Port Clinton and Lakeside Interurban car that was built in 1904 by the Kuhlman Car Company of Cleveland. Ohio had more miles of interurban track than any other state during the early 1900s, and Dayton was the second largest interurban center in the United States. This car holds 50 passengers and two railway employees, the conductor and the motorman. The car has two sections, a smoking compartment with a sliding door that keeps it separate from the larger non-smoking section.
Caboose
Pulling up the rear is the Baltimore & Ohio caboose built in 1923. The caboose was home for the brakeman and the freight conductor who used a potbelly stove to cook and keep warm and had a sink with running water and a small icebox. Two beds were also part of the home furnishings inside the caboose.
Waiting ...
These are benches used in the trainsman's room of the Western Avenue car barn in west Dayton owned by the City Railway Co. of Dayton. The metal dividers served as armrests and prohibited people from sleeping on them. The bench style was used in railway stations across the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
And a home for them all
The James F. Dicke Family Transportation Center, built in 2000 at Carillon Historical Park, was designed to be reminiscent of Dayton's Union Station and a railroad roundhouse. It houses five rail cars and a half dozen other historical modes of transportation. Fun fact: when you stand at the top of the roundhouse you can see yourself in each of the green squares of glass on the transportation building.
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