Get on board

Citizens’ help needed to restore RR station

By SCOTT JOHNSON — sjohnson@lockhaven
CASTANEA — One dollar from every resident of Clinton County.

While that may not sound like much, it could help to bring an old train station back to its original glory, and leave a legacy for years to come.

The Clinton County Historical Society has started an ambitious effort to bring the historic Castanea Train Station, 15 Logan Ave., back to its original, 1884 condition and tie it in to a recreational “rail-trail” connecting Pine Creek.

The society is looking for a dollar-for-dollar match to grants it has received in order to move the project forward.

Anne McCloskey, executive director, said the society has received a $24,900 grant from the Lumber Heritage Region and a $10,000 grant from the Degenstein Foundation of Sunbury toward a multi-year, $500,000 restoration project to the train station.

“It’s going to be a multi-phase restoration project,” she said. “It’s going to be a welcome center and travel complex museum for the proposed rail-trail.”

McCloskey said the $24,900 grant will go toward the construction of a 26-foot interpretive kiosk, to be built near the intersection of Logan and Bridge streets. The information booth will be built using the blueprints from the original wooden water tank built at the site in the 1930s.

“I was thinking, wouldn’t this make a wonderful kiosk where we can put information in it, signs in it and people can walk all around it and read all about the railroading history of Clinton County,” she said. “This isn’t just for Castanea or for Lock Haven, it would be for Clinton County... I think it will be a fun place for people to come.”

McCloskey said she hopes construction of the kiosk will begin this spring and be completed by next spring. It would be tied in to proposed rail-trail, which should be completed to Castanea in the next five years. She also hopes to use that grant to bring in and restore two railroad cars to be displayed in the front of the building.

The grant requires a dollar-for-dollar local match, which the society hopes can be raised through a dollar-per-person fundraiser.

“Everybody’s buying stock in this project for $1 a sale,” McCloskey said.

“We’re not asking for a lot of money. We’re asking for a little money from a lot of people,” added Heisey Museum Curator Lou Bernard. “A dollar from everybody... that’s not asking for much.”

Bernard has already set out donation jars at the museum’s front desk, along with the Village Tavern, Liberty Business Information, Avenue 6-Pack, Pugsley’s Pets and Sheer Talent, all in Lock Haven.

The jars will be rotated throughout the community, he said.

In addition, residents may mail donation checks — written out to Castanea Railroad Station Restoration Fund — directly to the society’s escrow account set up at Jersey Shore State Bank.

Those donating larger sums of money will become a “patron” of the project, McCloskey said, and their names will be etched on brass plates on the informational kiosk.

Later this year, Bernard plans to hold a fundraiser, biking the entire — still unfinished — 14-mile rail-trail between Castanea and Pine Creek.

All money donated to the project will be tax-deductible, McCloskey said.

The information center would be built by Keystone Central School District students and would, hopefully, be completed by the spring of 2009, McCloskey said.

“I thought it would be a wonderful community project for the kids,” she said. “It would take not only the students from the construction trades, but those learning about landscaping and journalism... in getting all the historical facts together.”

The $10,000 Degenstein Foundation loan would go toward the renovation of the two-story structure’s roof. Repairs to the entire roof are estimated at $61,000, McCloskey said. She hopes to begin that restoration work this fall, if the society receives sufficient donations by that time.

“It’s a very specific type of roof that we have to put on, due to historical guidelines,” she said. “The roof is leaking over there and the building is in jeopardy, so we need to raise that money as soon as possible.”

Other phases of the five-year project include the complete restoration of the train station to when it was built in 1884.

“Basically, the public would be stepping back into 1884,” McCloskey said.

It was built that year by the Beech Creek, Clearfield and Southwestern Railroad Co., and is an example of Victorian architecture, McCloskey said.

The railroad itself, primarily financed by the Vanderbilt family from New York, was built to transport coal from the coal regions of the state to industrial centers. It also carried coal, lumber and firebricks eastward. Farm products, processed food and merchandise was carried to the west.

It became a part of New York Central in 1899, which later became part of the Penn Central system.

The Historical Society has owned the building since 1988, and leases it out to the Clinton Central Model Railroad Club.

“We’re hoping they will work with us in turning it into not only their model railroad club, but into a museum,” McCloskey said.

Enthusiasm for the project could be clearly seen etched in the faces of McCloskey and Bernard as they detailed the plans in McCloskey’s office at the Heisey Museum.

“This is going to be a big part of everyone’s lives,” McCloskey said. “We are so excited about it.”

For more information, call the Historical Society at 748-7254.