BELLEVUE ... Hub of the Nickel Plate

(From the Nickel Plate Road Magazine, February 1957)

Bellevue always has been the hub of the Nickel Plate.

Seventy-five years ago next September a hand-forged, nickel-plated spike was driven in the center of the turntable there to mark completion of the Nickel Plate. Historians reported that the ceremony was "equaled only by the driving of the golden spike to join the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads in 1869, at Ogden, Utah, completing the first transcontinental railway."

Bellevue was the mid-point of the new railroad between Buffalo and Chicago. It was a division point, the site of the Road's largest roundhouse and also of the shops for the railroad.

Today, three quarters of a century later, Bellevue is even more important. Trains from four divisions - the Cleveland and Fort Wayne Divisions of the Nickel Plate District, the Sandusky Division of the L.E. & W. District and the Toledo Division of the W. & L.E. District - use its expanded facilities.

The principal classification yards of the system are at Bellevue. Eastbound high speed freights from the Chicago gateway are consolidated there with those from the St. Louis, Peoria and Toledo gateways. Then they are dispatched over the Nickel Plate District to Cleveland, Buffalo, and points beyond or over the W. & L.E. District through Pittsburgh Junction to Philadelphia, Baltimore and other points in the east. Trains from the east are broken for dispatching to the western gateways. On a normal day 35 to 45 trains arrive and depart from Bellevue.

The engine terminal, handling both steam and diesels, is one of the busiest in the system. To assist in expediting the trains, modern facilities to repair "bad order" cars were built there in 1953. The Road's principal icing station is there. Also there are cleaning and stock handling facilities.

The Road's general superintendent and his staff have headquarters there, Also, the maintenance of way equipment and the signal shops for the entire system are located at Bellevue. The storehouse is the principal one for M. & W. and signal materials. A reclamation plant for journal box packing was established there in 1954.

Bellevue - a community of about 7,000 - is indeed a "Nickel Plate town." Nearly one out of every two families there is supported by the Nickel Plate.