Board members and local officials break ground Thursday for the Seashore Trolley Museum’s new Fairview Carbarn Expansion Project. When completed, the project will increase storage in the facility, create 14 new covered spaces for the museum’s collection, and enclose the left side of the building. ED PIERCE/Journal Tribune
It marked a new era in Kennebunkport as a special groundbreaking ceremony was conducted for Seashore Trolley Museum’s new Fairview Carbarn Expansion Project.
Members of the museum’s board of trustees and local officials wielded symbolic gold shovels to officially launch the new project which will provide much-needed covered storage space for its collection of antique vehicles.
“This is a rather momentous day for us,” said James Schantz, the president and CEO of the Board of Trustees of New England Electric Railway Historical Society, also known as the Seashore Trolley Museum. “We look forward to getting track in here and to put cars on the track to protect our collection.”
The expansion and redevelopment project of the Fairview Carhouse will proceed in separate phases and enhance the current building at the site which currently only has two enclosed sides.
The project has been planned for several decades and has finally become a reality thanks to donations from museum members, a $25,000 grant from the Davis Family Foundation, and a $75,000 challenge grant from the 20th Century Electric Railway Foundation.
The first phase of the project is expected to be finished by December and will increase storage space in the barn by 560 linear feet, create 14 new covered spaces for the museum’s vehicle collection, and enclose the open left side of the building.
That will markedly improve the quality of storage for the 27 cars already inside the building, Schantz said.
During future construction phases, the Fairview Carhouse project will extend the front of the building and add nine spaces for vehicles, replace the roof on the original barn structure and add doors on each rail track across the front.
According to Thomas Santarelli, who leads the volunteer Bus & Trackless Trolley Department at the museum, seeing the expansion project begin is a significant milestone for everyone connected with the organization.
“It’s taken us many years to get back to this point,” Santarelli said. “When we do extend the full 60 feet forward in the second phase, this will be very prominent to our visitors.”
This is all part of the facility’s larger strategic plan, which included replacing the roof and supporting structure for the museum’s Donald G. Curry Town House Shop in 2016. That building was renamed last year for Curry, a museum volunteer who has been associated with the organization for the past seven decades.
Curry was on hand Thursday for the groundbreaking, along with Biddeford Mayor Alan Casavant and Arundel Town Manager Keith Trefethen. Biddeford donated the first trolley car for the mueum’s collection and the site of the new Fairview Carbarn Expansion Project lies in the town of Arundel.
Established in 1939, the Seashore Trolley Museum is the operating entity of New England Electric Railway Historical Society and is the world’s oldest and largest electric railway and public transit museum.
Visitors to the museum tour carbarns full of passenger streetcars, work cars, inter-urbans and freight equipment. It has more than 250 transit vehicles in its collection, most of them trolleys, from all over the United States, Canada, and many other countries.
The mission of the New England Electric Railway Historical Society is to share connections between the past and present by collecting, restoring, operating, and exhibiting significant public transit vehicles and artifacts for the knowledge, context, and resources for future generations.
— Executive Editor Ed Pierce can be reached at 282-1535 ext. 326 or by email at editor@journaltribune.com
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