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Lisbon landmark is restored
By D.A. WILKINSON
LISBON
For many years, water poured through the roof of the abandoned train station in Lisbon.
Now, the building has been restored to its original state, complete with stained-glass windows.
The Pittsburgh, Marion and Chicago Railroad Train Station was built it 1886. It later became the Pittsburgh, Lisbon and Western Railroad.
The building was later purchased by the Columbiana County Farm Bureau, which used it as a feed mill before it fell into disrepair.
Robert Durbin, the Columbiana County chief deputy engineer, said he learned of the project when Columbiana County Engineer Bert Dawson mentioned he had obtained $570,000 in federal funding to restore the building.
Durbin recalled that he said, “You did what?”
Additional grants brought the project’s total to $814,000 in public funds. He began searching for funds in 2004. The county had bought the property in 1996.
The application process was not smooth. A modern photograph of the dilapidated building showed so much damage that state officials were not sure it was a train station.
Now the station — complete with its now-empty vault for valuables — will be used for meetings and as a staging point for the end of the Great Ohio Lake to River Greenway Bike Trail.
What was the baggage area at the rear of the building is now handicapped- accessible restrooms, parking for the Greenway and access to nearby Beaver Creek for canoes.
About 600 people use the Greenway each weekend, according to Dawson.
“We all know the quality of life we have here,” he said.
His next project will be to move an abandoned arched bridge to provide a walkway over a ravine at the Columbiana County Fairgrounds.
The bridge will provide a straight walk from a northern parking lot to the center of the fair.