Overdue railway museum project readies for final push

Published 1:01 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008

SNOQUALMIE – If things go his way in the next couple weeks, Richard Anderson may see a long overdue project pull into his station.

As executive director of the Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie, Anderson will be listening attentively as the museum’s $1.2 million Conservation and Resource Center (CRC) goes before a hearing examiner in Snoqualmie on Tuesday, Jan 7. The hearing will come on the tail end of a written public comment period that will end on Monday, Jan. 6.

“This (CRC) will allow us to achieve one of our interpretive goals,” Anderson said. “Which is to show people what it was like to go everywhere by train.”

The push for the CRC began in 1999 with the original plans outlining a $400,000-$500,000 center that would allow additional phases to be added onto it in the future.

As more engineering studies were done on the center, though, Anderson said the railway museum realized it would be a lot more cost effective in the long run to try to build the station in one push.

Once completed, the 8,100-square-foot CRC will house any of the museum’s trains or cars that are being worked on. Two tracks will go into the CRC, which will feature a walkway that allows visitors to see the restoration efforts up close.

Visitors to the center will only be allowed to get there by train, a feature Anderson said is part of the learning experience the museum is trying to provide.

“We want everyone to learn how it was to get everywhere by train,” Anderson said. “That’s pretty much how it was up until the 1940s.”

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