|
|
|
|
| VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF TRANSPORTATION |
February 2010 |
|
|
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED! |
Join our growing corps of volunteers! At this time we are happy to provide training to persons interested in helping in the Museum Store or answering the phone and selling tickets in the front office. We need an experienced educator to help with school field trips. We also need people who have experience with construction, facility maintenance, and museum operations to help with the building and exhibits. If interested, please call 540-342-5670.
|
|
|
Greetings!
In response to the Norfolk Southern Challenge, Museum staff has been in a planning phase for the past year. We have studied our strengths and weaknesses, and identified opportunities for improvement.
Now it's YOUR turn! We want you to tell us what stories you think are important, what exhibits we might add, or how we could improve the building we're in. We invite you to attend one of the public input sessions listed below, or take our survey and let us know what you think.
Obviously, space and funding constraints will play a role in our final decision-making, but because of the generosity of Norfolk Southern and this community, we have a wonderful opportunity ahead of us! With your help, we can do a better job of sharing the powerful stories of Virginia's transportation heritage with current and future generations.
 Come see us soon!Beverly T. Fitzpatrick, Jr.
Executive Director
| |
Virginia Museum of Transportation seeks YOUR ideas
As part of our planning process for the Norfolk Southern Challenge, we are seeking public input at four upcoming sessions to learn from the community how we could improve this Museum:
- Feb 16: exclusive session for members, donors, and volunteers. If you are unable to attend this session, please join us on another date.
- Feb 18: focus on the role of the railroads in Virginia's history and in its cultural and economic development.
- Feb 23: focus on non-rail modes of transportation.
- March 2: focus on the Museum's contribution to the community, including tourism and education.
The Museum's lead project consultant for this planning process is William L. Withuhn, Curator Emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. He is widely considered the nation's leading transportation exhibits producer and is familiar with the Museum, its strengths, weaknesses, audiences, and great potential. |
We've partnered to share an historic locomotive with the C&O Railway Heritage Center
Cooperation is alive in Virginia's Rail Heritage Region!
 The Virginia Museum of Transportation has loaned one of its diesel locomotives--the Chesapeake & Ohio EMD GP7 Locomotive #5828--to the Chesapeake & Ohio Heritage Center in Clifton Forge, VA for the next five years. Norfolk Southern Corporation and the Buckingham Branch Railroad Company moved the locomotive to its new home.
As part of the agreement, the C&O Railway Heritage Center will give the blue locomotive a fresh paint job to ready it for display. "The Heritage Center is very excited to have this locomotive at our museum in Clifton Forge," said Center director Rick Tabb. "It is an important piece of railroad history and a key component of the story of the transition from steam to diesel. We are grateful for the support and contributions of the Virginia Museum of Transportation, its board of directors and staff, Norfolk Southern Corporation, the Buckingham Branch Railroad, and CSX Transportation. The locomotive is going to be an exciting exhibit and attraction to draw visitors to Clifton Forge."
"We are pleased to loan this locomotive to the C&O Heritage Center, to strengthen and enhance its interpretation of the C&O's rich history," said Beverly T. Fitzpatrick, Jr., executive director of the Virginia Museum of Transportation. "The loan of this equipment is yet another concrete example of the cooperation among the rail groups in Virginia's Rail Heritage Region as we work to attract more tourists to central and western Virginia."
Locomotive #5828 is one of 180 GP7 diesel-electric locomotives built by General Motors Electro-Motive Division for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway in the early 1950s. Power was provided by a 16-cylinder engine which generated 1,500 horsepower. The class was predominately retired from service by the early 1990s. |
 New! Come see a rare Whippet!
Just arrived--one of the fastest cars from the roaring twenties! This rare two-door sedan, built in 1928, has been graciously loaned to us by the William Hoover family. The Whippet was introduced in 1926 by Willys-Overland Motors as part of its new brand of smaller cars. The firm, perhaps best known in the twentieth-century for its jeeps, halted production of the Whippet in 1931. |
 Now on Display-- Images of Rail: Norfolk and Western Railway
Archival photographs from the book of the same name by Nelson Harris are now on display in the Museum's Rail Gallery.
For a century, the Norfolk and Western Railway operated as one of the greatest transportation companies in the southeastern United States. The story of the N&W is a story about people--a story of the tens of thousands of people who worked in the shops and aboard the trains, sold the tickets and moved the freight, laid the track and managed corporate affairs. With views of the rugged, and at times dangerous, days of railroading in the late 1880s to the rise of the N&W as a member of America's corporate elite, these pictures convey the railroad's storied history.
Nelson Harris is a lifelong resident of Roanoke, son of an N&W retiree, and former Mayor of the City of Roanoke. |
More great things to do and see in Virginia's Rail Heritage Region!
"Portal" by Christine Carr. The O. Winston Link Museum is proud to present more than 20 black and white photographic prints by Hollins professor and photographer Christine Carr. February 12-May 9.
George Washington's Train Show, presented by the Chesapeake & Ohio Historical Society, featuring railroad antiques and model trains. February 20, 9am-5pm at the Clifton Forge Armory. $4/adults; $2/children.
The Blue Ridge Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society is now taking reservations for A Circle Tour around Virginia. Take a bus from Lynchburg to Richmond, then enjoy a train trip to Alexandria and train back to Lynchburg on Saturday, April 24, 2010. Leave Lynchburg at 6:15am and return at 7:39pm, with free time in Richmond and Alexandria. | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
