Production of applause and ideastream.

Public media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

Now leaving on track 25 the Applause Express making stops in Medina County, Georgia, and Tuscarawas.

All aboard.

Tickets, please.

Another episode of applause is about to leave the station.

I'm your host and conductor, Kabir Bhatia.

First we ride on a streetcar from the early 20th century, which was the method of moving through big cities like Cleveland.

at the Northern Ohio Railway Museum.

And Medina County Transit fans keep history rolling by bringing century old rail cars back to their former glory.

It's like, why?

Why do we have a canal boat museum?

Why do we have.

Well, we have an art museum, and there's a certain segment of, bikes that needs to be saved and where the trials.

When we started the museum in 1965, most wanted to.

So is there a 60th anniversary year right now?

What kind of you get?

The home of the form of transportation that never should have been.

In the early 1900s, your primary way of long distance transportation was the steam trains.

And locally you had the horse and buggies.

The interurban came in in terms of streetcars.

It went from city to city, and they all started getting formed around the last of the 1800s.

In the early 1900s.

The line that we're building on was built in the 1902.

And you could take an inner urban train to Akron.

You could take one to Medina or Chippewa Lake.

We're we're very close to there were lines that went out in the Lake County Jogger County there.

You know, it was a radial networ That's how people got around to those things.

You know, we forget this, that I mean, we had automobiles, but back when not everybody did.

This is how people got around cities.

But between 1925 and 1938, it all was abandoned and gone.

And I got to see the streetcars die, which broke my heart.

And then the automobile came along.

And instead of merging into the existing network of finances, you've seen that they wanted to replace the the trolley car.

We're trying to save the history of that.

Because you learn from history.

We collect, we preserve, restore, display and operate streetcars and other electric railway equipment for the education and enjoyment of the public.

We've had several cars with restored are in use one way or the other, and a couple more waiting.

This is, the car numbers 303.

It was one of about six that were built for an urban, railroad in the Chicago area.

They lasted on that railroad about ten years, and they were purchased in by Shaker Rapids and, came to Cleveland.

Cherry wood.

All this wood is cherry in here.

The bulk of my work was these, sashes were in very bad shape, deteriorated.

The bottom edge of them was very, rotten, essentially.

And, all of these sections were stripped down to the bare wood and, stained and varnished and the, the, the hardware was, wire brushed and, coated.

That's all original hardware.

I mean, I've been at it basically for three years.

And one thing that I really learned was I gained an appreciation for the craftsmanship that was put into this car 100 years ago.

The other day, when I was cleaning up on one of these seats, I discovered a ticket, rain check ticket, for an Indians game that had made it through.

Well, it was 1950, so you do the math.

And it was still in that spot, kind of attached to the, to the framework of that seat.

You know, you just think about what people were doing back then, how they used this car, that there's a human aspect to this, that, fascinating.

This is Shaker Heights number 12, originally number 1212.

When the line was started, it was started.

It was the Cleveland Interurban Railroad, and its purpose was to provide the service from Cleveland out to Shaker Heights on the line.

The car was in service on the Shaker until about 1960, when it was retired from the General Revenue Service.

And of course, now today we're running it for the for the people to be able to enjoy and see what see wouldn't 1914 was like beautiful red hand seats, which is something you just don't see on, a modern car if, you know, a trip back in time.

1910 1920 era.

All you Cleveland streetcar lines were consolidated into one big company or Cleveland Railway.

But the mid 40s, I know it was during the war, the, city of Cleveland took over Cleveland right away.

And that created the Cleveland Transit system through the transit system, ran your streetcars, your busses in Cleveland.

Has started its own rapid transit.

We also have, the 109, which is Cleveland Transit System 1954.

It's a high level rapid transit car.

It ran on the Red line.

The red line is the one from Stokes Windermere out to the airport.

One.

In addition to being, motorman and conductor, I come in, work on the crew, like, be a tour guide.

I enjoy talking with the public.

I do enjoy getting a chance to run the car, although I also happy as a conductor.

I like taking tours around 1914, my mother used to say, I get restless in church, get me to quiet down.

She promised to take me home on the streetcar.

She said it always worked.

So I had been a freak for these things ever since.

I'd like to ring the bell and blow the whistle.

It's fun.

You know, maybe I'm a reincarnated steam engineer or something.

Or a trolley motorman.

I don't know what, but I like running cars.

I was raised along the Erie tracks in Waterville, and there's always trains going by.

It's a little kid.

I always wanted to go for a, trolley ride or a train ride or something.

There's just a certain allure of trains.

That attraction good for after me.

Sometimes you can find power lines where a trolley line had been.

You see remnants here and there, and I think preservation is very important.

The trolley cars are trolley car, rapid cars, a rapid car.

But it's important to know how things used to be or you don't know how things are done today.

You don't have a an appreciation for what you got.

The Northern Ohio Railway Museum and Civil is open to the public on Saturdays through the end of September.

We're now on our way to Georgia County, folks.

Home to the family.

They share a passion for model trains.

Let's visit their corner field model railroad museum with idea stream.

Public media.

Carry wise.

Oh.

The trains here talk steam whistle and at times whiz right by.

The museum is a family affair, started from a lifelong collection and passion for trains.

We always had the dream of the building, a building, giving the trains to the people.

I always wanted to make a layout because I was tired of hearing the people say, the hobby is dying.

It's not dying.

It's just goes in phases.

Getting everything up and running.

Took the family about 15 years.

The layout is 32 by 145ft.

And we're very proud of the size and the way it is, because it's the biggest in our.

The elaborate display features intricate details, from Amish buggies to handcrafted picnic tables with much of this layout paying tribute to Northeast Ohio.

My land here is incorporated with a lot of industry to the lake area to the town area.

We have a city amusement park which you might see replicate into like Jog Lake, which has an operating roller coaster called the Big Dipper.

A popular site in the city section is a replica of New York City's Empire State Building.

Has the changing colors on top to.

I can select different colors, but it's a big piece because people like the size and the heights of it.

The large families large collection also incorporates trains and pieces.

People have donated to their museum.

There's a 70 year old white church on the layout, and it has a wedding going on.

He knew the gentleman.

He had passed away from cancer, but he was really special.

That is one of my favorite pieces.

Visitors can lose track of time taking in all of the scenes throughout the layout, which features a mix of city and country life.

As you come into my side, we have the Amish area.

More like jogger County area, more like Cleveland, east side of Cleveland.

This is my pride and joy of section that my dad let me have.

Basically, I control this whole end for the public to see.

We also have the Best Sand company, which was made in honor of my great grandfather, which my brother made, and we all took turns on different creativity.

And we always would.

We would go travel around and we would get ideas of different buildings, how things would look, the nature.

So we kind of would get a good replica of how things work, so wouldn't look too much, and it won't look too little.

Ashley Ellis and her brother Tom Jr. Run the trains and control the features on opposite ends of the museum.

Two popular pieces on Ashley's side include the drive in theater and the rocket Ship Ride.

Everyone loves the rocket ships as everyone thinks of Euclid Beach Park.

They were also at the Lake Park, and everyone always talks about the cars that they ride on because the kids and families always talk like, oh well, they actually work and they do.

They actually start and stop.

Of course, the trains delight to keep an eye out for the bullet that speeds along the outside track and watch the trains brought in on the roundhouse.

It all gets people talking.

I like modern diesels, like steam engines and stuff, but you got to have like, steam engines.

A lot of older people like the steam kids and stuff, loves the railroads like CSX, Norfolk Southern.

It's just things like that.

The you got to have it for variety for everybody.

Can't have one particular railroad.

The museum also includes the trading post train shop, carrying on the name of a long time Cleveland business where Tom senior once worked.

Back in the time in the 70s and 80s, there was a time period when I was there at the store.

A lot of people would come in holiday times, but you never hardly seen the children.

They come in with their parents, but mostly it's the parents that came in.

So today is because we had this massive train display.

I get the chance to share it with the children of the country and our world, and that's very important to me.

The plan is to keep all these trains running well into the future, with the next generation of the family eventually taking the reins, and that's makes me feel very happy and relaxed, because, you know, a lot of businesses like this die.

They close because nobody's there to take over.

The museum's name, Corner Field, is a nod to another family dream, pursued a large ball field that was built for Ashley when she was ten and sick with meningitis.

I asked my dad to build me a big ball field in my front yard, and he's the greatest dad in the world and my role model, and he may be a dream come true for me on Christmas with that.

And in building this at the time, we've put two and two together to make the name because that's stuck.

And then this stuck and now it really sticks.

And in his house cornfield and trading post and shop and by God, I'm so proud of that.

I can't put it in words.

The corner field model railroad museum and trading post train shop in Hunts Burg Township is open Wednesdays through Sundays.

So while we're waiting for the next stop, I've got something to do right now.

And that's to tell you about our to do list.

It's a weekly newsletter that's free.

We send it not by train or by Pony Express, but by email, which is actually less smelly and way faster.

And when you open it, what's inside?

Arts event ideas, artist profiles, and arts news from across the Northeast Ohio region?

Be sure to sign up online at Arts Dot Idea stream.org and thanks.

Our next stop is in Tuscarawas County, birthplace of Ernest Mooney.

Water war.

There was a master woodcarver who also had a passion for trains.

His handcrafted history of the American Steam engine is at the heart of the Ernest Water Museum and Gardens in Dover.

He knew no strangers and he had a big booming voice.

She talked to anybody about anything, and you could hear him a mile away.

One time, Abraham Lincoln sending a text to go to work.

Like right where you are.

Well, there is no better place.

He was kind of a showman.

Where?

Small town.

He kind of had to advocate for his own art.

And so I think that personality helped sell his art to others and kind of get that popularity.

His hair was bigger than the rest.

He was only about five foot eight.

He was rather small.

A lot of hair.

He always said you could tell what direction the wind was blowing based on which way his hair was going that day.

So his story really begins in 1885, when he was born here in Dover, to parents who just came from Switzerland in 1883.

Now, unfortunately, when he was just three years old, his father passes away in an accident.

And that leaves his mom with five kids.

And so as soon as he could started working, and that was at age five, as a cow herder.

So he was born originally as Ernest was there no middle name, but that cow herding job earned him the nickname Moonie, because in Swiss, Moonie means bull of the herd.

And as he collected the cows, everyone kind of joked because he was the little leader of all of these cows, taking them out to pasture each day.

And that just ended up sticking with him for the rest of his life.

Taking the cows to pasture.

One day he finds a pocket knife in the dirt, picks it up, starts waddling to pass the time, watching those cows.

And he never stopped.

When you come into the lobby, his workshop is attached to the lobby so you can see where he started with his carvings, where he accomplished all of it.

We had the big picture window, as you can see, out to the gardens and where the button houses.

And the first room that you come into is the early years, when they got married and was raising the family and his work in the steel mill for the first 24 years, and some of his original tools that he used in carving.

Replicas of the steel mill that he worked in here and over was the American sheet tinplate.

He worked there for 24 years.

And then after the mill was torn down and moved out of Dover, then he carved it up 15 years later.

And it's a scale replica and all the little parts move and operate.

So you can see how the men work.

The steel.

He grew up along the railroad tracks, so it was a good place for him to hang out.

And the hobos would come into town.

And that's where he met the first hobo with the pliers.

So the story of the pliers really begins when man is about ten years old, and he meets a stranger who cuts him a pair of these pliers out of a single block of wood.

Hands them over, but doesn't tell him how he did it.

And of course, Mooney was enamored with whittling at this time.

And so while he took those cows to pasture, he figured it out.

And he found out that if he makes ten cuts in a single block of wood, he could make a working pair of pliers as well.

From there, he masters it.

He'll go on to carve about three quarter of a million of those in his lifetime.

He would hand those out to schoolchildren, anybody he would meet.

A lot of people challenged him and say, you know, I don't believe that you can do it that fast because he could guarantee you a set in 20s or less.

And then in 1965, he was on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and he clocked his fastest record at 9.4 seconds for a single pair.

So less than a second cut.

And of course, the single pair wasn't enough for him.

He began experimenting with multiples.

The theater contains the player tree, and that was his first big item that he carved in 1913.

Coming home from the mill.

He visualizes the block of wood that he needs to shape out, and the tree that he'll ultimately create.

And then he places in that block over a 64 day period, 31,000 cuts, and that unveiled a tree of 511 pair of pliers.

He had.

Then he started with trains.

There was a rail line that passed his home, and he was able to go down and look at the engines and started memorizing them.

And then he'd read it and then encyclopedias about different things that happened in the stages of history of steam.

So he'd carve something, and then he'd read about another one and how the steam developed over the years.

1913 is when he began the evolution of the steam engine completely his idea.

And it started with 250 B.C.

and it goes around the room up to 1942.

So he wanted to make sure that when he carved the evolution of the steam engine, that he was capturing them in their full essence and that was also included, mechanized them.

And so they're all run off of an electric motor with a leather sewing machine belt.

That's how we continue to run them today.

They're all pressed fit together.

They're not glued.

So they all have a tight fit and they're solid.

The evolution itself is carved across 40 years.

You can think of it as it is probably about 35 pieces in there for the most part.

So none of the works in the museum took him longer to do than a year, and he knew that he could carve about a thousand pieces a month.

I would say his average is about six months time of actual carving time.

Most of them are right around that 6000 piece mark.

The smaller engines, obviously are fewer pieces, but then you get something like the Erie Triplex, and that's over 9000.

He was considered an artistic genius as well as a mechanical genius to be able to operate them like that.

And then the.

That the.

At the age of 68, he retired because he finished the evolution of the steam engine.

So for four years he didn't carve, but he was restless.

So my dad and him sat down and they discussed, and they came up with the idea of carving these great American events in steam history.

So that was things like the Lincoln funeral train.

And the driving of the Golden Spike steam.

The John Bull was the first passenger train in the US.

average about 70 countries throughout the world, and we keep a registry that people can sign in.

There's kind of like, I guess, groupies.

There's people who really get really get into money and the history and everything that he created.

Our biggest method of advertisement is word of mouth.

People telling other people about it.

He had opportunities.

He had offers for quite large sums of money at that point in time, but he turned them all down.

And that's why, thankfully, I have a job and we're all still here and all the carvings are still here.

But he thought it was very important to have everyone come to the city of Dover to see his carvings.

And that's why we have such a great relationship with the city.

People are just fascinated and amazed that someone can actually do this from scratch.

And with only a second grade education, it's not like he was mimicking someone else who had done it already.

You had all this idea in his own mind.

That's truly amazing.

But.

The Ernest Water Museum and Gardens in Dover, Ohio, are open daily.

Next time on the Applause Express, step inside the Akron Museum of Art and see what contemporary artists have to say about bodies, culture and art history in the exhibit, she said.

She said.

A lot of these themes are really fruitful topics that artists are not going to run out of ideas in.

Plus, Northeast Ohio's Moises Vargas brings Brazilian beach to the stage for the Tri-C Jazz Fest.

All that and more on the next round of applause So no noise for you.

But I'm boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Below He.

It's time to wave goodbye, my friends.

I midia stream public Medias Kabir Bhatia as we depart.

Here's some traveling music from our blues buddy walking cane.

This is from our Applause Performances program, which you can watch online and on demand for free with the PBS app.

Enjoy!

Loved working that year.

Look.

Amazing.

Living.

Working third year.

Duncan is our Duncan commission.

Living, work and dying.

Oh, don't come visit.

They took me only put the the man on the deck.

The old man?

Very much since they.

Lived.

To be old enough.

Hear the angel say.

Living work and die.

Yes.

Don't give me the living.

Working the years.

Duncan means her.

Do.

Oh, don't come.

On living work and die.

Oh!

Do you?

All right.

You do?

You.

Do.

You.

Do you get.

Production of applause and ideastream.

Public media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.