Agent Williams at the LSE station likes to gaze into a looking-glass. He was caught doing this Thursday and continued his gazing for several minutes. It was thought by persons watching him that he was star gazing but inquiry showed that he has fitted up a looking-glass at the station so he can see the incoming cars from the west as soon as they have crossed West Monroe Street.In September 1912 the village fathers discovered that the single dynamo housed at the water works was insufficient to supply the power needs of the town through the winter, especially given the demands of the piano factory. With no funds to buy a larger dynamo, the decision was made to buy electricity from the LSE. Exactly how this was implemented is unclear. It may have been a simple metered connection at the LSE substation feeding the town's existing transformers and switchboard, or it may have used LSE transformers at the substation. Seven years later the LSE also began supplying electricity to the nearby rural communities of North Monroeville, Lyme, and Hunts Corners. A major change in LSE power production came in November 1916, when the hydroelectric power-plant at Ballville replaced the coal-burning Fremont powerhouse. The new plant produced 60-cycle alternating current as opposed to the old plant's 25-cycle current, which necessitated changes at the substations. Documentation of these changes is sparse, but many conclusions can be drawn based on available evidence. The change in power supply would have required a new rotary converter and matching transformers. It was probably at this point that the Monroeville substation received the 300kw converter noted on the 1922 Sanborn insurance map. The method of bringing the high-voltage AC wires into the substation was likely also changed at this time. Originally these wires passed through clay tile pipes set above a window in the south wall of the building. The increase in voltage and frequency would also create a higher electromagnetic field around the wires, and thus a need for safer separation and insulation. (Five years earlier, high-voltage lines arcing together had caused the fire which destroyed the Ceylon Junction station.) The new arrangement involved cutting six large holes in the west wall of the building. Within these holes was mounted a piece of plate glass with a small hole in the center through which the wires passed. Tragically, this change of equipment may have been a contributing factor in the death of one station operator. Charles Dellinger grew up near Clyde and began working for the LSE around April 1916, assigned to Monroeville as the night station operator. At 10:30pm on the night of October 4, Christ Deutesfeld, a steam railroad employee, stopped at the LSE station to visit Dellinger and found him lying unconscious near the electrical equipment. Agent Williams and a doctor were summoned, but all attempts to revive Dellinger failed. Despite his reputation as a careful employee, investigation showed that Dellinger's hand had likely come in contact with a live wire, the electricity flowing through his body and out his foot to ground. He was twenty-nine years old and left behind a wife and three children. Irv Williams himself had survived at least two mishaps involving the large switchboard, suffering electrical burns to his hand in 1902 and again in 1907. In 1925, a malfunctioning transformer caused a massive fire that destroyed the Beach Park powerhouse. Thereafter, all substation transformers were moved outdoors. A fenced yard was added behind the Monroeville substation for the transformers, a steel shed housing circuit breakers, and a steel tower for lightning arrestors and other equipment. The basement was abandoned and apparently forgotten as the official inventory conducted in 1933 lists the building as "without basement." By that time the substation was operating with one 33100/450 volt transformer and a single Westinghouse 500kw rotary converter. There may have been other transformers for the municipal power, but by 1933 these would have belonged to Lake Erie Power & Light, the commercial power subsidiary spun off from the LSE, and would not have been included in the railway inventory. Although the TF&N had carried freight from its inception, it is doubtful that Monroeville ever saw much interurban freight before the LSE ended the service in 1903. For more than fifteen years the LSE carried package express only, which was easily handled within the ticket office and required no additional facilities. But as the LSE's freight business began to blossom after World War I, a trackside platform, four feet in height, was built opposite the substation. This was soon replaced by a 12 foot by 50 foot, wood-framed freight house, probably in 1923 when similar freight houses were added at other LSE stations. Here the station agent stored outgoing freight until the next car arrived, or incoming freight waiting to be picked up by customers. Monroeville may have been a quiet, small town, but it was not immune to crime. The station here was robbed at gunpoint no less than twice over the years. The first robbery occurred on the night of February 3, 1911. Shortly before 8:00pm, a masked bandit entered the station and pointed a revolver at night operator Benjamin Snyder. At first Snyder assumed the man was a friend playing a prank, but was soon convinced otherwise. With the gun to his head he was ordered to unlock the cash drawer, from which the criminal retrieved $11.95 before backing out of the station and making his escape. The sheriff was alerted but it does not appear that the outlaw was ever apprehended. A second robbery came years later, on the night of August 17, 1925. Twenty-one year old relief ticket agent Forest Seeley was confronted by an unmasked man with a revolver who emptied the drawer of $19 in cash and a $7 check, before disappearing into the night. Hazards were not limited to employees only. The LSE had only three stops and four street crossings in Monroeville, far less than in many towns along the system, but accidents still occurred at nearly all of them over the years. Newspapers of the time document the occasional car derailment or collision with horse-drawn buggies in the early years, but the worst accident for Monroeville came on September 17, 1913. A westbound local car in charge of motorman Claude Jones and conductor J.P. Spurling, both of Fremont, left Norwalk at 5:30pm, half an hour late. The car was running fast to make up for lost time as it approached a point about one mile outside Norwalk where the track crossed from the north side of the road to the south side. It was then that motorman Jones saw an oncoming limited car closing fast. He applied the brakes, put the motors into reverse, and jumped from the car. The motorman of the limited had no time to react before the cars collided head on at high speed. The front vestibules of both were completely smashed as passengers were thrown into the aisles and showered with broken glass. The limited car was about half full, but the local was packed to capacity and carried the majority of those who were injured. Among the Monroeville residents injured were mayor August Hess, deputy sheriff Carl Bleile, Huron County treasurer J.F. Henninger, and businessman Thomas Latham. Motorman Jones received cuts to his face, while conductor Spurling had a badly bruised arm. Nearby residents heard the collision and called for doctors who arrived from Norwalk in automobiles. Responsibility for the accident was placed on the crew of the limited who were supposed to wait for the local car at the Monroeville siding, just west of the substation. As time passed, automobiles replaced horse-drawn buggies as the victims of collisions with interurban cars. On September 7, 1917, an LSE limited piloted by motorman John Camp collided with a steam-powered road roller at Monroeville. The heavy machine was pushed nearly 100 feet down the track. Motorman Camp was slightly injured when he jumped from the car, while the forty passengers on board were shaken but otherwise uninjured. A worse accident occurred on the afternoon of August 30, 1925. William Schmidt, Monroeville resident and employee of the Norwalk Dairy Co. (owned by former Monroeville Creamery Co. manager Carl Beyer), was at the wheel of an International truck carrying a load of ice and ice cream destined for a harvest festival in Sherman Township. As he crossed the LSE tracks on Monroe Street he was suddenly struck by a fast moving eastbound limited. The truck was carried 400 feet on the front of the car and snapped a trackside electrical pole. Schmidt was found lying on the ground next to the demolished truck in a scene littered with accident debris. He was removed to his home on Main Street where he lapsed into unconsciousness. It was feared that he had suffered internal injuries and his prognosis was uncertain. Motorman John Beebe suffered a broken wrist and conductor Tom Denan was cut and badly shaken, but none of the twenty passengers on board were injured. The broken pole stopped all interurban traffic between Monroeville and Norwalk, and left Monroeville without street lights for the night. Schmidt awoke the next afternoon and eventually made a full recovery. Although collisions with automobiles were becoming increasingly frequent, it wasn't until an especially deadly accident involving a Greyhound bus just east of Bellevue in 1929 that the LSE was ordered to install automatic warning flashers at many crossings. The crossings at Main Street and on the Norwalk Road (location of the 1913 collision) were the sixth and seventh locations to receive warning flashers. Oddly, the Monroe Street crossing, where the dairy truck was so violently destroyed, never received flashers. By this time, however, traffic on the LSE southern division was being steadily downgraded in favor of the flatter, straighter, northern division between Sandusky and Fremont. From November 1927 Cleveland-Detroit limiteds were routed over the northern division exclusively, while the southern division received Cleveland-Toledo express cars that also made local stops as needed. In July 1931 these express cars were demoted to shuttling between Ceylon Junction and Fremont, a car change being required of passengers traveling beyond those points. A state and federal government project to reroute US 20 under the NYC and W&LE railroad tracks was begun in 1935, and although it did not directly effect the LSE, it was another harbinger of the automobile age and the continuing highway improvements that were making interurbans less competitive. A similar project on the east side of Bellevue was more damaging, however, severing the LSE line in November 1937. This restricted the southern division shuttle cars further, but by then plans to replace all rail service with buses had already been set in motion months earlier. When the LSE asked the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio for permission to replace rail service with buses, the Monroeville council passed a resolution in favor of the plan. Buses arrived on the southern division on January 23, 1938. Initially these duplicated rather than replaced the rail cars until a legal dispute over the PUCO bus franchise could be settled. The major difference being that the buses followed the new US 20 and made their stops in the center of downtown Monroeville rather than the substation which was well off the highway route. Two weeks later rail service was reduced to a single round trip car each day, just enough to maintain the franchise rights. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled in favor of Lake Shore Coach Company in April, clearing the way for the LSE to end interurban rail service entirely. The last shuttle car passed through Monroeville on May 14, 1938. In a somewhat poetic conclusion, the final car was number 18, one of the original Barney & Smith coaches built for the TF&N in 1900. Once the star of the LSE roster and known as "The Yellow Flyer" for the speed records it set in 1902, by 1938 the car's orange paint was shabby and peeling. It was an aging relic compared to the later steel cars, which were themselves aging relics in the era of automobiles. With rail service discontinued and the buses making their stops in the center of downtown, the substation on Ridge Street no longer had need for an attendant. For nearly thirty eight years Irv Williams had been the constant, dedicated, and perpetually active representative of the LSE in Monroeville. His energy, and the demands of his job, were once expressed in a short piece in the Norwalk Reflector. Remarking on a photo of Williams taken by a local amateur photographer, the newspaper wondered when the shutterbug could possibly have caught him standing still. With no further job to perform and his wife having passed the year before, Irv Williams retired and moved to live with his daughter and son-in-law in Ashtabula. 
   
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operates the derail protecting the crossing of the LSE and the B&O sometime around 1914. The lunch room and roof of the former station operator's residence can be seen at far left. (Dennis Lamont) |
ville. Note some changes have taken place to the electrical equipment as compared to earlier photos, and the walls are partially painted. (Carole Evans) |
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approvingly at the rotary converters. This photo is later than the one above and shows more changes to the equipment, as well as the completely painted walls. (Dennis Lamont) |
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document the operating conditions of the equipment. One of the station operators many responsibilities. (Dennis Lamont) |
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rural communities in Huron County, including Hunts Corners, Lyme, and North Monroeville. (Sandusky Register) |
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the night station operator at Monroeville around April 1916. He was accidentally killed while working on the night of October 4, 1916. (Ancestry.com) |
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unknown newspaper, possibly the Fremont Daily News. (Drew Penfield) |
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lunch stand and house next door, freight platform, and listing the rotary converters present inside. (Drew Penfield) |
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1925 showing the outdoor electrical equip- ment. Freight house is at left and milk depot is visible across the street. (Dennis Lamont) |
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was the victim of an armed robbery on the night of February 3, 1911. (Sandusky Register) |
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was a head-on collision between a local and a limited about two miles west of Norwalk in September 1913. (Elyria Chronicle) |
Monroeville, pictured here in 1937. The head-on collision of 1913 happened near this area. (Ralph H. Sayles photo) |
demolished by an LSE limited at the Monroe Street crossing in August 1925, seriously injuring the driver. (Sandusky Star-Journal) |
deadly collision with a bus near Bellevue in 1929. The two crossings east of Monroeville got flashers, but oddly not the Monroe Street crossing. (Dennis Lamont) |
history. The LSE poles were in very poor condition in later years. Small round telephone booth at the passing siding is barely visible in the distance. (Dennis Lamont) |
near stop 212, known variously as Young's, McCurey's Creek, or Megginson Creek. (Dennis Lamont) |
bridge work necessary for the US 20 subway at Monroeville, which was scheduled to be completed in June. (Norwalk Reflector-Herald) |
along bottom of photo, track at left is NYC, train is on W&LE track, LSE track is curving away to the right. (Dennis Lamont) |
between Ceylon Junction and Fremont January 23, 1938 and replaced the electric cars entirely on May 15. (Norwalk Reflector-Herald) |
late 1937 to begin replacing LSE rail service. Three such buses were used on the southern division in 1938. (Bob Lorenz) |
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