While this has not been disclosed to the members (or my E-mail provider has censored it), it was posted on another Yahoo Group, Phila_Traction:

Subject: URGENT MEMO - Irene and the Trolley Museum
From: "Shore Line Trolley Museum" <office@...>
Date: Mon, August 29, 2011 7:38 pm
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
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Dear Members and Friends of the Museum:

We know that you care about the museum and are concerned about
the impact of Hurricane Irene, which struck our area of Connecticut
with great force. That is why we are writing to you now. We have assessed the damage and here is what we have found.

First the good news: There is only minimal damage to the car barns.
Sprague station and its contents are fine. Most of the railway line is
undamaged, however track wash-outs will prevent us from being able to
operate all the way to Short Beach for possibly quite some time.

Although Irene made landfall more than 70 miles to our west, and
was downgraded to a tropical storm as it did so, it had already whipped the waters of Long Island Sound to a frenzy. The timing was unfortunate: this storm occurred at new moon, when tides run higher than average.
The placement of the storm to our west meant strong winds out of the east, piling up the tide in the Sound, and the passage of the storm almost exactly at the time of high tide (11 AM in New Haven) brought strong southerly winds driving water on-shore and inland at the worst possible moment.

The result was the worst tidal flood in the museum's history. Water
levels peaked at 8.3 feet above mean sea level, exceeding the December
1992 nor'easter by about half a foot. The depth of water on the shop floor was 19-20 inches, in barn 1 12-15", and in barn 3, where tracks had been raised after the 1992 incident to be above that level, 5-6". Parts of barns 4 and 6 received almost two feet of water. Water levels in barns 2 and 7 were 12 inches or greater, and in barn 5 varied from 6 to 14 inches.
Flood waters receded by 2PM, but significant damage had already been done.

Thanks to the efforts of a number of volunteers who worked long hours
in the days before the storm, cars were moved to higher tracks where
possible. Because of the high winds forecast and the number of trees surrounding our line, options were limited. Cars 948, 850 and 357 are the only ones known to have completely escaped flooding and will be operational once electrical power has been restored to East Haven. All other cars in the collection were flooded to some degree by the salt water. Their operational status will depend on how the water affected the traction motors, which are only a few inches above the rail. All of these cars (over 90) are considered out of service until they can be inspected and their motor insulation tested.

This process will take several weeks. Some of these cars may be
operational, or may be brought back to operational status with a few days of effort, but we can expect that the majority of the cars will require complete traction motor disassembly and cleaning.

We value each and every vehicle in the collection for the important
history it holds, and hope to see each one repaired in time. Please be aware that every car that we have inspected is repairable, but
it will take a significant amount of work. As you may know, repairing
one single car with a flooded motor can readily take 500 hours of skilled labor. Our efforts to combat the effects of this flood will last for years to come.

Yet as much as we value each car individually, we must think of the
entire collection and the museum as whole. As we develop the plan to repair our cars as quickly and efficiently as possible, our first efforts are focused on re-opening the museum to the public. We anticipate re-opening before Labor Day, using the three trolleys that were not flooded, and operating over a shortened line. Thus our efforts right now are focused on clearing and inspecting the line.

The damage that we have sustained at the Museum is devastating and
yet manageable, shocking but also expected. It was devastating to see so many cars flooded, living history potentially destroyed, and many thousands of hours of restoration work wiped out over a weekend. But the damage is manageable with your help. We are coming together to repair was has been hurt and rescue the history that would be otherwise lost.

It was shocking to see 100-year-old antiques sitting in pools of water, knowing that every minute was further damaging their valuable and irreplaceable motors. While looking at serious damage is always hard, it was expected, even predictable - it's happened before and we always knew it would happen again. And what is even more sobering is that when it does happen again, it may be worse, much worse. The infamous September 1938 hurricane brought water levels to 12 feet above sea level in our area. That is 4 feet higher than what we experienced this weekend.

For over 65 years the museum has been in this cycle of damage
and repair. We must break out. And we have a plan to do so.

This year we began efforts to put a stop to this cycle by taking
action to move our collection to higher ground. We began a Capital Campaign, "Elevating the Collection", which is raising $2M to build two new car buildings at an elevation of 13 feet above mean sea level.

If the new buildings had been in place this weekend the cars inside
would have suffered no damage from Hurricane Irene and would have been
protected.

We have already secured $156K toward this goal and are in conversation with a significant group of prospective donors who are
considering support.

When our Campaign is successful and the new buildings are completed,
we will never again have to repair our cars knowing that we will have to do it all over again after the next flood and the one after that. We will never again follow news of severe storms with the same sense of dread as we did this weekend. And we will rest assured that our collection will be enjoyed by generations to come. Now is the time to recognize our pressing need for higher ground and make every effort to ensure the safety of our collection. As we begin to clean up the mess, we must redouble our work to ensure we are protected in the future.

At this critical moment, we need the support of every member, every
person who has visited our museum, and trolley lovers around the world.

Would you consider please meeting with us privately about giving to
Elevating the Collection? By giving to the campaign, you will be
doing the best thing possible to ensure that the cars you love the most will ultimately be taken care of and preserved in perpetuity.

Please contact us at office@... or (203) 467-6927 to find out how you can help. And be sure to visit www.ElevatingTheCollection.org to learn more about the campaign.

Jeff Hakner, Board Chairperson

Wayne Sandford, General Manager.

P.S. a copy of this message, along with a few photos, is at the
museum's web site www.ShoreLineTrolley.org/irene.html

Conway Scenic reports losing one bridge on the MEC side.

The Green Mountain Railway sustained heavy damage on the traditional "Green Mountain Flyer" route out of Bellows Falls, VT though in recent years main operations have moved north and pictures on the web show that a bridge was compromised on the current tourist run out of White River Jct.

Many historic, abandoned rights of way were pummeled. I have no count of lost depots yet, but the evidence suggests losses to the VT surviving depot list.

Southern and central Vermont were very hard hit by flooding.

An inspection on Monday indicated that most of RMNE's Naugatuck Railroad came through the storm without major problems. A few small trees across the mainline (easily removed/cut up) and some overflowing of heavily-silted-by-stormwater ditchlines were about it. There will be some cleanup work on those places this fall. Remedial shovel work by a MOW crew opened things up for now.

Equipment and rolling stock all un-affected at Waterville and Thomaston. Thomaston Shop and Thomaston station had electrical power for the duration of the storm; most of Connecticut did not.

It was very sad to see the YouTube vid of Bartonsville covered bridge sliding away; I think every Northeastern rail photographer has shot that bridge and the GMRC at one time.

Howard P.

It looks like Shoreline took a pounding and suffered much damage.

I am going to suggest to my museum (CT Trolley) That we put up a donation container near our ticket window with a brief explanation of the damage and collect money to forward to Shoreline. I would also like to suggest that other groups may consider doing the same. It times like this that we should all pull together and try and help other groups in need.

Another forum reports that Catskill Mountain RR lost 2 of 3 spans of the Boiceville bridge. Also the yard around the Phonecia depot was severly damaged. Trains were moved to safety, so not all is lost. Very sad for a group that has made much progress as of late.

Mike Stillwell
Buena Vista, VA.

Passing through Worcester today, the PW food service (I think it's Connecticut. That's what I get for a brain fart, and I was ten feet away from it Friday!) car for their excursion train has two broken windows. Both have been boarded up. That's all I saw from the street. I couldn't tell if the New Englander Obs. suffered any damage.

This may actually be beneficial to them in obtaining aid to bring the line back into service. That bridge was a large budgeted gap in their restoration process...it may speed it up, dare I say.

In the Mid-Atlantic Region, the Wilmington & Western came out of this with only minor damage and probably will be running this weekend...New Hope & Ivyland, however, suffered several major washouts in the area of Hood (just south of New Hope) and repairs are ongoing with no train service out of town, plus heavy flooding in the Lahaska area. Good thing they have an engine or 4 available to them on the south end to service freight customers and aid in making repairs.

Hopefully the two steel spans can be found in a location from which they can be recovered intact. This would have to be done anyway for environmental reasons and to help prevent future flooding, although the typical response would be to haul them out in small pieces. Hopefully outside funding would pay for this.

This might allow the spans to be put in a safe place for storage and repair/ painting while the pier repairs are done. Hopefully the missing spans were the ones sitting on the sinking pier!

It would be nice if some disaster relief bucks could help with the bridge recovery effort.

Ernie, any news? Hopefully all your members made it through the storm with no significant damage.

Steve Hunter

Pemberton Trust

http://www.courierpostonline.com/articl ... s-derailed

According to their respective Facebook pages, W&W expects to be operating this weekend, and NH&I will open again tomorrow, 9/1.

Also (according to their Facebook page), the Black River & Western will be up and running this weekend for their Three Bridges trip and Photo Freight special. :)

I read that too, as well as that the W&W canceled their trip to Hockessin scheduled for Monday, and are just running to Mt. Cuba on both Sunday and Monday, however, their scheduled Dinner Train to Hockessin is still on schedule for Sept 13th.

I thought I should add a note on this thread for the CMRR.

The CMRR east of MP 21.3 (Boiceville Trestle) received no damage except for many downed trees.

Principal damage was scouring of the Phoenicia Yard (MP 27.5), tracks in the creek at Camground Curve (MP 26.5), further erosion at MP 25.8 and 23.3, and the loss of the Boiceville Trestle at MP 21.3.

The CMRR will rebuild with or without help. Mainly we need rip rap for the washouts or near washouts. The Governor has suspended permitting so work can start in the creek right away - this was the big holdup before. We also have a quarry where we can get rip rap, or hopefully get some from the County, our landlord.. So the washouts will get fixed, one way or the other.

The Boiceville bridge is a tougher issue. However, we were not using it for train operations, rather it was our long range plan to operate over it to access the views from the scenic Ashokan Reservoir. We have been seeking funding to repair this asset for several years and will continue to do so.

At least one new washout is in the section between Big Indian and Phoenicia, which already had five washouts/landslides. The existing washouts got much bigger.

Bottom line - even considering the loss of the Boiceville Trestle - the CMRR's plans to expand and connect Kingston to Phoenicia will continue; we will be working to get across bridge C9 in Kingston this winter. However, the additional washouts from Phoenicia to Big Indian, and the lack of any immediate plans to repair them, make the prospect of running west of Phoenicia to connect to the D&U an ever more remote possibility.

Ernie Hunt
CMRR

Baltimore Streetcar Museum update:

Though I stand by my original statement that no direct damage was done by Irene or her winds, I found the BSM is in the process of eliminating numerous trees that apparently have cracked or started falling from the hillsides parallel to the BSM's former Maryland & Pennsylvania right-of-way. At least eight large trees are being dismembered around the Visitor Center's loop (which has a near-vertical cliff along part of it); more trees are being trimmed or dismembered up along the shop building (former MPA freight station).

A substantial part of this problem--not just for the BSM, but for CSX, NS, and the entire Northeast--is the invasion and proliferation of one of the worst "junk" or "weed" trees about in North America, the "tree of heaven" or Ailanthus altissima:

http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien/fact/aial1.htm

Has anyone else had problems with this utterly worthless species? One of these fell across our back lots and took out all our power and phone lines at the height of Irene.....