The old Mon Connecting Railroad roundhouse in Hazelwood, PA (near Pittsburgh) is in the process of being renovated and repurposed. A couple of links are below.

https://www.wpxi.com/news/top-stories/r ... CCYDBMSKM/


https://www.hazelwoodgreen.com/roundhouse

Good that it will not be destroyed, but sad that a resources like this cannot be the preserved historically and form foundation of a museum. For an area with such an enormous amount of rail and industrial heritage it seems strange that a rail museum does not seem to be able to coalesce in Pittsburgh.

A rail museum DID coalesce near Pittsburgh, but for electric railways. I surmise that the people who would have gotten together in the 60s and 70s to form a rail museum in Pittsburgh got together and joined the effort in Washington instead.

There have been other efforts that didn't really get off the ground. The Pittsburgh Chapter of the NRHS eventually disbanded. There was a Pittsburgh Steam Locomotive Historical Society which was based around the 643 but that too disappeared. The Beaver Valley Chapter of the NRHS, now the Beaver Valley Railway Historical Society was mainly a group of railfans in the 1990s in the Pittsburgh area until they obtained the West Pittsburg P&LE station near New Castle.

Even up here in Youngstown there hasn't been much success in coalescing a group around rail preservation. Fortunately the J&L Narrow Gauge has attracted a bit of attention and we are developing a group, but still isn't what it should be given the amount of rail activity and history in the area. It is odd to think that in the heart of the rust belt, where railroads, steel and steam was plentiful, that there really isn't a large rail history organization in the region.