Take this box and shelve it!

The Railway Education Center in January.

The Railway Education Center is located on the Northwest Railway Museum campus on Stone Quarry Road in Snoqualmie, Washington.  The building is designed to appear like a train station, but was built to provide museum functions including a library, reading room, collection processing, classroom, and restrooms.  

Rolling carriages are the
heart of a SpaceSaver
shelving system.

The library collection is housed in a vault that features special environmental controls to tightly control temperature and humidity.  This room is designed specifically for storing and accessing the paper-based collection, which includes photographs, books, leaflets, engineering records, and more.  This installation opened in early 2017 with just five rolling shelves, but will ultimately incorporate more than one linear mile of shelving.  

Registrar Cristy L. demos
how the rolling shelving
moves along the black
tracks set into the floor.

In just three years, those five shelving units are almost completely filled with books and other materials.  It quickly became apparent that the Museum had to add another shelving unit to allow continued processing of the collection backlog.  

Thanks to a major grant from the King County 4Culture cultural equipment program, and additional support from individual donors, a new 32 inch shelving carriage has been added to the vault.  SpaceSaver made this rolling unit with attached shelving and completed the installation through their representatives at Southwest Solutions.  

Cristy L. shows off the library's new set
of wheels: 10' high, 11' long, 32" wide

The SpaceSaver shelving arrived in large crates and assembled much like a giant Erector or Meccano set.  It was ready to load with boxes after just four or five hours of effort by the Southwest Solutions crew.  Already many important documents including all the chapel car 5 research, and exciting tomes published by the Association of American Railroads have found a new home on this brand new mobile storage structure.

The Northwest Railway Museum staff, trustees and patrons send a huge "Thank You" to King County 4Culture, and the more than dozen individual donors who made this new shelving financially possible.

Wheels for an interurban car

Puget Sound Electric Railway car 523 operated between Seattle and Tacoma from 1908 until 1928.  This early mass transit allowed commuters on "Limited" trains to travel from downtown to downtown in just 1 hour and 15 minutes.  The 523 is the sole surviving car from this once proud fleet and is the newest Snoqualmie property listed on the King County and City of Snoqualmie Landmarks Register.

523 was first preserved in 1963 when it was purchased by preservationist Paul Class. It had been repurposed as a home in Federal Way sometime prior to WW II, and the property owner was ready to build a larger house. So Mr. Class purchased the car and moved it to Oregon where he had started what today is known as the Oregon Electric Railway Historical Society. There were several ill-fated restoration attempts on the 523, but only when the car was donated to the Northwest Railway Museum was a formal plan prepared.

When 523 was adaptively reused first as an outbuilding and then as a home, the wheels and motors were no longer needed; they were sold for scrap circa 1930.  So replacements of at least similar vintage were needed.  This month new trucks (wheels and motors) for the 523 arrived in Snoqualmie. This was the result of a culmination of more than a year of effort and is being made possible with support from the Schwab Fund for Charitable Giving and 4Culture's Building for Equity program.

The "new" trucks are actually from an electric car order built for the Chicago Elevated and delivered in the early 1920s. The trucks were built by Baldwin (same builder of the Museum's locomotives 4012 & 4024), but are a decade newer than the trucks that would have been found under the 523 circa 1914. The front truck is powered with two GE traction motors and the rear truck is unpowered.

The Streetcar Investment Company purchased the trucks from a scrap car some years ago and the components had been in storage at their California yard.  An industrial motor shop in the Bay Area overhauled the two GE 243 traction motors, and the Streetcar Investment folks reassembled everything.  They arrived on a Gerlock Heavy Haul tow truck, the same rig that delivered 523 to the Museum more than two years ago.

The trucks are not ready for installation.  It was important to acquire and move the trucks so that all the variables between the carbody and the trucks were correctly defined.  Until they are installed, the trucks will remain in storage inside the Museum in Snoqualmie.

Train Shed Features New Exhibit

Panels with car 523.

This spring, the Train Shed Exhibit Building features several new exhibits, including Connecting Communities: Story of the Puget Sound Electric Railway. Using the recent acquisition of Puget Sound Electric Railway (PSER) car 523 as a spring-board, the Museum applied for and received a 4Culture Heritage Special Projects grant to fund the exhibit.

PSER was an interurban railway that ran between downtown Seattle and Tacoma and connected many points in between, both large and small. PSER operated from 1902-1928, and was an important factor in settlement along its route. With consistent and timely rail travel available, residents could move out of cities and into more rural areas while still remaining connected to urban centers.

Double-sided panels in Train
Shed Exhibit Building.

Connecting Communities consists of 4 double-sided panels, seven focusing on the story of PSER and one focusing on the history of car 523. The exhibit also includes a large (72"w x 34"h) high-pressure laminate panel that features reproduction of a graphic route map from a PSER public time table. Finally, there is a children's panel (the 1st of its kind at NRM!) that describes the different kinds of transportation children could have used to get around in 1902. That panel features a challenge to children with photos to lift and learn.

Children's panel is at a lower height.

A 2018 4Culture Heritage Special Projects grant funded this exhibit. 4Culture is the cultural funding agency for King County, Washington. Using Lodging Tax and 1% for Art funds, 4Culture has four program areas to serve the county: arts, heritage, historic preservation, and public art. For more info on 4Culture, visit their website at www.4Culture.org. 

A big thank you to 4Culture for continuing to support exhibits at the Northwest Railway Museum!

Also installed in the Train Shed over the winter, a photography exhibit Faces of Railroading that features images of railroad workers taken by Jack Delano during his time working for the Farm Security Administration in 1942-43.

Coaching an old coach

Coach 213 platform "B"

The Northwest Railway Museum has operated an interpretive railway since 1967.  Since then, millions of people have ridden the train, and coaches have traveled thousands of miles.  One of the longest-serving cars is coach 213, a former Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway coach built by Barney and Smith in 1912.  It is a sister to coach 218 - which was extensively rehabilitated and restored earlier this decade - and is built predominantly of wood. These two cars represent typical intercity passenger coaches used throughout Washington in the period prior to WW II.

Now it is coach 213's turn: it is being completely rehabilitated, but unlike the 218 this work is being performed in phases so the car may remain in service during peak periods.  With support from King County 4Culture's Heritage Capital program, major work has already been performed.

A renewed clerestory window

Over the last two years, all the 213's clerestory windows have been removed for rehabilitation.  The zinc came that retains the individual pieces of glass has been renewed, and any broken or missing colored glass has been replaced. The mahogany frames have been stripped of old finishes, repaired as necessary, and refinished with varnish on the interior and an epoxy primer on the exterior.  These windows will be installed as soon as a new canvas roof is applied.

Upper window sashes after re-installation

Meanwhile, the upper "elliptical"  sashes have been removed, rehabilitated and reinstalled.  These window sashes required a little more work that the clerestory windows because all but one were missing their colored glass panels.  The Museum's incredible team of volunteers and staff restored the original zinc came and produced the missing glass.  The effect is stunning, particularly when the sun passes directly through the milky green glass.

New platform trap

The platforms on the end of a wood coach are particularly susceptible to deterioration.  Mechanical wear and exposure to the elements are the chief factors, and improving the weather-resistance of the structure is key to its preservation.  The platforms were taken apart, deteriorated steel components were replaced, and missing or deteriorated wood was replaced.  Platform traps were patterned, manufactured, and installed.  Meanwhile, the hand brake stand was rebuilt and a new brake handle installed. 

New door and windows

The platforms have many components and are one of the more complicated areas of the car to work on.  Included in the scope work was replacement of four windows with elliptical tops, four platform doors also with elliptical tops, and even the platform ceilings where new LED platform lamps have now been installed. For now, this work will mostly appear in gray primer, but as the work advances everything will be colored SP&S coach green to match coach 218.

Car body siding has been addressed too.  Extensive reworking of the cladding is sealing it from the weather and preparing it for the final color coats. And the next step will be rehabilitating the roof deck and re-applying a canvas roof.  Exciting days are ahead for coach 213!

213 with reworked cladding appearing in gray primer

Learning more about an electric interurban

Interurban car 523 operated on the Puget Sound Electric Railway ("PSER") from 1908 until 1928, and represents a fascinating era in the development of King County and the region.  The 523 arrived at the Northwest Railway Museum in September 2017, and was listed on the King County and City of Snoqualmie Landmark Register earlier this year.  To best steward this cultural resource, a plan for how the resource will be protected and developed was needed.  Now, thanks to a Special Projects grant from 4Culture, an assessment and additional research has been performed.

Finding qualified individuals to research and assess an historical landmark can be challenging.  Fortunately, the Museum was able to find one of the most qualified historians anywhere: Mr. Kyle Wyatt has spent a career lifetime working in railroad heritage.  He retired in April from California State Parks, and his responsibilities at Old Sacramento and the California State Railroad Museum. That allowed him to take on the 523 assignment.

Mr. Wyatt spent hours performing additional research, further supplementing work done by Museum volunteers and staff in support of the Landmarks Register nomination.  Kyle discovered several new resources, and uncovered a number of significant facts.  One of the more interesting revelations is that the PSER parlor observations were color-themed: one each of the four original cars had interior design motifs in blue, green, red, and brown.

The 523 is an outstanding example of early 20th Century electric railroading, and especially how it was applied in the Pacific Northwest.  The 4Culture Special Projects grant has funded this assessment with additional contributions to the body of knowledge as to how the car appeared while in electric railway service.  Thank you to Mr. Kyle Wyatt and 4Culture for their investment in the 523's future.