next year's project.
Electrification is important because it will allow the operation of our historic trolley and subway cars.
Electrification at TMNY has been a hard hurdle to cross for a number of reasons.
The same location that blesses TMNY with waterfront scenery,
a historic district and tourists also bristles with underground utilities, especially gas pipelines.
Therefore TMNY couldn't just string some wire
without meeting the costly requirements for safeguarding the gas lines.
In 2006, the City of Kingston on the museum's behalf, commissioned a $50,000 engineering study to design and cost out the electrification project. HDR was chosen for the study and the final report was delivered in 2008. HDR's estimate for the project, including track upgrades, overhead, 12-pulse rectifier substation, and completely restoring trolley B&QT 8361 (a double end Peter Witt) is $7.1M. So, TMNY has a little bit of money to raise! TMNY still has no endowment or other long-term means to sustain the current operation (including staff salary), so that will continue to be the focus of our own fundraising near-term.
Below is the entire cost sheet from the HDR report.
This is based on prevailing wages and costs, so the actual price when shovel hits dirt may vary,
hopefully downward with volunteers, in-kind services and donations factored in.
An $800,000 federal earmark is in the 2010 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development appropriation for track upgrades. This will be the largest grant the museum will have benefitted from in its history. None of the $800,000 will go to electrification per se, but we expect some about a mile of the existing track will be updated to modern light rail standards as a prelude to eventual electrification.
HDR Inc. was once again chosen as the engineering contractor for this grant. There will be another bid in early 2012 to let the contract for the actual construction of the project. We'll post notes at the main tmny.org page as this project progresses.