Shelburne Railroad Station and Freight Shed facts for kids
The Shelburne Railroad Station and Freight Shed are two special buildings. You can find them at the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont, United States.
Back in 1890, Dr. William Seward Webb was the president of the Rutland Railroad. He wanted a new train station built in Shelburne village. This station would make it easy for people to travel on the Central Vermont and Rutland Railroad lines.
Contents
The Station's Cool Design
The Railroad Station was designed by Robert Henderson Robertson. He was also the architect for the Vanderbilt-Webb estate at Shelburne Farms. The station shows off a popular style called the Shingle style. This style became popular in the late 1800s. It grew from the Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles.
What Shingle Style Looks Like
The Shingle style often has an uneven shape. It also has big, pointy roof sections called gables. These features were common in Colonial and Queen Anne buildings. The roof hangs over the sides, and there are special "eyebrow" windows. The whole outside of the building is covered in wooden shingles. This makes the building look smooth and connected.
For the Shelburne Railroad Station, the shingled roof is very important. It stretches from the top of the chimney all the way to the edge of the porch. This roof connects the whole building together. Many rich people in the Northeast used the Shingle style for their summer homes. The house at Shelburne Farms is one example. By using this style for the station, Robertson made sure it matched his nearby estate.
Moving the Station to the Museum
Originally, the inside of the Railroad Station had separate waiting rooms. There was one for men and one for women. The stationmaster's office was in the middle.
In 1953, the Rutland Railroad stopped offering passenger service to Shelburne. Dr. Webb's son, Vanderbilt Webb, and his son-in-law, Cyril Jones, gave the station to Shelburne Museum. The museum moved the station to its current spot in 1959. They fixed up the building and made the inside look like Robertson's original design.
That same year, the museum built the Freight Shed next to the station. It looks similar to the Railroad Station. It shows the kind of storage buildings that train companies used to have.
Railroad History and Collections
Railroads brought big changes to how people traveled and communicated. This happened in New England in the late 1800s. Before trains, people in New England mostly traveled by lakes, rivers, and the ocean. Traveling inland was hard. Roads were often muddy, dusty, or bumpy.
How Trains Changed New England
Starting in the late 1840s, trains brought new people to Vermont. They also helped the state's growing dairy industry. Farmers could now send their milk, butter, and cheese to markets. Trains connected small New England towns to the rest of the country. Mail delivery became faster. Newspapers from Boston and New York City arrived the next day, not weeks later.
Items in the Collection
William Seward Webb was a very important person in the railroad world. He was president of the Wagner Palace Car Company and the Rutland Railroad. The Shelburne Railroad Station was built for him. Today, it holds part of the museum's collection of railroad items.
The collection includes old communication devices. These range from simple message hoops to newer inventions like the telegraph and telephone. You can also see old photos of trains and maps of the rail network. There are posters and timetables from Vermont railroads. The museum even has models of early trains.
Railroad Tools and Equipment
The museum also has many railroad lanterns. These lanterns have glass globes from different railroads in the Northeast. Railroad lanterns were used by train workers to talk to each other. Conductors, brakemen, signalmen, and engineers used them to send signals.
Other items in the collection include tools for setting tracks. There are also semaphore flags and handcars. These are small carts that workers used to move along the tracks.
One special item is a wooden copy of Old Ironsides. This was the first train built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works. The replica was first shown at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893. Another interesting piece is the Gertie Buck. This was a self-propelled car used by the Dewey family. They used it to check the tracks on the Woodstock Railway in eastern Vermont in the late 1800s.
See also
