NRHS awards $3,300 to Pittsfield railroad depot

  PHILADELPHIA – The National Railway Historical Society (NRHS), America’s largest rail preservation organization, has announced the 2012 recipients of its annual National Railway Heritage Grants Program. NRHS will award $50,000 to support 21 non-profit organizations from 14 states and the District of Columbia which include NRHS chapters, historical societies, museums and municipalities.

  Locally, the town of Pittsfield received $3,300 to replace the roof of the historic Pittsfield railroad station, one of Maine’s only original publicly accessible train stations. The building, constructed in 1880, also serves as the headquarters for the Pittsfield Historical Society and houses artifacts of the town's history.  The depot was placed on the National Register of Historic Buildings in 1980.

  Other projects approved by the NRHS range from the restoration of rare locomotives, passenger cars, freight cars, and railroad structures to the creation of an exhibition featuring the history of African-American railway workers in the Pacific Northwest.

  “This year’s applicant pool was the largest in NRHS history and one of the best in recent memory, making the award decisions painfully difficult,” said NRHS President Gregory Molloy. “While we’re excited to fund these important projects, the fact remains that scores of equally significant rail projects will go without our support this year, underlining the urgency of our mission.”

  Since the program’s inception in 1991, NRHS has now awarded 221 grants for a total of $548,000 to support a wide variety of railroad history preservation projects.