Official Naugatuck Railroad thread (NAUG/RMNE)

Want To Help A Kid With A Boxcar? Seems like an awful cool idea for a fort!: Hartford Courant

A country teen who paid $1 to buy a 1930 boxcar and save it from the scrapyard came here Wednesday to pick up his 44,000-pound purchase.

Orion Newall Vuillemot, a lanky 15-year-old from Woodstock who collects old tractors and makes maple syrup for sale, showed up at 7 a.m. at the Naugatuck Railroad Co. yard off Thomaston Avenue to collect his project.

"He's always been interested in trains," his mother, Jane Newall, said as Orion and a team of a dozen volunteers prepped the badly worn and weathered Boston & Maine boxcar – #72249 – from its longtime parking spot in the NRC yard. "When he said he was interested in this, I said, why not?"

It led to Orion raising about $4,000 on a GoFundMe page, putting on a restaurant fundraiser in Putnam, and assembling a bunch of people interested in helping him bring his train car home to a 50-foot-long section of track he built in the family yard.

Follow up: Hartford Courant

Some neighbors weren't too happy:

A teen's hobo castle — the 1930 decrepit boxcar that a high school sophomore bought for $1 to restore and donate to a museum — can stay in the side yard of the 15-year-old's family home despite neighbors' objections, the town zoning board of appeals ruled Wednesday.

By unanimous vote, the board rejected a complaint by a neighborhood family that the boxcar should not be in the yard, that it poses a danger from lead paint, and that the town was wrong to issue a zoning permit last month allowing Orion Newall Vuillemot to bring the boxcar from a Waterbury train yard to his parents' home at 78 Pulpit Rock Road.
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The boxcar was one of three the Naugatuck Railroad had. It was listed for sale for $1,500, but Pincus sold Orion the boxcar for $1 when he heard his story.

The teen raised more than $4,000 to get the boxcar disassembled, put on trailers, moved to Woodstock, and placed by crane onto a 50-foot span of rail in the side yard near the driveway and a small sap house where Orion makes maple syrup.
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Sounds like a industrious young man to me, best of luck with this one.
Noel Weaver

Surprised child protective services isn't investigating the lead paint hazard to the youth. I'm sure he will wear gloves and respiratory protection during the deleading process. Wait, the lead paint is historic!

Dude, ain't no lead paint left on that boxcar! If I remember reading correctly it was sometime in the late '80s that the Naugatuck restored the boxcar which included stripping the original lead paint and then re-painting it. The reason it looks so bad now, is apparently after the restoration it was left to deteriorate.
Peace,
Jonathan

lead laws seem to be meant for children 6 years of age or younger and even then BLL's were 10 micrograms per deciliter they prolly have no jurisdiction

Photo by Nathan Sloski:

http://www.railpictures.net/photo/597440/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Transformer moves are not as unusual on NAUG as Mr. Sloski indicates; this is at least the 8th and 9th of these NAUG has handled since 2000. Some moved to East Litchfield and some to Watertown.

A little blurb in our local internet newspaper rag on the transformers at the East Litchfield siding.

http://www.litchfield.bz/news/massive-t ... itchfield/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

J. Lang

They shipped them to Towantic by way of East Litchfield? Surely that's rather roundabout.

8 or 9 since 2000 is less than one per year, so I'd call that rare

I'm sure the routing has to do with road and bridge capacity and cost.

Jeff Smith wrote:I'm sure the routing has to do with road and bridge capacity and cost.

Also likely grade of the roads with a load like that.

I wonder if they considered using the siding in Seymour.

Rep-Am article has a picture of the rig used for carrying the transformer over the road, looks like it has at least 72 wheels. the other two transformers are scheduled to be moved on Dec 5 and Dec 12.
http://www.rep-am.com/news/news-local/2 ... low-crawl/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It's a bit ironic though that the site of the powerplant these transformers are being shipped to is only half a mile from the Larkin rail trail.

Why East Litchfield? It was stated by the people actually moving these things (a reliable source, no?) that, "It's west of Route 8 and west of the river, and that's very important." It's a good, flat site, lots of working room for the riggers.

Second transformer was placed at siding Tuesday afternoon.

Had to go to Blue seal in E. Litchfield so I stopped by the siding a grabbed a phone picture. Probably some of the most photographed transformers in a long time.

J. Lang