Nice to see what appears to be a great level of activity occurring at ORM on their website! Really sad to here of the passing of new ORM board member Dan Roberts, a friend from many years back.

What is the relationship between NORM and ORM?

Bob

Hmmm,
The relationship between ORM and NORM. When, and with what factions? I don't know how it was in any particular way, but consider this... ORM was THE premier trolley museum in the 1960s into the 1970s, and at the same time NORM was a bunch of random cars on a badly built track or borrowing space at other people's places. Today NORM has two carbarns and is demonstrating progress yearly, while ORM still has its old open air shed and we are glad to see it getting its feet back on the ground.

When I visited the places around 15 years ago I was aware of the recent rift (and loss of people) at ORM due to some who wanted to move to a different property (I believe it was an Ohio Electric line to a power plant which had line poles in place) and those who wanted to stay at the Worthington site. At NORM there was a group of bus enthusiasts who had quite a presence at the site. They later split off and formed their own bus museum elsewhere. At the time I asked about the relationship between ORM and NORM and I recall that they were friendly with each other. Seeing the cross-posting of photos seems to indicate that is still true.

So I think that the question could be unending ....what is the relationship between this Ohio group and that... when there are so many possibilities. Ohio was and and still is remarkably still full of trolleys. I never saw the Toledo Waterfront trolley, but it had a couple of CTA 4000s and is now long gone. When I visited I saw one of the last electric freight lines (Toledo Edison with a fleet of steeple cabs). There was the "Nelson Blount" equivalent collection of trolleys - Gerald Brookins' Trolleyville. The trailer park it was located in later evicted the museum. This is now the Lake Shore Electric trolley museum, but has not updated its website in quite a while and as far as we know the equipment is still in cold storage on a wharf in Lake Erie. There was an enthusiast who tried for years to get a museum going in Grand Rapids, Ohio, and his collection has been merged with NORMs. There still is a guy in southeastern part of the state who has a field of rotting cars, as far as I know there are not signs of a positive future for this collection - it may be the "Paulsen Spense" of collection of trolleys. Cleveland has a rapid transit system which was designed as an interurban gateway to the city, and the Shaker Heights trolley/light rail. Trolley buses still roam the streets of Dayton - very much a physical remnant of the streetcars of years past. Carbodies have been extracted from the state for many projects, local or elsewhere (Illinois, Maine, and Connecticut come to mind). Ohio traction preservation is a real interesting pickle. With so much potential, I'm glad to see the progress, and hope for more.

O. Anderson


http://www.bera.org/cgi-bin/pnaerc-query.pl?sel_loc=Ohio&match_target=&Tech=Yes&pagelen=200