An old trolley, loaded Sunday on a flatbed trailer, prepares to leave the Red Hook waterfront.
Rusting street cars that had become fixtures of the Red Hook waterfront shipped out Sunday on flatbed trailers bound for an East Haven-based train association — all to the surprise of the trolley buff who claims to own them.
“We have no idea exactly what went on,” said a shocked Bob Diamond, president of the Historic Railways Association.
Diamond stored three cars for more than a decade in a lot behind the Fairway Market next to Van Brunt Street.
He’d hoped to put the trolleys — or at least pieces of them — in service again one day as part of a long-delayed dream to restore streetcar service in Red Hook, he said Monday.
His plans went off the rails on Sunday, however, when a pal told him a shipping company was hauling the cars away.
Greg O’Connell, president of The O’Connell Organization, which owns the lot and other Red Hook property, issued a statement Monday, saying the trolleys and a “significant donation” were given to the Branford Electric Railway Association Sunday. The association operates the Shore Line Trolley Museum in East Haven.
“Rather than let these historic trolleys continue to sit stagnant, building up rust and rot in Red Hook, the O’Connell Organization has passed them on to BERA, which has the ability to rebuild them or at the very least can facilitate a transfer to someone that will,” according to the statement.
Read more: Source
↧
Red Hook trolley cars shipped to Connecticut as train buff cries foul
↧