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The New York Museum of Transportation (NYMT), founded in 1975, is a non-profit organization located at 6393 East River Road, in the Rochester suburb of Rush. A private rail line built by volunteers connects NYMT with the Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum, over a distance of two miles. This demonstration railway allows both museums to offer train rides with their collections of vintage railroad equipment. NYMT operates the only electric trolley ride in New York State, not to be confused with the similarly named Trolley Museum of New York located in Kingston, New York. ==History== The last streetcars operated in Rochester in 1941, leaving only the Rochester Subway rapid transit operation to soldier on until 1956. Rochester Transit Corporation donated car 1246, a Peter Witt-style streetcar, to the Rochester Museum and Science Center in 1941, but the museum never made any attempt to incorporate the car into a permanent exhibition. Stored outdoors and ravaged by vandals, the car was finally sold for scrap in 1950. Rochester Subway car 60 was donated to the Rochester Chapter, NRHS in 1956, but having no permanent location, the car was loaned to other organizations outside the region. The roots of the New York Museum of Transportation can be traced back to the Mageee Transportation Museum, a private museum located near Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, founded by wealthy industrialist Harry Magee, the owner of the Magee Carpet Company. His interest in vintage vehicles of all kinds led him to create a home for antique automobiles and trolleys in the mid-1960s. The museum and trolley rides flourished until the summer of 1972 when flooding caused by Hurricane Agnes caused extensive damage to the tracks and trolley fleet. Harry Magee died that October, and the collection was sold at auction in 1973. The planned community of Riverton was being developed in West Henrietta, New York by Henry Hamlin and William Morris. The cornerstone of this new project was a proposed light rail line that was to connect Riverton with downtown Rochester constructed along the former Erie Railroad Rochester Division right of way. A small trolley museum was envisioned as a natural outgrowth of the planned light rail line. With the knowledge that several Rochester area streetcars were preserved at the Magee Transportation Museum, Hamlin and Morris made a visit to see what could be salvaged from the shuttered museum. Before his untimely death, Harry Magee had expressed hope that the Rochester streetcars in his collection could one day be returned to New York State to be restored and operate once again. The first car acquired was former Elmira, Wavery and Corning Railway car 107, as well as a stock of bracket arms and other stock to construct overhead wire. New York State Railways Rochester and Eastern Rapid Railway car 157 was also acquired in the same deal. Lease of a recently abandoned dairy barn on state agricultural lands in West Henrietta was acquired by Hamlin to house the two cars. Temporary tracks were laid and car 157 was placed inside the barn on October 5, 1973, with car 107 following a month later. Rochester Transit Corporation sand car 0243 and Rochester City and Brighton Railroad horse car 55 were brought to the barn site, on loan from the Rochester Museum and Science Center. A provision charter was issued in 1975, bringing formal organization to the New York Museum of Transportation. By 1975, the city of Rochester was looking to abandon the remaining western end of the old Rochester Subway, which was still being used for freight service by both Penn Central and the Baltimore & Ohio railroads under contract. The NYMT volunteers were given permission to salvage as much of the track materials as they could for the construction of the rail line circling their campus in West Henrietta. Addition historic vehicles were added to the collection from various sources, and a gift shop, exhibit hall, and gallery were completed inside the old dairy barn. SEPTA was retiring its fleet of wood-bodied street snow sweepers they inherited from the old Philadelphia Transportation Company, and NYMT acquired C-130 in January 1975. Designed to run on Philadelphia's five-foot "broad gauge" tracks, NYMT volunteers worked to convert the trucks to standard gauge. Nearly all restoration work had been completed on this project, but the car has been stored out of service since the 1980s. Construction of the museum's demonstration railroad began in 1976, totaling nearly three-quarters of a mile by 1979. By 1980, NYMT began offering rides on Fairmont "track cars" (small gas-powered vehicles once used by railway maintenance workers for transport to work sites) on the partially completed museum railroad. Around the same time, the neighboring Rochester and Genesee Valley Railroad Museum began constructing their own demonstration railroad from their Industry depot north towards NYMT, and both operations were connected in 1993. Following the joining of the NYMT and RGVRRM tracks with a golden spike ceremony, end-to-end track car operations began. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「New York Museum of Transportation」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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