Railroad history rescued in Warwick

Warwick - Thanks to the timely intervention of the Lehigh and Hudson River Railway Veterans Association, a big chunk of the history of the railroad has been saved from destruction. On May 24, a group of the members rented a box truck, rounded up a few more trucks and in the first wave of summer heat moved about two tons of valuable railroad records from Middletown to the Carriage House Self-Storage in Warwick. Facility owners Jack and Janice Hubert and the Historical Society of the Town of Warwick are helping with the cost of the storage for a few months so that it can be cleaned, sorted and a new permanent home found. Rescuing these valuable historical records came down to one phone call from Orange County Community College to the railroad group that a storage unit had to be cleaned out and there were many boxes of material from the railroad that needed a home. This was quite a surprise to the club, because, as far as anyone in the organization knew, this entire archive - which had been cleaned out of the railroad office when it closed 30 years ago - had been transferred long ago to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg, Pa. It seems that a lot of the records got left behind. Now that there are a few months of grace, volunteers will be working to prepare it for the journey to a safe, climate controlled facility, where researchers can further our understanding of the railroad that made Warwick what it is today.