http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/09/08/worthington-museum-slipping-off-the-tracks.html?sid=101
I posted a while back about wondering where the N&W 578 went , and it looks like the museum is pretty much gone.
Here is the text from the Columbus Dispatch today.
The signs outside the Ohio Railway Museum say it all.
"Due to technical issues we are closed."
For how long and at what cost have yet to be figured out.
The Worthington museum has struggled over the years, with too few volunteers, uncertain revenue and the challenge of making hulking old trains interesting and safe.
The problems came to a boil at the start of summer, when a trolley-car pole, used to connect trains with power lines, snagged, bending the pole and taking down the lines.
The 600-volt lines sparked and snapped, breaking a tripper switch in the control building and smashing out the streetcar's windows.
No one was injured in the Memorial Day weekend mishap, but it caused the museum's leadership to halt operations and reconsider its future.
"Trying to turn around 30 years of neglect with five or six volunteers on the weekend is not going to happen in a day," said Chris Howell, the Ohio Railway Museum's president for the past year.
Revenue from the summer and fall typically carries the museum through the winter. And the popular "Ghost Trolley" in October is uncertain.
Howell said previous museum officials had not spent enough on cleaning up the rail yard or protecting its historic cars, including some of the oldest streetcars in Columbus.
The museum, along Proprietors Road just west of Rt. 161, is run by a nonprofit board of directors.
A few years ago, "There were literally just piles of junk all over," Howell said. "It's one thing to have people expect to see some rust - it's old. But to have to step over piles - broken windows and heaps of metal - it was just a safety risk."
Howell met with Worthington City Councilman Scott Myers and other city officials this summer.
"The city has had some concerns about the deterioration of the site," Myers said. "They left the impression that they were working pretty darn hard to restore the site."
He said the group would like to extend its rail lines south toward Indianola Park, making itself more of an excursion and less of a museum.
"They want to be able to run Saturday-morning lines up those tracks and back," said Myers, who has a soft spot for trains, stemming from his college days.
"If they can get a fundraising base or endowment in there, I would support their efforts, personally."
But it won't be easy.
"It's a herculean task with the limited resources they have," Myers said.
dnarciso@dispatch.com
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