I am trying to contact someone from the museum at Allaire, NJ about a piece in their collection. If anyone is associated with them or has a contact, I would be grateful.

Thanks in advance,

Matt Bumgarner

If you go to www.njmt.org there are contacts listed.

Which piece are you interested in?

J.R.

That Lawndale boxcar sure would look nice with a Tweetsie stablemate...

Mike Stillwell
Buena Vista, VA.

When I was on the board we looked at donating it to another museum. That fell apart since the car needed to be cleaned out and stablized for a move. Those cars are quite long too. Its doable though. Center frame members seemed solid as did much of the body. Side sills are rough. Truss rods are missing.

Chances are you will need to hound the current Board on the subject. In other words, don't give up.

J.R.

Thanks for the tip!

Yes, we are most interested in the ET&WNC boxcar to pair up with the Lawndale car and our ET&WNC motorcars.

Thanks

Matt Bumgarner

Matt,

What is a Lawndale car?

Iassume it would be narrow gauge?

Ted Miles

A little bit of Colorado transplanted into the Carolinas Piedmont.

dave

Ted,

The Lawndale Railway was a short narrow gauge line that served the Cleveland Cotton mills from 1899-1943 in the piedmont of North Carolina. Check out this website for a brief history-

http://www.tarheelpress.com/Lawndale.html

Our NRHS chapter, the Alexander, recently acquired a wooden NG car from the Lawndale and won an NRHS grant to help restore it. Our goal is to restore the car and display it with other NC narrow gauge equipment. In the past few years, we were part of raising $350,000 to move and restore the 1924 Newton, NC depot (Southern Rwy/Carolina & North-Western Rwy), and we are about to embark on a $400k fundraising effort to build a car barn with 3 tracks to provide covered shelter for our collection.

Matt

The Lawndale Railway made it into the pages of Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg's famous book, MIXED TRAIN DAILY, even though the 3' gauge line had ceased operations by the time the book was published. Still, Beebe recognized the little line stating that it had what was believed to be "the smallest combine in operation anywhere." He also mentioned the two Consolidations that the line used, pointing out that they were painted green! Two photos accompanied the salute to the abandoned line, including one of a train rolling through the countryside with Consolidation #4 on the point, and the aforementioned combine (#101) bringing up the rear. What made me remember the photo though was the fact that the number 4 had side by side headlights mounted on top of the boiler. This is the only time I have ever seen such an arrangement on a steam locomotive. Not sure if the other 2-8-0 was also so equipped, and if it was not, why the 4 spot had such an odd arrangement.

Glad to hear that some remembrances of the little railroad are being preserved. Especially heartening considering that it quit so long ago.

Les

Les,

In the 1930's, the master mechanic of the Lawndale was Frank Coffey, who later became GFE of the Carolina & North-Western and the chief engineer of Tweetsie Railroad.

He was laid off from the blacksmith shop of the C&N-W during the depression (his father, Charlie was the shop foreman at the time), and he went to work for the Schencks in Lawndale. By this time, the Vulcan 2-8-0's were aging pretty severely, and as Frank told me, he would "have to take the parts off one to get the other one to Shelby and back."

That odd headlight arrangment was a pair of Buick headlights, and the locomotives were painted with some Southern Railway green his daddy hoo-doo'd from the storekeeper at Spencer.

I always thought the narrow gauge thread with Frank was remarkable. He worked for the C&N-W (that's what it was called around here, not CR&N) which was at one time the longest narrow gauge in either of the Carolinas, worked for the Lawndale, and ended up rebuilding ET&WNC 12 and her new home at Tweetsie.

Our new museum is really a perfect tribute to Frank- A Lawndale car, hopefully an ET&WNC boxcar, all sitting along the C&N-W mainline.

Matt Bumgarner

Matt -

Thanks for the info. Very interesting. Your preservation efforts sound great. I'll have to stop by and see you guys some time.

Les