A $500K windfall for train museum
Sixteen-year-old Cameron Wolk, a sophomore at Half Hollow Hills West High School, has spent months calling railroad companies across the country searching for a boxcar.
Cameron has been a volunteer with the Railroad Museum of Long Island since 2013. In the past he’s helped with research and touched up paint at its two locations.
“All my life I’ve had an interest in railroading,” he said.
But this assignment was different.
The museum had long struggled to find a suitable boxcar to put on its track near the Greenport LIRR station.
Twelve years ago, a railroad museum in Pennsylvania offered to donate a Pacific Fruit Growers refrigerated boxcar for free. But the museum would have had to pay $10,000 to cover the moving costs, which the board determined they simply couldn’t afford, Mr. Fisher said.
Since then, there’s been space on the track at the museum’s Greenport location — the perfect spot for a boxcar to sit between the caboose and a railroad-riding snowplow and complete the set.
After months of searching, Cameron found the perfect match during spring break, while searching images online.
“It struck me immediately,” he said.
The boxcar — a deep maroon car with the Pennsylvania Railroad name painted proudly on its side — was built in 1960 and spent decades shipping clay byproducts for the American Colloid Company.
It even has a Long Island connection, having been used by the LIRR’s parent company.
The boxcar ultimately ended up on the Tioga Central Railroad, a tourist railway that twists through northern Pennsylvania. That railroad used the car as “photo freight,” a type of business model that runs restored trains along the rails for photographers to capture, Mr. Fisher said.
After years of service, the boxcar was due to be scrapped, Cameron said. So the museum agreed to pay its scrap value: $5,000.
“Every railroad museum has a boxcar,” he said. “Why not us?”
Now that it’s arrived, Mr. Fisher said, the boxcar will be placed onto the tracks between the existing cars sometime in the coming months.
It will be used as storage this summer season, with the ultimate goal of turning the interior into a theater to show museum visitors films and exhibits about the LIRR’s freight service.
The boxcar couldn’t be better, Mr. Fisher said.
“It’s perfect,” he said. “Oh my God, it’s perfect.”
