Boca Raton rail museum, former FEC station, is sold
The Boca Raton Historical Society has sold the former Florida East Coast Railway train station that houses its Boca Express Train Museum for $2.1 million, Law.com reports. Mizner Arts LLC is listed as the buyer. The station was built in 1930; the museum’s collection also features two former Seaboard Air Line passenger cars, an Atlantic Coast Line caboose and a 1930 Baldwin steam switch engine. According to the museum website, the station and passenger cars are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A South Florida Sun Sentinel report indicates the historical society placed the building on sale in May 2017 to address a shortage of funds. The historical society has not yet responded to a Trains News Wire request for information on the status of the museum’s equipment and artifacts.
The Center for Rail Photography & Art and historian and professor Roger Grant have been selected to receive the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society’s annual research fellowships. The CRP&A received $2,500 as recipient of the 2020 William D. Middleton Research Fellowhip, for a project to examine the role of videography in railroading. The grant will support the research, writing, and curating of a multimedia project titled “Railroads and the Moving Image,” which will consider the evolution and production of railroad videography and its place within the realm of railroad imagery. Grant, a professor at Clemson University, received a $2,250 award as recipient of the 2019 John H. White Jr. Research Fellowship. It will support his ongoing work on a book manuscript about local station agent-operators, a nearly bygone occupation once essential to American transportation. More information about the R&LHS is available at the organization’s website.
Kettle Valley Railway cancels remainder of 2020 schedule
British Columbia’s Kettle Valley Steam Railway has cancelled operations for the rest of 2020, scrapping its remaining planned events including its annual Christmas train. The Penticton Herald reports that railway president Sharon Unrau said in a statement that the railway board and management “made the tough decision to discontinue operations due to concerns of safety from coronavirus for our staff, volunteers, passsengers, and community.” The railway in Summerland, B.C., had hoped to operate its fall or holiday trains, Unrau said, but in light of recent comments from a provincial health official, “we recognize it is simply not safe to operate.”
