PITTSBURGH — According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, railroad enthusiasts of all ages got an early Christmas gift this year when Norfolk Southern Railroad’s ExhibitCar pulled into a rail siding adjacent to The Waterfront in Homestead Saturday.
The 85-foot interactive railroad museum was lured here by the McKeesport Model Railroad Club. The local appearance was somewhat of a coup.
“They don’t usually come this far north,” said Larry Ward a club trustee who has been a member since 1962.
He said, while standing in front of the converted passenger car on this blustery Saturday afternoon, that Norfolk Southern usually takes the traveling museum to towns along its own routes in Dixie, but that persistence on the part of the McKeesport group persuaded the rail giant to take a trip up north.
ExhibitCar originally had been scheduled to be at the site from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., giving visitors ample time to get out and see the displays of H.O. model trains (the same scale as used in the Railroad Club’s exhibit) set up to represent the kinds of cars that the railroad pulls along thousands of miles of track, hauling coal, automobiles, paper products, chemicals and other commodities.
But Norfolk Southern officials, seemingly leery of the snow and winds that accompanied them up north, got a little antsy and decided at the last minute to pull the plug at about 4:30 and head for the car’s next stop in Altoona, a visit that was scheduled after the decision was made to come to Homestead.
But even considering the early departure, Ward said the ExhibitCar was well received.
By his estimates, about 1,500 people went through the car, watching monitors that tout Norfolk Southern’s claim of being the “Thoroughbred of Transportation,” or pretending to be railroad employees at the museum’s interactive dispatch center.
Visitors also got the chance to do the job of a railroad engineer in a true-to-life locomotive simulator that puts them right in the command seat to operate the horn, throttle and brake.
But, warned Ward, it is not as easy as it looks. “The engineer has to touch a different part of that console every 30 seconds to keep it from going into an emergency brake application; if he doesn’t, there is a buzzer or a bell that goes off, called an alerter.”
The McKeesport Model Railroad Club invited ExhibitCar to come to town to help kick off its annual Holiday Open House, a public display of its own model train exhibit, one of the largest in the Pittsburgh region.