Members of the Berkshire Scenic Railway Museum are exploring how to make operational the Boston Route 128 station Solari board that Amtrak donated in 2015, said Brent Bette, the museum’s senior project manager. It has been in storage for the last four years. “They disassembled it, removing all the modules to transport it,” he said. Two members drove a rented van to an Amtrak warehouse in Rhode Island to pick it up.
“I called Solari Corp. and asked if it could be resurrected,” Bette said. The Long Island City, N.Y., company has agreed to send two technicians to Massachusetts for three days to overhaul the machine. “We need to raise $6,000 to cover the cost, but I’m confident we’ll get that quickly,” Bette said.
Bette said the museum is working on a display plan for the machine, once it’s operational again. The current plan would program the machine to display the trains that would have stopped at Lenox in 1900 under the Housatonic Railroad, then show trains under New Haven ownership, and finally display the last years of service under the Penn Central flag.
To contrast the flip-board machine, on the opposite wall of the proposed display is the original chalkboard from the station, on which the stationmaster would have written the arrivals and departures. “This will be a great interpretive display,” Bette concluded.
As the Berkshire museum’s plans to exhibit their Solari board are coming together, the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania took delivery of the Philadelphia 30th Street Station Solari board on Feb. 14. It was placed in temporary storage until a base can be constructed to display it. Since the machine is on loan from Amtrak for three years, it will not be made operational and will appear as it did when it was shut down on Jan. 26.
One of the great pleasures of train travel in years past was not only the sight, but the sound of the Solari board’s flipping names and numbers. Glad that at least one is being restored to use, and only an hour and a half from where I live.
Cool!