> Does the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden,
> Colorado meet the "Pioneer"
> criteria. As I understand the story, Bob
> Richardson and Cornelius Hauck started the
> collection in the early 1950's, and moved to
> Golden about 1960.

My father has movies of the Narrow Gauge Motel and museum in Alamosa in 1954. These guys were indeed pioneers.

Greg Scholl

> My father has movies of the Narrow Gauge
> Motel and museum in Alamosa in 1954. These
> guys were indeed pioneers.

Yeah Greg, I was unhappy they decided to tear down the old Richardson house to build the new library when they had just acquired the motel property next door and it could have been adaptively reused. I did salvage the porch posts and brackets which are now on my old house in Idaho Springs. It almost seems they want to erase all remnants of the Richardson - Hauck partnership that started it all.

Dave


irondave@bellsouth.net

I got a nice letter from Bob about 2 weeks ago, as I am hunting for some D&RGW images of 1954 and 1956 RMRRC trips.
We have a video coming out of my dads home movies, and in 1954 and 1956 there are a few scenes showing the locos at Richardsons place in Alamosa. I still remember as a little kid in 1956 standing in the depot building hearing the floor boards groan while my dad and Bob looked at artifacts and talked railroading.
The next day we rode to Durango...See photo of me in 1956 before we left Alamosa on a three day adventure.
Cheers,
Greg Scholl

http://www.gregschollvideo.com/welcome.html

PS Caption says Durango, but its wrong....Ah the good old days when life was simple, eh!

1956 photo

sales@gregschollvideo.com

Maybe I missed it, but I didn't notice mention of the locomotive collection of Purdue University, at Lafayette, Indiana. These engines now repose at Museum of Transport. I think the first engine there was the B&O Camel, in 1901. It arrived under its own power, according to contemporary reports in Railway Age and Railway Mechanical Engineer. If you look at the turn-of-the-century indexes of these journals (often found in the dank storage areas of university libraries), there are occasional progress reports on the museum's development.

ryarger@rypn.org

Purdue stopped collecting after its primary sponsoring professor left for another school about 1908, but at least kept most of the collection from the scrap drives of two World Wars. It was moved to the Museum of Transportation in 1952 or 53. But what about Travel Town in LA? I think it was started in the early 1950s. Can anyone give us a good date.

Museum of Transportation
rdgoldfede@aol.com

> But what about Travel Town in LA? I think it was started in the early 1950s. Can anyone give us a good date.

Travel Town was dedicated 14 Dec 1952 according to the information on these two Web sites:
http://www.cityofla.org/RAP/grifmet/tt/information.htm
http://www.scsra.org/ttown/history.html

Cheers,
Keith Albrandt

kalbrandt@rypn.org

F. Nelson Blount's various operations and the ultimate creation of Steamtown USA, in Bellows Falls, Vermont must be one of the largest and earliest examples in this category. Anyone know what year Blount started "collecting"?

photo: Robert Rathke.

Steamtown, VT photo site

SJHussar@aol.com

While we're all thankful that Nelson Blount saved what he did, the photo that Steven provided (taken in the 1960s from Fall Mountain) illustrates well what could have developed at the North Walpole roundhouse site, but didn't. As you can see, this was an almost fully-intact steam-era Boston & Maine roundhouse facility that still existed over a decade after the last B&M steam plied those rails. Even the coal chute was intact and working. Blount already owned two B&M steam engines and sought two others. With minimal effort, history could have been reborn here, with great authenticity.

But Blount's goal was not to enshrine this rare gem of a historic site, but rather to have the biggest steam collection in America, at a new location with little previous rail history. In short, his mega-museum dream died in the plane crash with him and the shortline Green Mountain RR (and New Hampshire Highway Department)subsequently destroyed the coal chute and much of the site's historic fabric. It's still a railyard today, but greatly modernized, to serve today's freight customers. In retrospect, the abandoned Riverside Steamtown site up the road (today an industrial park) could have served this function much better than the North Walpole yard, allowing the historic roundhouse facility to be restored with great accuracy. Our field is still filled with those dreamers who think it is impossible to save and preserve a small and historic 5-stall roundhouse, but somehow possible to build a new 30-stall version in a green field where one never existed before. Blount couldn't do it and they likely won't either.

> F. Nelson Blount's various operations and
> the ultimate creation of Steamtown USA, in
> Bellows Falls, Vermont must be one of the
> largest and earliest examples in this
> category. Anyone know what year Blount
> started "collecting"?

> photo: Robert Rathke.


ryarger@rypn.org

But what makes projects possible or impossible isn't tangible for the most part. Anything built can be restored or replicated. An interested and committed person given the resources and a reasonable amount of technical ability can do it.

Intangible considerations like location, politics and economic interests make projects viable or not. Your new roundhouse in the right place at the right time will get built - look in Scranton or Golden - but one landlocked on railroad owned property behind lines of operating yard trackage saturated with hazardous waste in the way of an industrial park in an economically depressed area is doomed.

Dave

irondave@bellsouth.net

> Intangible considerations like location,
> politics and economic interests make
> projects viable or not. Your new roundhouse
> in the right place at the right time will
> get built - look in Scranton or Golden - but
> one landlocked on railroad owned property
> behind lines of operating yard trackage
> saturated with hazardous waste in the way of
> an industrial park in an economically
> depressed area is doomed.

> Dave

Good points Dave ... if you follow the link you will see a "possible", if there is any follow thru by the usually uninterested folks in Ohio.


http://www.midwestrailway.org/rh.htm
lamontdc@adelphia.net

Certainly not every roundhouse is worth saving or possible to save, but we seldom make an attempt to save even those that can be, and those who do try are often derided by others among us. I guess it depends on whether one is really interested in saving and interpreting history accurately, or just playing train. In my opinion, Nelson Blount was a rich man playing train, despite the many engines he did save.

As a longtime RR employee, I know how recalcitrant companies can be, for little or no reason, but some of the oft-quoted problems are not unsolvable. Ground pollution, asbestos, etc., must be dealt with whether a building is saved or razed. Access over busy tracks can be solved with pedestrian bridges or tunnels; many yards had them years ago. Competing industrial parks? Let them have the green field and keep the historic site for history. Economically depressed area? Let the historic site be part of the revitalization. That's how Scranton got all those millions. Ditto for politics. Yes, many sites are doomed, but often as much by our indifference and lack of action as real threats.

> But what makes projects possible or
> impossible isn't tangible for the most part.
> Anything built can be restored or
> replicated. An interested and committed
> person given the resources and a reasonable
> amount of technical ability can do it.

> Intangible considerations like location,
> politics and economic interests make
> projects viable or not. Your new roundhouse
> in the right place at the right time will
> get built - look in Scranton or Golden - but
> one landlocked on railroad owned property
> behind lines of operating yard trackage
> saturated with hazardous waste in the way of
> an industrial park in an economically
> depressed area is doomed.

> Dave


ryarger@rypn.org

> Pioneer museums have their rightful place in
> history. Railway museums are no excpetion.
> Here is a rough (unchecked) list of pre-1960
> railway museums and tourist lines) in the
> United States for your critical
> review--please add, amend or correct (note:
> this list does not include world's fairs or
> railway expositions which were the true
> precursor of the modern railway museum as we
> know it today):

> 1885c. Smithsonian (first railroad
> collecting - C&A John Bull donated by
> the PRR)
> 1941c. Seashore Trolley Museum
> 1944 National Museum of Transport (now MOT)
> 1949c. Edaville RR
> 1953c. NJ Museum of Transportation (now at
> Allaire, NJ)
> 1955c. Black Hills Central
> 1955c. Knott's Berry Farm RR (name?)
> 1959 Strasburg RR
> 1960 EBT revival
> 1960 Historic Red Clay Valley (W&W)

> A good timeline of railway preservation
> (though admittedly not handy at the time I
> typed this) appeared in L&RP March-April
> 1990 issue.

> Who am I missing, and what needs to be
> corrected?

> Kurt,

The Seashore Trolley Museum was founded in 1939.
The Connecticut Trolley Museum in founded 1940.
The Branford Trolley Museum (now Shoreline Trolley Museum) in 1945.

Other Early Museums that come to mind are the Museum of Transport in St Louis cira 1945(?) and the Colorado Railroad Museum in 1958. The California Railway Museum now Western Railway Museum was founded in 1960.

What about the Ohio Railroad Museum and the Arden Trolley (now Pennsylvania Trolley Museum)?

Ted Miles


ted_miles@nps.gov

The Trolley Museum of New York was founded in Brooklyn in 1955, though I don't think it was formally incorporated until 1961.

TMNY
n2xjk@yahoo.com

You've also got the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia with Baldwin 4-10-2 60000, Peoples Railway 3, a very early 4-4-0, and P&R's "Rocket" an 1838 Braithwaite import.

The engines went into the building in 1933 and then it was completed.

I believe 3 and Rocket were collected by the P&R in the 1890's. FI doesn't make much about it but 3 may be the earliest surviving example of Harrison's equalised driving wheel suspension.

Electric City Trolley Museum Association

> But what makes projects possible or
> impossible isn't tangible for the most part.
> Anything built can be restored or
> replicated. An interested and committed
> person given the resources and a reasonable
> amount of technical ability can do it.

> Intangible considerations like location,
> politics and economic interests make
> projects viable or not. Your new roundhouse
> in the right place at the right time will
> get built - look in Scranton or Golden - but
> one landlocked on railroad owned property
> behind lines of operating yard trackage
> saturated with hazardous waste in the way of
> an industrial park in an economically
> depressed area is doomed.

> Dave

Amen, Dave.

I was told countless times that a wooden combine could a.) never be found in the year 2000 b.) would never be able to be restored if I did find one c.) that our "little blue-collar" town would never go for it d.) It would take someone with much more experience than my formative 27 years to do any of the above.

Two years later, we have a restored GT wooden combine, an 1858 depot, and are looking at the potential of a future tourist line of some sort. Again, I'm being told that could never happen, either. Sorry if I think that it can ;-)

TJG


Port Huron Museum

tjgaffney@phmuseum.org