Thanks to the timely intervention of the Lehigh and Hudson River Railway Veterans Association, a big chunk of the history of the railroad has been saved from destruction. On Thursday May 24 a group of the members rented a box truck, rounded up a few more trucks, and in the first wave of summer heat moved about two tons of valuable railroad records from Middletown to the Carriage House Self-Storage in Warwick. The facility owners Jack and Janice Hubert and the Historical Society of the Town of Warwick are helping with the cost of the storage for a few months so that it can be cleaned, sorted, and a new permanent home found.

Sometimes rescuing valuable historical records comes down to one phone call-- in this case, a call came in from Orange County Community College to the railroad group that a storage unit had to be cleaned out, and there were many boxes of material from the railroad that needed a home. This was quite a surprise to the club, since as far as anyone in the organization knew, this entire archive-- which had been cleaned out of the railroad office when it closed thirty years ago-- had been transferred long ago to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg, PA; it seems that a lot of the records got left behind.

Now that there are a few months of grace, volunteers will be working to prepare it for the journey to a safe, climate controlled facility, where researchers can further our understanding of the railroad that made Warwick what it is today.

Records of the Lehigh and Hudson River Railway were rescued recently by the railroad's veterans and some friends. About two tons of records were moved to safety by Tom McGovern, Phil Simms, Bob Mohowski, Brian Wood, Raey Webster, Warren Blakeney, Bob Carr, Russ Hallock, and Marty Feldner.