Portal:New England/Selected article/24
Steamtown, USA was a steam locomotive museum that ran steam excursions out of North Walpole, New Hampshire, and Bellows Falls, Vermont, from the 1960s to 1983. The museum, which was founded by millionaire seafood industrialist F. Nelson Blount, was operated primarily by the non-profit Steamtown Foundation following his death in 1967. Because of Vermont air quality regulations that restricted steam excursions, declining visitor attendance, and disputes over the use of track, some pieces of the collection were relocated to Scranton, Pennsylvania, in the mid 1980s, while the rest were auctioned off. After the move, Steamtown, USA continued to operate in Scranton but failed to attract the expected 200,000–400,000 visitors. Within two years the tourist attraction was facing bankruptcy, and more pieces of the collection were sold to pay off debt.
By 1995, Steamtown had been acquired and developed by the National Park Service with a $66 million allocation. Since the government acquisition, several more pieces have been removed from the collection. A part of the Blount collection is still on display at the Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton, while several other pieces have been sold or traded and are located in various locations throughout the United States and Canada. (Full article...)