Found the following letter to the editor in the Courier News (NJ).
For Railroad History
To the Editor:
In response to February’s Hunterdon Life article about Ray Clauss’ restoration of railroad cars.
First, the photos by Ben Scheetz were outstanding and it was very nicely laid out. However, the article was misleading. I’ve been involved in this effort for two decades and am president emeritus, director and curator of the Friends of the NJ Transportation Heritage Center as well as a long time delegate to the United Railroad Historical Society of NJ (URHS).
Ray Clauss is a friend and we’ve worked together on many occasions. The article states that Ray got his start with a chance encounter with the NJ Historical Society. It was the URHS. Ray, doing business as Star Trak, is an independent contractor doing about 70% of his work on URHS-owned equipment.
URHS owns about 90 pieces of rail equipment (it takes over a mile of track just to store them all), including “The Hickory Creek” observation car and the other equipment pictured. Star Trak restored over 20 items of rail equipment for the URHS. Ray and his son Scott manage, operate and maintain The Hickory Creek under contract for the URHS. The URHS isn’t even mentioned in the article.
The URHS equipment has been preserved for the future NJ Transportation Heritage Center. The URHS works closely with the Friends on the Heritage Center initiative.
Our Web sites should have been part of the article: http://www.urhs.org/ and http://www.njthc.org/.
The bigger story is that the NJ Transportation Heritage Center, a nonprofit volunteer effort for over 20 years, has been in limbo for the past several years due to an apparent vendetta by one political party in Trenton against the other. Legislation was purposefully stalled. The State Legislature should hang their heads in shame over what they’ve done to our historic transport preservation effort.
One only has to look to the west to see what the preservation minded state of Pennsylvania has done with the Railroad Museum of Pa. at Strasburg and the Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton.
Many states have outstanding transportation museums that draw heritage tourism, but not ours! New Jersey residents have to go to New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Missouri, California, Illinois or Ohio to see and experience transportation equipment that’s been exported from the Garden State.
Thank you for this opptuinty to tell our side of the story.
BILL McKELVEY
Berkley Heights