We at the Pemberton Township Historic Trust in Pemberton Township, Burlington County, NJ are in need of volunterrs and members to help us restore history at our facility.

For those of you who don't know who we are, we are in a restored Pennsylvania Railroad train station. It was restored in 1995. The foundation of the section house was unearthed and it was rebuilt in 1999. We are a local history museum that caters to all local history but since we are in an old RR station, we have collected a sizeable collection of railroad rolling stock. We have:

100 Ton GE diesel built around 1966.
Tidewater tank car built in 1923.
NX23 caboose built in 1942/3 from an X23 box car that was built in the late 1800s.
N6B built in the late 1800s.
N5C built in 1942.
A gondola, flat car and hopper that have yet to be identified.
A CNJ caboose. This is one of those narrow cars (not narrow gauge) built for CNJ.

We are looking to acquire another very unique and rare piece but we cannot give any details at this time. Just let me say that we need donations to have this extremely historic piece moved to our facility. Once it arrives, it will go to top of the list for restoration.

We have acquired the ground from Wawa that the old 1860s railyard sat on. We have identified and uncovered the top of:

The turntable pit.
Footings of the original freight house.
The foundation of the original bunk house.
The floor of an oil house.
Sections of the in ground drainage rough that ran from the front of the yard to the creek at the rear of the yard.
Several other foundations that were torn up when Wawa built the store and gas station.

We just finished digging out the 40' ash pit. It was installed in the 1860s and filled in around 1930.

We scraped the ground yesterday to locate the doodlebug engine house. After a few passes, we found spike head still in the ties plates and ties. But the angle of the tie ends did not run to the center of the turntable pit but rather to the edge of the pit. So what we uncovered was a freight siding that was put in after they tore down the engine house and removed the truntable. They still needed to access the factory that was there so they laid new rail across the edge of the turntable and ran it down the side of the factory loading dock. So we will probably have to remove these ties to get to the foundation of the doodlebug engine house.

So this is why we need volunteers to come out and help us restore history. We have big plans but need people to help us. The work is sometimes dirty and hard but trust me, very rewarding! We need people to sand and paint the rolling stock, continue digging out the foundations and footings.

We have also uncovered in the woods, the granite blocks that supported water tanks back in the 1800s for watering the steam locomotives. And on the trail is the semaphore pole that needs to be painted and we have a semaphore that is waiting to be reinstalled. And we know that there was another smaller yard at the branch to South Pemberton. We have found the foundation for the steam pump used to pump up the water towers from the creek, the base of the Birmingham switch tower, and last summer we began looking for the foundation of the old Birmingham station, which by the way, still exists in another location.

So in the end we have a significant historical site that needs your help to restore it to what it once was. And very soon we will become part of Burlington County who is very big in restoring and maintaining history. We have approval to lay 1.5 miles of track on the trail and we hope to get that done so we can begin running an excursion.

Get in on the ground floor of something that is going to be the biggest railroad historic site in South Jersey. PM me or call the station at 609-894-0546 and leave your information.

Later!
Mr. Ed