by Jeff Smith
Want To Help A Kid With A Boxcar? Seems like an awful cool idea for a fort!: Hartford Courant
A country teen who paid $1 to buy a 1930 boxcar and save it from the scrapyard came here Wednesday to pick up his 44,000-pound purchase.
Orion Newall Vuillemot, a lanky 15-year-old from Woodstock who collects old tractors and makes maple syrup for sale, showed up at 7 a.m. at the Naugatuck Railroad Co. yard off Thomaston Avenue to collect his project.
"He's always been interested in trains," his mother, Jane Newall, said as Orion and a team of a dozen volunteers prepped the badly worn and weathered Boston & Maine boxcar – #72249 – from its longtime parking spot in the NRC yard. "When he said he was interested in this, I said, why not?"
It led to Orion raising about $4,000 on a GoFundMe page, putting on a restaurant fundraiser in Putnam, and assembling a bunch of people interested in helping him bring his train car home to a 50-foot-long section of track he built in the family yard.
Next stop, Willoughby
~el Jefe :: RAILROAD.NET Site Administrator/Co-Owner; Carman at Naugatuck Railroad
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~el Jefe :: RAILROAD.NET Site Administrator/Co-Owner; Carman at Naugatuck Railroad
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