October 26, 2014
Preserved streetcars entertaining a new generation.
Yet for me the most intriguing elements of the museum are the cars I once knew from the streets of Boston. These are tucked away toward the back of the collection.
There, awaiting for another day when they may run again, are old PCCs that once worked for Boston’s MBTA. They were among the first vehicles I ever put on film.
These old PCCs are like some post apocalyptic vision of the future. Nature is cruel to paint and old metal. They remind me of rotting pumpkins.
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“The Warehouse Point Trolley Museum” was my “local” – just a long bike ride (by 1964, 14 year old standards) away from my house. That’s where my hands-on railroad activity began, thanks primarily to Bill Zaiser, one of their younger members back then. It was here that I replaced my first railroad tie, through my first shovel of coal into a firebox, and scraped my first life-expired paint off the hide of car that was about my grandparents’ age. Although not active there since the early 1970s I maintain my membership and occasionally make a donation to the organization.
I was primarily involved with the steam department and we had an industrial tank engine, since sold off and last known to be exiled to a semi-abandoned industrial area in upstate NY. The steam department became the staff for caring for locomotive 97, a privately owned 2-8-0 that had arrived from Vermont in 1966. This group eventually evolved into the Connecticut Valley Railroad Association, and many CVRA members went on to staff the new Valley Railroad Company, “the Connecticut Valley Line.”