Atlasburg family’s old train cars to be restored for museum display
Eugene Petricca had an inactive rail line running through his Atlasburg farm, tracks that once were used to transport coal from Atlasburg Mine to Burgettstown.
About a half-century ago, two years after the line was shut down, he decided to purchase it and embellish it with rail cars. Petricca bought three of them, but there was a logistical issue. The 3-foot-gauge cars did not fit on the 4-foot-wide track. Eventually, the track was removed and the smallish cars sat idly in the grass, deteriorating – until last week.
Early Friday morning, Green’s Road and Towing Services of Burgettstown arrived at the center of the farm with its massive rotator crane and flatbed truck. The rotator efficiently lifted the rusted, weed-infested cars and placed them on the flatbed for transport to central Ohio.
“These cars have been here since I was 12 or 14,” said Eugene’s son, Dan. “About 50 people stop by every summer and take pictures of them.”
Dan sold the cars to American Industrial Mining Co., a 501©(3) nonprofit that, according to its website, preserves “vintage equipment from all types of mining, heavy industry and public transportation.” The organization will restore the Petricca cars at a facility near its home base – Buckeye Lake, Ohio – and eventually display them in the company’s museum near Brownsville.
The museum also features restorations and preservation projects from two Washington County coal mines – Mathies Mine and Mine 84 – and Emerald Mine in Greene.
“We’re ‘rehoming’ them,” Petricca said on a morning made overcast by the Canadian wildfires. He was accompanied by his wife, Tracey, at the site about 20 yards off Route 18, across from Kauffman Family Marketplace.
American Industrial Mining has a preservation team – all volunteers – that works at saving equipment at more than 70 locations across the United States and Canada. The organization has operations in 22 states – including Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio, plus Canada. Most are in the northeastern U.S.
“We have the largest collection (of this particular equipment) in the United States,” said Pete Jedlicka, president of American Industrial Mining, who was assisting other workers along the strip of grass downhill from the roadway. They were maneuvering machinery, using torches, weeding out weeds and cleaning the cars as much as possible.
Petricca said the cars were originally brown. Rust was partially cleared away from at least one of them Friday. Jedlicka said all three will be painted and get new cabs. Two cars, he added, were vintage 1948, the other, 1943.
Dan Petricca, third-generation owner, is proud of the 312-acre farm that has been in his family since 1936. East to west, he said, it covers 1.6 miles. Yet it appears destined to change hands.
“I’m trying to sell the farm,” said a man who has a vested interest in selling, and the experience to do so. As does his wife. He and Tracey are real estate agents with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices in Washington.
Old train cars will not be included in the prospective deal.