Painesville Railroad Museum dedicates new barn for Collinwood 999 Engine - The News- Herald
The Collinwood 999 Engine now has a new home at the Painesville Railroad Museum.
The museum hosted the dedication of the engine’s new barn on Aug. 24 at the Painesville Depot, 475 Railroad St.
Those who visit the museum are now able to look at the barn’s wall displays in the engine bay, which were done by the Collinwood High School Alumni Association, as well as the Trolley Bay, which houses an 1865 No. 51 Cleveland Railway horse drawn trolley.
According to vice president of the Painesville Railroad Museum Tom Pescha, the engine barn started being built last year. Due to the pandemic, material shortages were a challenge, he said.
“Getting it up last year and finishing it this year is heart-filling,” Pescha said. “To have that history here — that’s the whole idea of a museum. It’s saving history. I’m pleased we have it here in our possession and can have it out for parades, and stuff.”
In 1932, Collinwood 999 was built by a group of World War I veterans who worked at the yard.
“They started doing it on second shift, management found out about it and they did it as a replica of the New York Central Empire Express 999 Engine, which was the first train in 1893 to go over 100 miles an hour,” Pescha said.
Since being built, the engine has been in numerous parades, including the Rose Bowl Parade and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
“When the Collinwood Alumni Association found it a couple years back, they brought it back out,” Pescha said. “They weren’t able to do the restoration on it that needed to be done. Our group did and that’s why we ended up owning it.”
The trolley that’s also housed in the new barn was built by the East Cleveland Railroad Company, which existed from 1868 to 1880.
“The trolley was No. 52 in the Cleveland street car system,” Pescha said. “We’ll be doing restoration on that and be pulling it with a tractor later on.”
After Mike Cavotta, president of the Collinwood High School Alumni Association, died earlier this year, his son, Mike Cavotta Jr., picked up the ball on the engine barn project in addition to the many others who had hands in the project.
“Mike (Cavotta’s son) did the history of Collinwood up to building the engine,” Pescha said. “We have the murals from Collinwood High School and some memorabilia. We also have a live steamer that was built in 1865 on display here.”
Mike expressed that he is being moved by his dad.
“He’s not with us, but he is definitely here in this place,” he said. “His heart was in that train.”
The week he spent time with his dad before he died, Mike’s conversations with him were different not just because the two shared a name.
“My conversations with him were about finishing business that he couldn’t finish for himself,” Mike said. “My dad was big on commitments and when he said he’d do something, it got done even if it came at the expense of time with family and personal finances. His word was his bond and he made a commitment to finish the stuff you see here.”
Although his dad wasn’t the most creative soul, he had vision and drive that moved the engine barn project along.
“He asked me before he died if I would see to it that the posters got done,” Mike said. “The poster project became something more for me. It wasn’t enough for me to deliver on what my dad promised. I wanted to do everything I could do and it became my own little adventure in connecting with this project.”
The historical Collinwood timeline now in the engine barn is something Mike attributes to his dad’s passion for nerdy history and all things Cleveland.
“I thought it would be a way to bring it all together and every day that I’d go to the studio, and work, I could feel my dad hovering over my shoulder,” Mike said. “It wasn’t a burden.”
Also among those in attendance at the engine barn unveiling was Karen Dethloff and her sister, Vicki Vesel, whose grandfather, Peter P. Ducosky, had hands in building and designing Collinwood Engine 999.
“He would be surprised at all this,” Dethloff said. “He was a very humble man. He rarely talked about what he accomplished with the train and the effort he put into building it. He did remarkable things at a remarkable time in history and was the commander of the post during the war, and did fundraising to support the war effort and other things like collecting toys for children after World War II in Europe.”
Vesel described her grandfather as a quietly proud man.
“We’d like to thank the Alumni Association for not letting it get out of the neighborhood,” she said. “It was up on eBay and we never knew. There were many of these built and they paraded them. Not too many survived and not too many with the prominence of being tied to a historical train.”
Dethloff said the condition of the engine speaks to the craftsmanship that went into building it.
“It’s amazing that something built in 1932 is still around today and looks as good as it does,” she said.
Going forward, Pescha predicts an increase in visitors at the museum. On average, the museum sees roughly 100 people per week. For special events hosted at the museum, between 500 and 600 visit.