(rshsdepot) Connecticut Eastern Railroad Museum, Willimantic, CT

["James Dent" <james.dent_@_itochu.com>]

Volunteers Work To Make Railroad Museum First-Rate
By DAVID OWENS
The Hartford Courant
June 11, 2001

WILLIMANTIC - Volunteers at the want their museum to one day be considered
the Sturbridge Village or Mystic Seaport of railroading.

On Sunday, they took a step in that direction by dedicating a roundhouse
constructed last year and opening the museum for the season.

There's much to be done and museum officials figure it will be another 20
years before the museum is complete, said Mark Granville, the museum's vice
president. A host of buildings for restoring and maintaining locomotives and
rail cars as well as track are planned.

The projected cost to build the museum as planned is $13.5 million. But in
the meantime, the museum's volunteers are working hard to develop the area
once known as Columbia Junction.

The roundhouse is awaiting windows, estimated to cost $30,000, and
completion of interior work. The structure's massive doors are in place, and
one inspection pit is complete. The job so far has cost $400,000, which was
paid for by a state grant.

A roundhouse is a sort of garage for locomotives. The locomotives would be
stored inside and railroad mechanics would work on them. An inspection pit
is a depression between the tracks that allowed a mechanic to get underneath
a locomotive.

The turntable itself may be in place by the end of the summer. Museum
officials are still working on the logistics, but hope to have the turntable
pit ready for its massive steel bridge sometime this summer. Cranes will be
needed to move the bridge.

The bearing on which the bridge will turn, manufactured by the Torrington
Co., is ready for installation, Granville said.

Once the bridge is in place, locomotives can be rolled onto it and the
bridge turned to direct a locomotive into a roundhouse bay or to change the
direction the locomotive is facing. The bridge is not mechanized and is
known as an armstrong bridge, meaning those who want to turn it will need
strong arms.

If the locomotive is properly balanced on the turntable bridge, two men
should be able to turn it, Granville said.

"Based upon what I've heard and what I've read, the problem will not be
moving it," Granville said of the turntable. "The problem will be stopping
it once we get it going."

Museum volunteers have restored other historic structures, such as an
operator's shanty that once stood at a place south of Willimantic called
Versailles, and the former Chaplin railway station and a New Haven Railroad
section house. A section house is a building that housed the equipment for a
maintenance crew that covered a particular section of track.

They are also laying track at the museum, with a lot of assistance from the
1205th Transportation Railway Operating Battalion, a U.S. Army Reserve unit
based in Middletown. The reservists have been getting lots of practice
laying railroad ties and rails and driving spikes to hold everything in
place.

Sunday, they got some help from the members of Cub Scout Pack 157 of Bolton.
Several Cub Scouts, with a bit of help from the soldiers, were lifting heavy
spike hammers and driving railroad spikes into ties.

Cub Scout Ryne Tedord, 8, said driving spikes was fun, but he doesn't plan
on going to work for the railroad.

"I was thinking about being a BMX racer," he said.

Stan Staron, one of the Cub Scout pack's leaders, said the Cub Scouts have
been volunteering at the museum and plan to continue working throughout the
summer. They've picked up garbage and helped salvage steel pieces, such as
spikes, needed to lay track.

"The kids are fascinated with this stuff," Staron said. "They're hooked."

The museum has been good for the soldiers, members of what Sgt. Albert
Lavigne described as the Army's only railroad unit. They've been able to
practice their skills.

The unit was activated during Operation Desert Storm to restore rails at a
base in North Carolina. The rails were in place to transport equipment to
ships and hadn't been used since the Vietnam War, he said.

The Connecticut Eastern Railroad Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday through the first weekend of November. Admission is $3
for adults. Children get in free.

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End of RSHSDepot Digest V1 #84
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