Interior renovations planned at train station this winter for train traffic next summer; museum looking for new home

by Dan McClelland

In preparations for the coming of train excursions here next summer will be renovations to the interior of the Tupper Lake train station off Depot Street in coming weeks.

The Adirondack Railroad Preservation Society, which has been charged by the New York State Department of Transportation with operating the new tourist train line, anticipates the first train to roll into town on July 4. From that point on there will be various trips up and down the Adirondack line to and from Tupper and from points south like Big Moose, Remsen and Utica.

Various train excursions from Tupper Lake for special dining and other events are planned by the not for profit railroad operators, starting next summer. There will also be rail bikes for rent, out of the Tupper Lake station.

In order to adapt the interior of the historic train station into a working station, ARPS is planning to engage a local contractor to erect partitions and such to provide offices for the volunteers who will work there selling tickets and such and serving train-traveling patrons.

According to Bob Hest, who with Jim Ellis and Al Dunham are three members of the ARPS board who live in the area, the design of the new offices and visitor areas inside the station will be historic in nature, in keeping with the building's 1895-era architecture.

The photo above left shows a nearly empty great room of the Tupper Lake train station this week, in anticipation of interior construction work in the weeks ahead by the Adirondack Railroad Preservation Society.

For the past three years the train station has been home to the Tupper Lake Museum, which delighted visitors with its local artifacts. Nearly 1,000 visitors have enjoyed its historical offerings each of the past two summers.

So that the place can really become a train station this coming summer, the museum volunteers have been working diligently in recent weeks bundling up the museum's many possessions into carefully labelled boxes for moving day last Thursday.

The museum leaders contracted with Madden's Transfer and Storage that day to move all the artifacts and its display cases into clean and dry storage at several sites around town.

Museum President Kathleen Lefebvre said Bill Madden and his staff were all very careful in loading and unloading the museum's keepsakes. The laborious moving event took over eight hours. The photo above right shows the Madden trucks backed up to the train station doors.

One of the temporary storage places is the former Hyde Fuel gas station on Demars Blvd., the premises generously loaned out by a museum board member, Marlene Hyde, and her husband Tom. Office space and storage areas were also made available to the museum group at Ivy Terrace by the board members of the Tupper Lake Housing Authority and the Ivy Terrace staff.

Plans are currently underway by Mrs. Lefebvre and her board members to find a permanent home for the Tupper Lake Museum- so that it will never have to be moved again.

Discussions are currently underway with several local property owners and their real estate representatives.

A fundraising campaign to raise the money needed to buy a building on a main thoroughfare here that would be suitable for a local museum is expected to be launched in coming weeks. Watch for details of that!