More Car Shifting

Most of the progress during the day on Saturday included shifting of various cars in preparation for the Annual Meeting.

First thing in the morning, Bill Wall and Bill Pollman stopped by the museum with tires and rims for the trolley bus that is scheduled to be shipped down to Baltimore. They have a similar trolley bus, but they need one of ours (we have three) for parts. The one big hurdle in getting the bus shipped is that it had no tires on it.

George Contrada, Galen Semprebon, Ted Coppola, John Cummins, Dave Coppola and I worked to move the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad Caboose under the Train Shed. In order to do this, we needed to pull the caboose down to the Powerhouse Crossing on the Visitor Center lead tracks so that the access track could be shifted over 2 bays. Then the caboose was pulled back up and pushed under the Train Shed.

Xian Clere and Camilo Santiago worked with Northern Tree Service of Palmer, MA to move around 700 relay ties that have been donated to the museum. The ties are now sitting on the back road to the loop.

Up in the shop, John Pelletier was working with another volunteer to service additional cars. They were able to finish working on Fair Haven & Westville Railroad Car 355 and Illinois Terminal PCC 451. Later in the day, Springfield Terminal Car 16 was brought up to the shop and minor repairs were continued on the car.

After operations was finished for the day, Camilo Santiago, Xian Clere, George Contrada, and John Cummins completed a switching operation which included moving the Reading Caboose to the North Road Lay-Up Track and clearing the Northern Barn Lead so that Aurora Elgin & Chicago Interurban 303 can be moved out for the Annual Meeting next weekend.

Morgan von Eisengrein spent the day working diligently in the office with the planning of our new fund raising event for this year, BBQ on the Line. More information on the event will be forthcoming.

303 Makes Maiden Voyage

Last night, the museum hosted the Tobacco Valley Chamber Alliance's Business After Hours. The event took a lot of planning, but was highly successful. Many businesses throughout the area came for the event, and the parking lot was full almost to capacity.

The museum was represented by Galen Semprebon, Jim Miller, Brian O'Leary, John Carter, Hugh Brower, Fred Stroiney, and myself. The operations department ran trolley service and we were lucky to have a large turnout of volunteers there too: Mike Caputo, Xian Clere, Ernie Anderson, Paul Gallo and Steve Mitchell. Both Galen and the town's first selectwoman gave short speeches and the Broad Brook Opera House Players sang in the theatre.











At the end of the night, I switched over to operations, something I do not normally do, and ran Aurora Elgin & Chicago interurban 303. The car was filled with passengers as we made our maiden passenger voyage with the car. 303 should be out again next weekend for the Members Picnic. Next year, we hope to have Train/Interurban Day on the first Saturday of the summer months. This would be when 303 would run as well as Centerville Albia & Southern box motor 101 with the train.

Photos by Frank Rossano

Car Moves

Saturday was a very hot and busy day at the museum. In the morning, the pilot for CA&E 303 was installed on the car.

Most of the day was taken up by shifting cars around to get Connecticut open 840 into the shop. We (John Pelletier, David Coppola, Alex Aberdale, Galen Semprebon, and myself) had to shift the two Boston PCCs (3100 & 3306) off of the Northern Hill and pull New Orleans 836 out of the barn. Then we shifted the flat car with the wheel boring machine on it up into the Northern Barn as well as CA&E 303. It was planned to set up the wheel boring machine in the shop, but with the other machinery that we want to set up, there is not enough room.


While the shop was empty, John and I were able to clean some of the wall space in the shop. A lot of the materials were moved into a storage trailer. Other stuff was thrown out because it was no longer usable. Unfortunately we have had a bad habit of keeping scraps of things that are not large enough to do anything with.


We did run into a problem when we tried to put 836 into Woods Barn. Whoever measured the barn space was not quite accurate. We were about a foot shy. In order to make up that space, we took the knuckles off of 101's couplers, and ran 101 up against the rear wall of the barn. It is actually bulging the back wall of the barn out slightly. Then we ran 836 into the barn. The fender of the car made it about 3 inches under the coupler of 101. The car fit, but the pole hung out of the barn, so we had to pull it out and spin the pole around. At that point, the doors of the barn just barely shut.


We were then able to put 840 into the shop so that work can begin on the repairs to the car. Before work can begin, the woodworking machinery will be set up in the shop to do the necessary woodwork.