RESERVE YOUR SEAT FOR OUR 2026 ANNUAL MEETING & BANQUET
November 8, 2026 at the Sandusky Yacht Club
ORDER YOUR TICKETS HERE or download this form and mail it in.
About that buffet. There is something for everyone at this feast! Dinner includes a house salad, dinner rolls, coffee, hot tea, iced tea. But the main attraction was the carved top sirloin, seafood scampi, green beans almandine, roasted redskin potatoes, and veggie pasta. And for dessert, the Club’s famous warm bread pudding. If this sounds delicious, you are right. Everyone is encouraged to go back for seconds!
Program/Time
5:00 Social hour (cash bar)
5:30 A very short business meeting and Board meeting
6:00 Buffet dinner, with dessert served at the table
7:00 Speaker program
Our speaker will be Tom Patton, talking about the Lake Shore Electric Railway
While not a trained historian, he always had a great interest in history, virtually any history. However, the Lake Shore Electric Railway became a focus in 2001. He and his wife (Tomie) purchased the old Avon Lake Sparkle Market, when that store went out of business, and the property was offered for sale. They wanted the northernmost building on the property to convert to our administrative offices but had to purchase the entire parcel (which was the Car Barn and Station for the LSE.) That was 2000, and this was important because Tom started to learn about the significance of the old shopping center to the area’s history – for example, while living in Avon Lake since 1976, he did not know that Electric Boulevard was actually the trackage for the Lake Shore Electric Railway. For the next 20 years he collected memorabilia, learned about the history and “snooped” around the old LSE Facility, and met Rail Fans, particularly Dennis Lamont, and Albert Doane. He learned that Mr. Freilingsdorf, who purchased the property from the LSE bankruptcy in 1939, used existing Jaybird Rail that was laying around the property, instead of structural steel for joists for construction of the hotel rooms – the second floor did not exist when the building was a car barn/station, but Mr. Freilingsdorf said he was encouraged by City Officials to build hotel rooms, as Lake Road was the main artery to Northwest Ohio. He also found it quite interesting to go beneath the old “Saddle Inn” and view the structural steel foundations that held up the tracks in the Car Barn, where mechanics could work on the interurbans.
With Dennis Lamont and Albert Doane they wrote the Arcadia Book; LAKE SHORE ELECTRIC RAILWAY. Subsequently, Al brought a great deal of information created by Richard Egen. Mr. Egen retired to Southern California and decided to write the definitive story of the Lake Shore Electric Railway. After approximately 15 years, he passed, and his original materials and computer found their way to one of his friends that was active at the same rail museum. Unfortunately, all the materials were destroyed in a water event – how this could occur in southern California is a mystery. Al Doane, always the detailed conservator of information, had retained all the copies of information that Mr. Egen supplied, as Al was one of the people researching all the facts for Mr. Egen.
Tom took the narrative – over 750 pages – and had this manuscript keyed into Word, in India. Dennis Lamont has painstakingly found, scanned, and downloaded virtually every photo noted in that volume, and we reworked and restored all the maps that constitute the last volume. After about 5-6 years, we published the book; “An Annotated & Illustrated Atlas of The Lake Shore Electric Railway Company – which we will discuss and demonstrate at the Annual Meeting.
