The trolley museum built two storage buildings and a portion of new track, which will bring the antique cars to higher ground during threatening weather.
The Shore Line Trolley Museum in East Haven is home to nearly 100 vintage cars from around the country and Canada. But it sits on a floodplain, and much of its valuable collection was damaged after storms Irene and Sandy pounded the East Coast in 2011 and 2012.
The museum held a ceremony to commemorate new construction that will protect the cars from future damage. The trolley museum built two storage buildings and a portion of new track, which will bring the antique cars to higher ground during threatening weather, like hurricanes, nor’easters, or other major storms.
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The $2 million project started with a fundraising campaign called “Elevating the Collection,” which received $1 million dollars from the state in 2012. Governor Dannel Malloy participated in the ceremony.
"This is an absolutely fabulous world-class collection that deserves to be protected and elevated," he said. "It was a smart project. I did ask you to go out and raise money and you responded."
Many of the cars sat in feet of water following Sandy and Irene, ruining their electric engines. It was the worst flooding the country’s oldest operating trolley museum had seen since it came to the site in 1947, leaving the museum with two major projects -- getting the cars to higher ground and rebuilding the flooded engines.
