A Visit To The Train Museum
I really loved this place but then I loved real trains and history so its no wonder. I've always thought I belonged in another earlier time.
They didn't have a website when I lived there but they do now. Museum I clicked on the history link on that page and its pretty much blank. Yet, there is so much history in this area of the Nickel-plate Rail Road and the folks who worked for it and lived in this area. The Mill Street house had once been owned by a woman who rented out rooms to railroad employees. It was one of the reasons the attic there was finished off. It was also the reason why a lot of older homes had that sickly pale green on the walls. The people often swiped cans of paint from the railroad. Or it was "given" to them, I was told.
This was one of the Nickel Plate Engines. I'm pretty sure it was a steam engine. I remember climbing up those stairs to look inside. I saw the coal bin behind it and I think the coal was used to heat up the water to make the steam.
Inside the museum. I bought him a train whistle. It was almost as big as his bottle. He had a lot of fun with it but I had to hide it at times because he drove his father nutso with it.
They added this to it after I'd been there a few times. Kids and Dads alike loved to climb up in these and sit and dream. It was a hands on museum.
I had an old railroad lantern, I'd brought back from Colorado that I donated to them. Throughout the years we lived in Ohio, we spent a lot of time here.
On the back side of the museum you could sit on the old benches that passengers would sit on while they waited for their trains. There was a mesh fence here that separated the waiting area from the real tracks that were still in service. Amtrak passenger trains sometimes went through here. They would not have stopped here because it wasn't a working station so they went through pretty fast.
There were a lot of trains that carried coal, stone, chemicals and what ever freight through here. Sometimes we'd see them stop and halt traffic for miles until the town built and underpass for traffic on one section.
When Tommy started school, he had to cross one major highway and two different train tracks before he got to school. Even though he was in kindergarten they really thought I should let him walk back and forth on his own. I walked with him most of the time till he got in the fourth or fifth grade.
Sometimes he'd be real late because we'd have to sit and wait while the trains parked across the roads. Sometimes it would be over an hour and a half. You could read the markings on the train cars and see what chemicals they carried. Sometimes it was corn syrup, other times it was acids and flammable stuff. It was really scary to think of this stuff parked within two blocks of the school.
They did have a bad problem in Fort Edward, New York after we moved back to NY, with chlorine gas leaking from a railroad car. The town had to be evacuated. I can just imagine what chaos that would have caused here with schools so close. I would have been on the wrong side of the tracks to have even tried to save my kid.
I not only had more of these taken that day but I have one sitting here that I need to soak in water to see if I can get it to separate from another. When Tom came out to visit Tommy when he was older and we had moved to NY, he brought me a notebook of photos. Most of the photos were beyond repair. The book had supposedly gotten water damage while in storage. I saved some but an awful lot were lost and about four or five more albums were never given to me.
Luckily, when it happened in NY, although it was a nearby town, we didn't live in it.
I don't have any more from here now and I'm not remembering any more stories from here either.