By JULIE CARLE
BG Independent News
Wednesday at the Wood County Fair offered a step back in time for visitors to the Weston Depot.
Ticket agent Brittney Klockowski, aka secretary for the Historical Society of Weston, welcomed visitors to the three-room depot to explore the town’s past and its connection to a busy train route that went from Weston to Perrysburg in the early in the late 19th century into the early 20th century.
To welcome fairgoers to the depot, the historical society and a cadre of volunteers spruced up the 1853 building, painted the caboose and added historical memorabilia in the three rooms to set scenes of Weston in the early 1900s.
At least a couple of hundred man-hours were spent to get the depot and caboose ready for fair time.
First stop: The ticket window where passengers received a ticket for their destination. My ticket was punched from Bowling Green to Weston and back.
In addition to the ticket window in the lobby, the historical society borrowed some of Joe Schroeder’s collection depicting some of the village’s history: a slate tile, a 1921 class photo and a 1950s band jacket, all from Weston High School; newspaper clipping about the May 2, 1983, tornado that struck a Weston trailer park and killed one man; and photos and clippings detailing the depot’s move from Weston to the fairgrounds in 1970.
The middle room, the train dispatch room, has a train master sitting in his spot facing what would have been the tracks, a pot-bellied stove to heat the room in the winter, and railroad spikes, glass insulators from power and communication lines, and the original telegraph machine.
“There was also a crazy number of documents that were on the desk from as early as 1901,” Klockowski said. “We put everything into binders that you can flip through to get a sense of what was going on at the time.”
The third room was the model train room with a running set and a small wooden play train set for young children to play with during their visits.
The historical society opened the depot during the fair as part of a two-fold plan to focus attention on the importance of the railroad—and the depot specifically—to Weston, and to garner support to eventually return the depot to Weston and create a Weston museum.
The caboose was not open to walk through because of unsafe conditions inside, but Klockowski said they could peek in the windows to see what it looked like.
“We wanted to show that we are still trying our best,” Klockowski said about hosting Weston Depot Day. “Hopefully, by next year we’ll be able to make it even better.”
“There were definitely more things we wanted to do in here,” said Jeremy Schroeder, president of the Weston Historical Society and former Weston president. “We are trying to take baby steps to make this relevant again.”
Some people are resistant to the idea of bringing the depot back to Weston, citing the building is in poor condition and the cost to refurbish and move it is too expensive.
The goal is to raise private funds and seek grants to cover the costs.
“For now, we want to put some TLC into it and show off some of Weston’s history,” Schroeder said.
They didn’t have a full count of how many people toured the depot during the fair, but Schroeder and Klockowski were pleased that there was a consistent stream of people who toured the depot and showed interest in the town and depot’s history.
The historical society is considering opening the depot on a day outside of the fair to bring in people who might be interested in seeing it but didn’t want to pay to get into the fair, Schroeder said.
“We’re trying to build core memories for children and families with all of these little touches inside,” he said.
