New trolley display building houses a collection of stories

Each of the 30 trolleys at the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum's new, massive display shelter -- which opens to the public Saturday -- has a story.

One wooden car, built in 1918, was used as a cottage trolley -- an early version of a trailer house -- after it was retired as a public car. Another became the "Dew Drop Inn" -- a bar -- in Ellwood City, Lawrence County, after it was retired. One trolley survived the catastrophic Hurricane Agnes in 1972, and was found washed up along the shore of a Pennsylvania creek.

Another trolley -- used in Johnstown, Pa., in the '50s -- maintains the interior advertising signs of the times promoting typewriters, polio shots and Cold War sentiments.

"This one's a time warp ... it just really sets you back in time," says Scott Becker, executive director of the 42-year-old museum in Chartiers, Washington County. "What were people thinking about• Communists. Russians. Polio."

The 28,000-square-foot Trolley Display Building -- three times the size of the current trolley shelter -- contains historic trolleys mostly from Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, although one wooden streetcar built in 1911 comes from Brazil. Some of the cars are from the 19th century, while others are recent, such as a Philadelphia subway car retired in the late '90s and donated to the museum. Car styles include street sweepers, milk cars and a 107,000-pound locomotive.

The giant building -- which cost about $2 million -- resembles an airplane hangar, with rows of trolleys and their printed histories for visitors to explore. Guests can enter some trolleys, all of which the staff hopes to restore eventually.

"It's the first building we've ever owned that has an echo," says David Hamley, the museum's president and trustee.

Ed Lybarger, the museum's archivist and exhibits manager, says the staff has renamed the building "the blimp hangar."

The Trolley Display Building -- the second step of a three-phase expansion project -- stands along the four-mile trolley line, where visitors take rides through the grassy land near the museum. Each day the museum is open, the trolley ride will stop once near the new building for a guided tour. Museum officials next will build about one-eighth of a mile of tracks that lead from the main track directly to the building's entrance, so that the trolley ride can come right up to it.

When the full expansion -- which will cost a total of $11 million or $12 million -- is completed, the museum's 2,500-square-foot headquarters will move into a new, 56,000-square-foot Visitor Center by the Trolley Display Building, which is about a half-mile away from the current headquarters. Timelines for the remaining expansion plans depend on funding, which has come mostly from federal grants and private donors. Much of the labor in creating the Trolley Display Building came from volunteers.

"The community has been very supportive of this project," Becker says.

State Sen. J. Barry Stout, a longtime museum supporter in the legislature, says the display building makes the Trolley Museum a stronger asset to Western Pennsylvania's tourism and economy.

"It's a hands-on museum," says Stout, a Democrat from Bentleyville, Washington County, who spent his teen years working on a railroad. "At most museums, you can just look at stuff from a distance, but here you can actually ride on the old cars." Additional Information:

Trolley Display Building

When: The building opens to the public on Saturday, and tours begin daily at 1:30 p.m. Allow two and a half hours to do a regular museum tour and trolley ride, plus explore the new building.

Regular hours: Through Memorial Day, the museum is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. After Memorial Day, the museum will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily until Labor Day.

Admission: $6; $5 for ages 65 and older; $4 for ages 3 to 15. Tours of the Trolley Display Building cost an extra $2 per adult, and $1 per child.

Where: Pennsylvania Trolley Museum, One Museum Road, Chartiers, Washington County

Details: 724-228-9256 or www.pa-trolley.org