Hi friends,

As some of you learned from me off-list the past couple of weeks, the PB&NE enginehouse at the Bethlehem, PA steel mill will be torn down to make way for the new casino project. It is not a total loss, as the casino porject will pay for restoration of other parts of the mill.

However, it is a loss, as not only was it the enginehouse, but it had an addition used to house Charles Schwab's private car Loretto (now at Altoona).

The National Museum of Industrial Heritage was allowed to preserve what the railroad did not need any more, and a bunch of my steel-obsessed friends of mine offered to help move the goods to storage. In the end, I had to bag-out due to schedule conflicts, but my friends pulled through to help Mike Piersa, the very talented steel and rr preservationist.

I am happy to call these guys friends. Here is a link:

http://media.www.wilkesbeacon.com/media/storage/paper533/news/2007/02/26/Features/Wilkes.Students.Help.Keep.Railroad.History.On.Track-2740857.shtml


Rob

Wilkes students help keep railroad history on track
Candice Halliday
Posted: 2/26/07
Thanks to several Wilkes University students, historical foundations that helped build America are not going to be forgotten. On Saturday, February 17, four Wilkes University students, all of who had a profound interest in history, caravaned to the National Museum of Industrial History located in Bethlehem, PA to assist in the preservation of artifacts from the locomotive ship of the Philadelphia, Bethlehem and New England railroad.

The museum has a lot of fascinating history behind it. Museum executive Mike Piersa explained, "Until this past month, the building was used as a repair ship for the locomotives that pulled trains on the grounds of the former Bethlehem Steel mill. In its heyday in the mid 20th century, the shop serviced a fleet of locomotives dedicated to moving materials for the steel mill." Trains also transported things like ingots, semi-finished products, molten iron, iron ore, coal and coke (baked coal).

Although the museum has shown great success with its productivity and the railroad has a great future ahead, the new owners were unable to purchase the locomotive repair shop. The lease for the repair shop finally fell in the hands of Sands Beth Works who plans to build a casino. They hope to open in the summer of 2008.

Since the museum is not yet open, Piersa explained how they rely on a heavy volunteer corps.

Piersca said, "We needed responsible people to help move artifacts to a storage site. The museum asked for recommendations from fellow preservationists and was directed to a Wilkes student, Nick Zmijewski. In addition to a vast knowledge of railroading and museum practice, his organizational skills were invaluable and allowed great progress to be made. The work ethic of Nick and his team from Wilkes was impressive."

Their main mission was to remove artifacts that pertained to the Mill on site to another part of the complex. In the first load, they took items that ranged from paperwork that was abandoned on desks to a blueprint sized drawing inside a glass frame. The also removed hard hats, signs, tools and spare locomotive parts.
Removing these items symbolized a great deal of humanism that once existed in the Mill. Piersa described how "preserving items such as the logo emblazoned red hardhats bring a human scale to railroads. The same is true of the paperwork, which reveals practices that would otherwise be forgotten in time."

Students decided to become involved with this project because of the impact these artifacts had on them after taking a tour two years ago. In an interview, Nick Fisher, one of the five students involved with the project, said, "The artifacts are a big piece of history like Beth Steel." Beth Steel is the woman who formally occupied the National Museum of Industrial History.

Although most of the renovations are currently taking place, a few minor ones began in the nineties. Some of the building was torn down.

Furthermore, the artifacts also have a profound impact on the Bethlehem community and the city of Pottstown. Fisher explained, "Beth Steel built everything, including the Golden Gate bridge in Pottstown. We are saving stuff that relates to people's everyday lives. I'm from Pottstown, so I can relate to this."

These efforts brought forth from the concerns of the Wilkes University students involved with this project shows that history cannot be relived and it is important to cherish the items that still remain. Fisher concluded that, "Once the Casino is gone nothing is going to be the same so it is important to remember what we can."

Hi guys, I have contacted my employer (the newspaper in question) and fixed a misquote and some of the major typo errors. It was a privilege to go to Bethlehem and help out their preservation efforts. We moved far more material than I would have thought and a lot of it was good stuff. There was a lot of significant paperwork that could be used by a researcher to reconstruct a lot of the PB&NE ops in recent years with the documents I saw. We also moved quite a few artifacts as well. The people I feel sorry for are the PB&NE shop guys still there. They lost out on quite a few parts that could have been useful but they had to move out. Currently shop operations are being done with parts from three 53 foot trailer parked out in front of the old shop. These guys will be working outdoors through the summer from what I have heard. The other good news is that the NMIH Whitcomb is safe and going to be moved elsewhere on site. Nick Z