Green Gables Restaurant

A very traditional and popular "Old Reynoldsburg" restaurant in this 1987 photo, the year it closed.It was the Reynoldsburg stop for the Lake Shore system bus line.

The Reynoldsburg-Truro Historical Society has a display and a Columbus Dispatch article about the closing of the restaurant.

The building was recently sold and is now the store front for a palm reader.

The Lake Shore System, was a fairly large regional carrier in Ohio. As their map in the Russell's guide shows their service was centered out of Columbus going mostly to towns East and South of Columbus. They did have one route that went to Lima which was a former Trailways route. It was owned by Harry Arnold, who at one time also had some routes that went North to Toledo and along Lake Erie from Cleveland to Toledo. That is where the Lake Shore name came from as by the 50's they no longer ran anywhere close to the lake shore of Lake Erie. Routes in the North had been sold to Greyhound by that time. The route to Newark ran just as far as Newark up until about the late 60's.

During the late 60's Lake Shore took over the former Greyhound "Panhandle Route" which ran Columbus to Pittsburgh paralleling the Pennsylvania Railroad "Panhandle route" which ran between NYC and St. Louis. As I recall they used the recently discussed Flxible Visicoaches between Columbus and Newark on the trips that ended in Newark. Also, I believe that they used Flxible High Levels on that route as well. Harry Arnold at one time also owned the transit companies in Newark and Zanesville, Ohio, and possibly some other cities. On the Lake Shore buses, the baggage doors noted the owner as Ohio Rapid Transit Inc./d.b.a. as Lake Shore System.

They did a lot of commuter service to Newark, Chillicothe, Lancaster and Reynoldsburg Ohio. In addition to the Columbus-Newark-Pittsburgh route they had a busier Columbus, Wheeling, Steubenville Pittsburgh route. They ran just about every kind of GM or Flxible ever built. They had about 65 buses, Flxible Clippers, Visicoaches, high levels, Flxiliners, everything but VL's. GM's were dominant and included from the 3703's, 4101, 4103's 04's,06's,07's,08's 4903's and 05's. They also owned two Eagles for a few years before being sold to Bieber in PA. Prior to getting into the 4106's they had a fairly large contingent of used Silversides. They also had some Twin Coach Highway Post office units.

Greyhound needed them to get into Athens from Cleveland so an LSS driver would pull the run Athens to Columbus and a Greyhound driver would take it on to Cleveland. They pretty much controlled all charter service in South east and South central Ohio. Pooling service with Greyhound may have led to their demise, as by the early 70's the Lake Shore drivers wanted wages the same as Greyhound's. They were on strike about nine months before the company closed its doors. By this time Harry Arnold had gone into semi retirement and had turned over day to day operations to his son in law who evidently thought selling out was the easiest course to sail. According to "Motor Coach Age" there was a connection in name from the Lake Shore System to the Arcodel System which Harry Arnold also owned.