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RAIL FANS ONLY - SIGN OUR GUEST BOOK. GREAT NEWS! No more spam will clutter our guestbook pages - all submissions are now being sent to staging, where they will be screened and posted. Only railroad related items, from our riders will be posted.
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We're doing our best to stop oil imports by returning to
STEAM!!!
With more than six
years of restoration
work behind us,
American Locomotive
Company (ALCo) 2-8-0
#18 returned to active
service...
MAY 24TH, 2008
Our passenger excursions are also powered by one of our two World War II era diesel-electric locomotives,which are also used weekly in our freight operations. Both engines were built by General Electric at their locomotive facility in Erie, PA. The 44-ton centercab No111 was built in 1947 and delivered new to the Arcade & Attica Railroad. No112 was built in 1945 and delivered to the United States Navy. The A&A purchased the engine from the City of Colorado Springs Railroad in 1988 to supplement the ailing engine No111. Today, No111 has been returned to full operation.
We're Ready .......
- Come Ride With Us -
New 2011!! Passenger coach #306 put back in service! Expanding our fleet to 6 coaches for your riding pleasure.
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J.T.’s Arcade and Attica Train mission has only just begun
By PATTI CECALA
Journal Editor
Hearing the words “all aboard” never meant more than it did at the Arcade and Attica Railroad on September 18 when 12-year-old Jon Thomas Robertson’s (J.T.) dream of having the train made more handicapped accessible came true.
Some of the train cars along with the train station received a makeover courtesy of Good Morning America and some of the Extreme Makeover Home Edition crew including Paige Hemmis and Michael Maloney from the show. But the real story is that of a 12-year-old boy who found a way to make a difference through persistence and determination.
J.T., who is a seventh grader at the Cuba-Rushford Central School has loved trains since he was a toddler and in pre-school he told his class he wanted to take them on the train which is how his railroad endeavor started.
“When he was 8-years-old, he said to me, Mom, I’m going to save cans (returnable pop cans) to take the kids on the train ride.” And so he started saving.
“It was very small, we did it with our family, and several businesses in town donated to him,” said Monica. “He would take his wagon and go and get the cans and take them to a recycling center.”
During one discussion with his mom about the kids he wanted to take on the train, J.T. found out that some kids who really wanted to ride the train couldn’t because they were handicapped, which bothered J.T. enough to want to do something about it.
“Our Sunday night tradition is to watch Extreme Home Makeover,” his mom said.
During an episode of the show called ‘Field of Dreams’, J.T. watched as the Home Makeover team made a baseball field accessible to handicapped children and he decided that was what he needed to do so the children could ride the train.
“We need to do an extreme train makeover,” J.T. told his mom. “That became his soul focus,” his mom explained.
When J.T. decided he wanted to write to the Extreme Home Makeover Show, he and his mom spent over a year getting footage and putting together a video tape before writing to them. Monica said they didn’t hear back but noted that they had moved several time since submitting J.T.’s request.
Last year, a man approached them from ‘Trains Magazine’ who rode the train with them. He was doing a story on the train and had heard about J.T.’s mission.
“He took pictures and he wrote an article which came out in June,” Monica said.
The article ended up on the desk of an ABC producer who eventually called Monica and Jon Thomas for more information.
“He then told us that Good Morning America was going to be in Niagara Falls, and asked if J.T. could be on the show.”
Monica said that before they were on the show, people from Good Morning America met her and J.T. and took a ride on the Arcade and Attica Railroad while J.T. told them all the things that he thought could be done to make the train more handicapped friendly.
“At the time, we thought it was about Make a Difference Day,” said Monica, which is a day she and J.T. have been involved in for several years.
Make a Difference Day, is on October 25 this year. It is the largest national day of helping others.
“You can go on makeadifferenceday.com and read about it and their mission. It’s very simple, all they want people to do on that day is to set aside some time, set a side their worries, all their problems and spend at least one hour volunteering and caring for somebody else,” explained Monica.
Although J.T. and Monica are once again going to be involved in Make a Difference Day, this year by making sure that over 300 children can have a ride on the train, that was not why they asked J.T. to be on Good Morning America.
Monica and Jon Thomas were as surprised as the rest of the Good Morning America viewers, when Ty Pennington, host of Extreme Makeover Home Edition, came out and told J.T. that he had brought his team to Western New York to makeover the Arcade and Attica Railroad.
“ABC kept it so quiet. They didn’t tell anybody what was going on,” said Monica.
“The Extreme Makeover volunteers who came to the Arcade and Attica Railroad painted the front side of the building and made one of the baggage cars handicapped accessible. They took off one of the sliding doors and turned it into an open screened off door, that could slide open and shut to allow the wheelchair ramp to pull up and allow people in wheelchairs to go in and out of that door so they could enjoy the sights, sounds and smells,” explained J.T.
“J.T.’s dream was to make this train accessible to all kids, not just to kids who could walk in,” said Paige. She and Michael volunteered their time to do this project between building homes for the Extreme Home Makeover television show.
“Sixteen kids (in wheelchairs) can now ride the train,” said Michael, who explained that they not only made the train more accessible to the wheelchairs but also added straps to hold the wheelchairs in place.
“Here is a 12-year-old boy who made a difference at 12. He still raises money for train tickets for other kids. Imagine what he will do. He doesn’t seem like a kid who will be content,” said Michael.
“We just hope that when we leave, the community will still support him and his efforts and stand behind him to raise more money to help more people,” he added.
Most of the volunteers were local people, and included about 16 volunteers from the Christian Youth Corps, Inc. in Machias who were asked by Good Morning America to help out.
“We painted and scraped the paint off the building and cleaned up garbage that was around here,” said Brittany Willard, a volunteer from the Christian Youth Corps, Inc.
The group also helped by washing the train cars and windows on the big reveal day.
When Jon Thomas showed up at the event, his car pulled up right in front of the train station, which was surrounded by a crowd of several hundred people.
“I was completely shocked and awestruck,” said Jon Thomas about seeing his first glimpse of the refurbished Arcade Railroad station. But he is quick to mention that his mission is far from complete.
“There are quite a few things that we have to work on. Next week a few of the Extreme Home Makeover volunteers are coming to finish painting the rest of the building. We have to get a platform in because there isn’t any platform, just dirt and loose gravel and it is very hard for people in wheelchairs to be able to move across that,” explained J.T.
His mission is to make the train accessible not only for kids in wheelchairs but for kids who have other disabilities as well.
“It’s not just the handicapped accessibility, there are other things too, but the wheelchair access was one of the major components because parents weren’t comfortable with the handicapped facilities,” Monica explained.
J.T. has plenty of ambitious ideas still in the works for the railroad, which includes building a special screen over the top of the gondola car for kids who have issues with sunlight.
“He is the perfect example of how you can do anything you put your mind too,” said Paige.
“This project is only four years old and he has set goals and reached them and surpassed them,” Monica said proudly of J.T.
When asked what he wants to be when he grows up, Jon Thomas is still trying to figure that out.
“I’ve had quite a few people ask me that but I don’t know. I have been asking all kinds of people from many aspects of business, what they do and why they enjoy it to try and give myself a heads up on all the different opportunities that will be available to me,” he explained.
If you would like to volunteer with Monica and J.T. during Make a Difference Day this year, you can email them at, mailto:makeadifferencedayexpress@yahoo.com, or visit J.T.’s blog at makeadifferencedayexpress.blogspot.com. |
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JT at Arcade and Attica Railroad |
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READY TO RIDE — Twins, Zachery and Dominick Proudman, who attend the Springville Learning Center, were two of the first in wheelchairs to board the newly renovated handicapped accessible train car at the Arcade and Attica Railroad, thanks to Jon Thomas Robertson, right, whose mission it has been to make this happen for the last four years. Shown with the twins is Michael Molony, behind them and Paige Hemmis, on the right, from the ABC television show, Extreme Home Makeover. (Photos by Patti Cecala.) |
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