(The following story by Larry Alexander appeared on the Intelligencer Journal website on March 12, 2010.)
STRASBURG, Pa. — Generous grants will allow the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania to complete one large project and start another.
A $59,980 grant from the Norfolk Southern Foundation will allow the Strasburg museum to put the final touches on its 1915 Golden Age of Railroading street scene.
Begun in 2005, the display includes a train station platform running from Steinman Station, complete with telegraph office, to Stewart Junction, the museum’s education center. A passenger train sits by the platform.
In between, along a cobblestone street, are several false fronts of buildings, vacant until now.
The grant will allow the museum to furnish the buildings to represent a railroad employee’s home, a general store, a railroad hotel and bar, a railroad union organizer’s office and a photography studio.
On special occasions, there also will be people in period garb, including engineers, conductors and townspeople.
“The whole unit, from Steinman Station to Stewart Junction, is trying to recreate the Golden Age of Railroading around 1915, and show the impact the railroads had on communities all across the nation,” said museum director Charles Fox.
The street scene buildings were previously constructed, in large part, by students from the Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology, Lancaster County Career & Technology Center students and volunteers.
Work on the final touches to the street scene project will begin sometime later this spring, Smith said, and be completed by early summer of 2011.
Also, a $50,000 matching grant will be awarded to the museum next week from the Pennsylvania Railroad Technical & Historical Society that will go toward restoration of the famous Lindbergh Engine.
The 96-year-old engine, the lone survivor out of 83 locomotives of its class, gained fame in 1927 when it raced an airplane to New York City, to deliver newsreel footage of President Calvin Coolidge promoting aviator Charles A. Lindbergh to the rank of colonel, following his nonstop solo flight from Long Island to Paris, France.
Although the train, which reached speeds of 115 miles per hour, arrived in New York after the airplane, the fact that the photos could be developed in a special darkroom on the train meant its newsreels reached movie theaters first.
The engine and attached fuel tender, with a combined weight of 205 tons, is in for a long list of work including removal of all lead paint (due to start this month), repair of all rust, replacement or repair of the boiler jacket, drive rods, bearings and drive boxes, as well as wooden doors, windows and flooring.
The work is expected to take 10,000 man-hours and last three to four years. The cost, Fox estimated, will be about $400,000.
“With a project like this, you never know what you’re getting into until you start taking it apart,” Fox said. “It’s probably the single biggest restoration project we’ve ever undertaken here.”
The museum invites anyone skilled in welding, metal fabrication, cabinetmaking, painting and pipe fitting to volunteer for the restoration shop.
The Lindbergh Engine is one of many historic locomotives visitors can see for free on Sunday as all state-owned museums celebrate the 11th annual Charter Day.
The day commemorates the event in 1681 when England’s King Charles II deeded the land that became Pennsylvania to William Penn.
The historic sites, including the Railroad Museum, Ephrata Cloister, Landis Valley Museum & Village, are open from noon to 4 p.m.