(rshsdepot) Quakertown, PA

["jdent1_@_optonline.net" <jdent1@optonline.net>]

From the Philadelphia Intelligencer...

Grant will help spruce up train station 

Plans call for the $100,000 to help repair the 
outside of the freight building.

BY BRIAN CALLAWAY
Staff Writer

QUAKERTOWN =97Another $100,000 has been awarded for 
the renovation of the Quakertown Train Station.

The federal grant will be used to repair the exterior 
of the freight building, while previously secured 
funding will be used this year to remodel the train 
station proper, located at the intersection of Broad 
and Front streets.

"We've been working on this for a long time," said 
Richard Mindler, president of the Quakertown Train 
Station Historical Society, "so it's great to see 
this all coming in."

The $100,000 will go toward cleaning the outside walls and replacing the roof on the 2,500-square-foot freight station.

Mindler said the group is also preparing to go out to 
bid on train station projects to be paid for with a 
$600,000 grant received in 2000. Those projects include 
roof repairs and the installation of new sidewalks and 
windows.

When completed, plans call for the 100-year-old station 
to have several historical displays, a community meeting 
area and other attractions.

The funding for both grants comes from the Transportation 
Equity Act for the 21st Century, administered by the 
Federal Transit Administration.

The new grant was good news for more than just the 
historical society.

"We're really excited that they got it," said Pam Coleman, 
manager of the downtown economic initiative Quakertown 
Alive!, which has worked with the society to secure other 
funding. "The train station is a vital piece of our 
revitalization =97it's spreading revitalization around it.

"It's a good expenditure of federal funds."

Passenger service to the station stopped in 1983. It was 
then used for community functions for several years, but 
a 1989 fire gutted the building and left it largely unusable.

Since 1990, the Quakertown Train Station Historical Society 
has held fund-raisers and lobbied for grants to get the 
station back in tiptop condition, a state Mindler said 
was finally within reach.

"We were hoping to have everything ready this year for the 
centennial," he said. Instead, the work should be done this 
fall in time for the borough's annual Autumn Alive! festival. 
"But as long as it will be done at some point =97great, bring 
it on."




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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

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End of RSHSDepot Digest V1 #364
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=================================
The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org