Photo by Nyttend, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)
Dennison Depot Railroad Museum
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About Dennison Depot Railroad Museum
The Dennison Railroad Depot Museum is a National Historic Landmark and the most significant remaining example of a WWII era railroad canteen.
History
The Dennison depot was built between 1884 and 1900, with its baggage room added around 1912, at a Pennsylvania Railroad division point midway between Dennison and Uhrichsville, Ohio — which meant every train passing through stopped there. That fact made history during World War II: from 1942 through 1946 the depot housed a Salvation Army Servicemen's Canteen, proposed by Dennison native Lucille Nussdorfer and staffed by 4,000 volunteers, most of them local women, who vowed to serve every soldier passing through and ultimately fed 1.3 million troops — 13 percent of U.S. forces. The third-largest Salvation Army canteen in the nation became so beloved that soldiers nicknamed the town 'Dreamsville, U.S.A.' after the ideal small town in a Glenn Miller song. The station was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 as the Pennsylvania Railroad Depot and Baggage Room, designated a National Historic Landmark in 2011, and now operates as a local history museum.
The Trains
The headline locomotive on display is Chesapeake & Ohio No. 2700, the first built of the railroad's ninety 2-8-4 'Kanawha' class steam locomotives, which Alco and Lima produced between 1943 and 1947; cosmetically restored in 2017, it is one of just twelve preserved Kanawhas. Dennison is also becoming a destination for brand-new steam: in May 2025 the T1 Trust announced that final assembly of Pennsylvania Railroad 5550 — the under-construction duplex-drive locomotive that will become the 53rd member of the PRR's T1 class and the largest steam locomotive built in the United States since 1952 — will begin in 2026 at a newly constructed restoration shop at the museum.
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