Preservation
According to their web site, the museum's mission is "to communicate the story of Pennsylvania's Trolley Era to a diverse audience through the preservation, interpretation, and use of its collection of electric railway and railroad equipment." To that end, the museum includes a collection of 45 refurbished trolleys. The museum owns a New Orleans streetcar, Perley A. Thomas car #832, formerly used on various lines in New Orleans including the Desire line which is mentioned in the film A Streetcar Named Desire based on the play by Tennessee Williams, although it is not the streetcar actually in the film (#922, still in service in New Orleans). Much of the museum's collection is housed in a $2 million "Trolley Display Building" which opened May 6, 2005. Visitors can take a short ride on a restored functioning trolley. A special ride during the Christmas season includes a visit from Santa Claus. In September 2004, the area surrounding the museum flooded in the wake of Hurricane Ivan. The floodwaters caused substantial damage to the museum which has since been repaired.
The line was extended north along the track bed of the old Arden Mines Railroad Branch between 1979 and 1995, adding 1 mile (1.6 km) to the track and allowing stations to be opened at the Arden Mines loop and the passing loop at the County Fairground.
The shelter at car house #1 came from the Richfol Stop, one stop north of Canonsburg on the Pittsburgh Railways Interurban line from Pittsburgh to Washington.
Read more about this topic: Pennsylvania Trolley Museum
Famous quotes containing the word preservation:
“The preservation of life seems to be rather a slogan than a genuine goal of the anti-abortion forces; what they want is control. Control over behavior: power over women. Women in the anti-choice movement want to share in male power over women, and do so by denying their own womanhood, their own rights and responsibilities.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929)
“There is something to be said for jealousy, because it only designs the preservation of some good which we either have or think we have a right to. But envy is a raging madness that cannot bear the wealth or fortune of others.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“Men are not therefore put to death, or punished for that their theft proceedeth from election; but because it was noxious and contrary to men’s preservation, and the punishment conducing to the preservation of the rest, inasmuch as to punish those that do voluntary hurt, and none else, frameth and maketh men’s wills such as men would have them.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)