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08/24/2016 06:00 AMAt 8:42 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, a train pulled out of the Port Authority (PATH) of New York and New Jersey station in Hoboken, New Jersey, packed with commuters, and headed for the World Trade Center about three miles away. At 8:46 a.m., a plane crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center near the 90th floor, immediately killing hundreds of people and trapping those higher up in the 110-story building. At 8:52 a.m., with Car 745 in the lead, the PATH train arrived on Track 3 in the station at the World Trade Center. At 9:03 a.m, a plane crashed into the south tower. The towers begin to crumble from the intense heat generated by the jet fuel-fed conflagration. The entire PATH station was ordered evacuated and the train abandoned. Car 745 remained buried amidst the charred rubble and filthy water, during the terrorist attack and the aftermath that claimed more than 3,000 people and helped start a war that claimed many more lives.
During the recovery operation at the Port Authority, Peter Rinaldi, a senior engineering manager with the Port Authority, working as part of a team, opened an intact emergency exit hatchway and entered the PATH system’s loop through the World Trade Center site. Working from a raft, due to the flooding that remained from the effort to fight the fire, they paddled through a 20-foot steel tunnel that was remarkably intact, and came upon Car 745, still open, and waiting for passengers.
It was recovered, and put on display for a while in New York City, then was slated to be destroyed, but, with the help of Rinaldi, a national network of train and trolley car enthusiasts, along with the staff and volunteers from The Shore Line Trolley Museum in East Haven, it was saved again.
Rinaldi’s vision of having this surviving car memorialized will be fully realized at noon on Sunday, Sept. 11 of this year, when Car 745 will once again be filled with visitors, having been restored to the exact same state it was on that day in 2001.
Visitors will be able to sit in the same seats, read the same advertisements on the walls of the train, and see outside the windows some of the same signage that would have been familiar to the people who traveled that train every day to work in or near the World Trade Center. An adjacent car will serve as a multimedia educational resources, with videos and other teaching tools.
A Car with a Story to Tell
Museum President Wayne Sanford says, like the other cars in the museum’s collection—there are about 100—Car 745 has an important story to tell, along with a bent piece of the third rail from the PATH station, a 20-foot section of the cast iron tunnel that protected Car 745, and other artifacts, including a crossword puzzle in a newspaper that was filled out by a Car 745 passenger to the World Trade Center that day, who then tucked it behind the seat.
Sanford was the fire chief of the East Haven Fire Department on 9/11 and in the days that followed, sent some of his crew to help with the recovery effort. He said the story of Car 745’s survival resonates with him.
“As you can imagine, when we were offered the car, I said ‘Yes’ before the question was finished,” he says. “I know that many people have trouble remembering that day. I hope by doing this I am helping others recover from the event. I lost a number of friends that day, so for me, personally, I feel like this space of Car 745 allows those friendships to continue.”
Sanford says he remains in awe of the fact that the car still exist, despite the maelstrom that consumed the building above it.
“The way the [World Trade Center] building was built, for whatever reason, this car was not touched at all. The car behind it was slightly damaged, and the cars further back were destroyed, the roofs were laying right on the cars,” he said. “It really is ironic that this car made it and that, in fact, we were able to get it for this museum.”
The very fact of this rail car serving commuters from the city of Hoboken, New Jersey, and from the suburbs around it, makes it perfect fit with the other cars at the museum.
“Trolley cars changed America from about 1900 to about the 1930s,” he says. “Our previous generations lived in the cities, in cold water flats, and worked within the city they lived.”
The line where The Shore Line Trolley Museum, which is operated by the Branford Electric Railway Association, now runs the meticulously restored trolley cars, from East Haven to the Short Beach section of Branford, was built by three businessmen who wanted to attract workers from New Haven.
Changing History
“So they paid to put this line in so people would come from New Haven and work in their business in Branford,” Sanford says.
Eventually the line was extended to the Branford neighborhoods of Indian Neck, Pine Orchard, and Stony Creek.
“They changed Branford forever because people went to Branford to work in their business, and when they got there, they said of this sleepy little town of 800 people in 1900, ‘What a cool place this is, I think I want to move here and raise our children,’” he says. “In 10 years, 10 years!, people on this line no longer went from New Haven to Branford to work. They were living in Branford and going to work in New Haven. All across America, trolley lines allowed people to move out of the cities to the suburbs. Trolleys allowed that to happen and they allowed it to happen for a nickel, a nickel! So that is the contribution that trolleys made to our history in America.”
Sanford says that’s why the staff and volunteers at the museum are so dedicated to their mission.
“How could you not save this?” he says, looking up at Car 745. “To allow it to be destroyed would be a tragedy.
While some trolley riders used trolleys for commuting and were all about the destination, Sanford says, other trolley car riders were about the journey, particularly on hot summer days. Some trolley cars, like the Connecticut Company Car 401 in the museum’s collection, are called “breezer cars,” because they were open and provided a cool ride on a hot summer day.
“That was the air conditioning of the 1920s,” he says.
Survivors
PATH Car 745’s role as a survivor will make it right at home in the collection, where it will live side by side with other rail and trolley cars that have survived floods, economic downturns like the Great Depression, and other calamities, both natural and man made. The museum’s entire collection, in fact, is a survivor of Hurricane Irene. After that storm hit in August 2011 the rail yard, located in a floodplain, filled with water and many of the cars and the motors underneath the cars were damaged. In addition to restoring the cars, the museum undertook a $2 million capital campaign to construct two new buildings on higher ground to store the museum’s collections. The buildings are designed to protect the museum’s collections, not only from a storm of Irene’s magnitude, but also from a storm as big and bad as the one that hit Connecticut in September 1938, a Category 3 bruiser that brought water levels four feet higher than Irene, which at one point was a Category 3 storm, but was downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it made landfall in New York and New Jersey.
The museum collection includes nearly 100 vintage vehicles, more than 50,000 photos, more than 4,000 books and documents, and other artifacts including tokens, hat badges, and ticket punches.
Sanford says he is looking forward to opening Car 745 to the public at noon on Sunday, Sept. 11. There will be a dedication, and tours, and museum officials hope that the woman who was driving Car 745 on that day, another survivor, will be there as part of the ceremony. Author Marie Betts Bartlett will be there to talk about her new children’s book about Car 745. The car, in the book, is named Poppy, because that name goes well with the word “purpose,” and the book, which will be available for sale, describes Poppy’s purpose.
In the book, Car 745 is very happy with its life, taking people from New Jersey to Manhattan every day. Then there is a fire and buildings falling down all over and Poppy is buried. Fourteen years later, Poppy arrives at the trolley museum, and now Poppy is happy again, “allowing people to come and heal,” says Sanford. “Poppy’s purpose is to allow people to heal.”
Sanford remembers when Car 745 first arrived at the trolley museum, as part of a parade and amidst great fanfare in August 2015. Connecticut State Sen. “Blumenthal said it best,” Sanford says, remembering that day while standing in the restored glory of Car 745. “He said, ‘you need to touch this car.’ It’s a piece of history. This car is a witness to history.”
On the 15th anniversary of 9-11, on Sunday, Sept. 11, PATH car 745 will be dedicated and opened to the public, as part of a ceremony with local officials and first responders at noon at The Shore Line Trolley Museum at 17 River Street, East Haven. Due to the Fall Festival traffic changes, use Foote Road to access the museum. In addition to the ceremony and dedication, a children’s book about car 745 by author Marie Betts Bartlett will be available. The museum runs seven days a week through Sept. 5, and is open Saturdays and Sundays through October. The museum grounds are open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Trolley cars depart regularly throughout the day starting at 10:30 a.m., with the last car leaving at 4:30 p.m. Because it is a working railway museum, maintenance and other operations on the railway line may dictate changes to the posted schedule, from time to time. For more information, visit shorelinetrolley.org.