From the Cape Cod Chronicle (28 August 2005):
All Aboard!
Chatham Railroad Museum Seeks To
Raise Awareness Of Historic Station
by Tim Wood
When Larry Larned was nine years old, his father, a railroad enthusiast, took him down
to the Chatham railroad station while the family was vacationing in Orleans. At the time,
the station had been closed for nearly 10 years. They peeked inside the darkened
windows, but saw little.
“It was all barren” around the station, said Larned, now retired and a resident of South
Chatham . “There were no trees, no grass, no parking lots.” Later they walked the old
railroad bed to the Harwich line. “The railroad ties were still there, but no rail.”
The Chatham Railroad Museum.
Larned is now director of the Chatham Railroad Museum, housed in the former
station on Depot Road . Like the other 14 members of the Chatham Railroad Museum
Group, which operates the facility, and the 55 docents who provide staff support, Larned,
like his father, is a devoted railroad buff. His basement houses a replica of a Berkshires
railroad, complete with a 30-foot-long mountain.
Al Brier is typical of the museum’s volunteers. He’s been spending several days there
each summer greeting visitors since moving to the area in 2000.
“I’ve had toy trains since I was five years old,” he said.
Many of the museum’s 6,000 or so annual visitors are also train buffs, interested either in
the history of railroads or model railroading. A large number of visitors, however, are children,
who love the playing with the working telegraph in the station master’s office or climbing inside
the wooden caboose parked behind the station.
One of the museum’s biggest draws --- and chief reason Larned wants to draw attention to
it --- is the building itself.
“People come here just to study the building,” he said, standing outside the red and yellow
Gothic Revival structure. “It’s considered to be a real gem of a building for its architecture.”
Also referred to as “Railroad Gothic,” the style of the building is distinguished by a
central tower with its candle snuffer-type roof, tall, narrow windows, an overhanging roof, large
brackets below the roof, as well as a very low foundation. In “Cape Cod Architecture,” the late
Clair Baisly noted that the tower nicely balances the building’s boxy dimensions, and “adds a bit
of drama” to the structure. Built in 1887, the building was listed on the National Register of
Historic Places in 1978.
Larned pointed out the building, both inside and out, is little changed from the original.
That’s also a problem. The skirt boards along the exterior are rotting, and the floor has become
springy, all the results of the station being build on pine pilings and a bed of stone.
“It has no foundation,” he said. “It’s been close to the ground for over 100 years. We feel
it’s time to put in a permanent foundation.”
In May, voters appropriated $30,000 in community preservation funds for an engineering
assessment and plans to place a full basement beneath the building. While it’s clear “some action
needs to be taken,” Larned said any changes will retain the historic authenticity of the structure.
“The building itself is a museum piece,” he said, “as well as the contents within it.”
Those contents include railroad paraphernalia from around the country as well as a
significant number of artifacts from the Chatham Railroad, the 7.03-mile extension of the Old
Colony Line in Harwich to the depot, which began operating in 1887. Funded and owned jointly
by the town and private stockholders, its proponents included key Chatham figure Marcellus
Eldredge, founder of the Eldredge Public Library and co-owner of the Hotel Chatham.
Having a way for tourists to get to huge hotel, which was located at the current site of the
fourth fairway of the Eastward Ho! Country Club, may have been a factor in bringing the
railroad to Chatham .
The hotel had its own flag stop along the line, but it didn’t seem to help; it closed in 1894,
four years after opening. The Chatham Railroad lasted somewhat longer. In 1891, its best year,
it carried 22,00 passengers. A complex of buildings built up around the station, including some
that served the railroad and others that depended on it. Weld Manufacturing Co. made artillery
shell fuse for the Russian Army, and the Nickerson Lumber was located where the Oyster Heights
Condominiums are today. Both were key freight shippers for the line. But by 1930 a gasoline
motor car had replaced the line’s steam engine, and the last freight train pulled out of the station
on July 5, 1937 .
The station was shuttered and languished unused for many years (Larned said he’s heard a
sea scout group met there during the 1940s, but he’s not sure of the exact dates). In 1951, Phyllis
Cox, a summer resident, purchased the building and surrounding land and donated it to the town.
“She wanted to save the building,” said Larned. Little was done until 1959, when the
chamber of commerce suggested the building be restored and converted into a museum. Opened
July 27, 1960 , the museum operates on a small budget from the town, as well as
proceeds from a small endowment established by Cox.
Many of the items inside the museum were donated by local residents of members of the
railroad museum group from their personal collections. Some were used in conjunction with the
operation of the Chatham Railroad. A switch stand lamp, for instance, was used at the South
Chatham station. It was discovered during excavation of the foundation of the Perry
Borden Plumbing building, which sits on the site of the old station, and restored.
“People will be digging in their yard near where the railroad was and come up with lumps
of coal,” said Larned, pointing to several large black rocks sitting on window sills. “We’re
constantly getting railroad spikes.”
Along with a large reference library, one of the highlights of the museum is a scale model
of the station and the surrounding buildings constructed by Pete Hoyt. It’s historically accurate,
showing the businesses around the railroad yard as well as the turntable, where locomotives were
rotated to head back toward Harwich, and various support structures, including a windmill used to
pump water for the steam engines.
Of the numerous train models on display, four are of special note. Scale models of the
locomotives in use in the late 1930s on the New York Central Railroad, they were handmade by
Walthers Brothers, a top model train maker, for display at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
The trains were later shown off in various New York Central stations, as well as Grand
Central Station, on a working model layout. The late Frank Love, the first director of the
museum who had worked for the railroad, arranged for the models to be displayed at the
Chatham museum in the early 1960s.
“We’ve had them ever since,” said Larned. The models are currently being restored one
by one by Robert Furtado, head of Cape Cod Technical High School ’s auto department.
Love also secured another of the museum’s top attractions: the 1910 wooden caboose that
sits on rails behind the station.
“I’d say it’s the biggest draw for children,” Larned said. “Children like to crawl into it.”
The caboose came from Selkirk , N.Y. , where it had sat unused with other wooden
cabooses since their use was banned in the early 1950s. Larned explained that wooden
cabooses were deemed unsafe by railroad authorities because of their inability to
withstand collisions. This one was used as a field office. Shortly after it was brought to
Chatham , the remaining wooden cabooses were gathered together and burned, he
said. Cabooses are no longer used on trains, he added.
“That’s what makes this interesting as an historic relic. You don’t see them anymore on
railroads.”
While it’s a big draw, the caboose is also requires extensive care and maintenance. It
must be painted and re-lettered periodically, and each spring it undergoes some level of
maintenance.
“It’s just like a wooden boat,” Larned said.
The museum is open from mid June through mid September, Tuesday through Saturday
10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Museum volunteers will also open it upon special request. Larned
said last year, a group from Disney attending a conference at Chatham Bars Inn stopped
by and posed for a photograph on the back of the caboose. They all adopted dastardly
expressions and pointed to a victim tied up on the tracks below.
Railroad certainly mean different things to different people.