CSX Trains
Wheeling & Lake Erie
Lorain Ashland & Southern
Maps of Area
CP-37 Area History
The Village of Wellington wouldn't be what it is today without the influence of the railroads. The Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati Railroad (chartered in 1836) had planned to build through then-larger Huntington, 10 miles to the south until one man, Dr. Johns, sold the right-of-way through Wellington to the railroad. Construction began in the 1840s and the first trains began running between Cleveland and Columbus in 1851. In 1868, the company merged with the Bellefountaine Railroad to form the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Indianapolis Railway. This company was merged with several others in 1889 to form the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad. The CCC&StL was commonly known as the "Big Four Route" and even today the lines are referred to as "The Big Four." The Big Four was acquired by the New York Central in 1906 but was largely operated as a separate company until NYC's 1968 merger with Pennsylvania Railroad to form Penn Central. The line became part of Conrail in 1976. When Conrail was split, CSX received the line through Wellington, along with most of the Big Four Route.
The Wheeling & Lake Erie line through Wellington was constructed between 1880 and 1882, when the line officially opened. At that time, the line ran from Huron to Massillon, Ohio. The W&LE continued construction in other areas. In 1949, the road was leased to Nickel Plate Road (NKP), which merged with Norfolk & Western in 1964. N&W merged with Southern Railway in 1982 to form Norfolk Southern Railway. Through all of this, Wheeling and Lake Erie existed on paper as an independent railroad, wholly owned by each of these companies, until 1989, when NS dissolved the company. Then, in 1990, NS spun off a bunch of smaller lines, including most of the original W&LE. The new company was named the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway and it operates on about 850 miles of track.
It was only after the original CCC railroad was built that Wellington began to boom. The railroad gave Wellington easy access to the world for shipping out products. The dairy industry was huge in town, but without adequate refrigeration, shipping great distances was not possible. As a result, over 50 cheese manufacturing companies were started and Wellington Cheese was shipped around the world. So much cheese was shipped from Wellington (6,465,674 pounds of cheese and 1,001,661 pounds of butter in 1878) that Wellington was called the "Cheese Capital of the World" from 1868 until 1910.