Youngstown and Ohio River Railroad
Open-knowledge reference entry

The Youngstown and Ohio River Railroad, or Y&OR, was one of the smaller interurban railways in the state of Ohio. Along with the Youngstown and Southern Railway, the Y&OR formed a traction link between Youngstown, Ohio and the Ohio River at East Liverpool. It served several coal mines in the area and it was distinguished by the unusual feat of electrifying a section of a steam railroad, the Pittsburgh, Lisbon and Western Railroad, as part of a trackage rights agreement. The Y&OR operated for 24 years.
History
In 1906, a group of promoters formed the Y&OR for the purpose of completing an electric railway link between Youngstown and the Ohio River. Initially they leased the tracks of the Pittsburgh, Lisbon and Western (PL&W) between Washingtonville and Salem and strung trolley wire over the seven-mile (11 km) stretch of tracks. Construction began from Washingtonville and by 1907 service had been extended south to Lisbon. By 1909, the entire route from Salem to East Liverpool.
Passenger operations were conducted using a group of five interurban coaches and three combines ordered from Niles Car and Manufacturing Company in 1907. Freight trains were initially hauled by steam locomotives but in 1913 the Y&OR ordered electric locomotives to replace them.
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This entry incorporates text from “Youngstown and Ohio River Railroad” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.