Chester Railway Museum (Mass.)

The Hudson Berkshire Division of the NMRA held our October monthly meeting at the Chester Railway Station and Museum in Chester, MA over the past weekend.

 

Though it was a 70 minute trip from our house, my wife and son came with me and we had a great time learning about the local railroad history. 

Some fun facts I never knew were that the first pusher operations were conducted on the original railroad in this location, and technically the first "mountain railroad" was located here. 

They have an attractive tank car painted up for "Bakers Chocolate", which apparently shows the oldest American trademark (the old woman) on file. 

They also have an old Rutland caboose, painted for the New York Central, that you can rent for the night. I definitely plan to do that in the spring. 

An unusual steam locomotive, which arrived with a two-axle tender that was powered by a motor, is also on the property. 

The station itself is nicely restored and smelled like an old railroad station. 

Inside, they had lots of displays and memorabilia as well as tables and chairs to rest in.

During the meeting I was also awarded officially my MMR Structures certificate.

A CSX train happened to go by on the old Boston and Albany mainline, which was neat and caught everybody's attention.

An old schematic of the tracks that use to be in the area.

They even had a "kiddie" boxcar (an actual boxcar) filled with toys and children's books and things for young ones to play with. An old Lionel train circled the ceiling.

Across the street from the station was the location of an old marble quarry. 

Apparently, someone tried to steal the cutting wheel with a blowtorch! They might have cut part way through, but they never got it off though.

One neat thing about this trip was that I found out about the background for Michael Tylick's (one of my biggest influences) large scale Chester and Beckett Railroad which is frequently exhibited at the Springfield Train Show. It has models of quarry operations based on this area, and when I go in January to see it again I will take better notice of all that he built.

All in all, I learned a lot and it was a really enjoyable place to visit for an hour or two. Even my wife and Harrison (who is in a couple of the shots) enjoyed themselves too.