08/30/2026
That’s a WRAP on the America 250 Locomotive Celebration, one of the most exciting railroading events of the 21st century! Thanks to all of TOYX’s volunteers who took their own time (and money) to attend and represent our organization at the N.C. Transportation Museum for the past four days! Additional thanks is due to all of the TOYX volunteers who toiled outside in all kinds of unpredictable spring weather at Port Jervis to get this caboose prepped, repaired, masked, and painted earlier this year.
We spent the long weekend with about 8,000ish visitors. We were in the company of the giants of the rail industry, and we owe a lot of special thanks to railroads and organizations for making it possible:
- the Middletown & New Jersey Railroad / Regional Rail LLC for donating the EL C380 caboose to us last year (and for hanging out with us on Friday!)
- THE NEW YORK, SUSQUEHANNA AND WESTERN RAILWAY CORP. and Norfolk Southern for pulling off multiple miracles to make sure the caboose made it to the event safely and on time (and to both railroads for being great people to hang out with all weekend!)
- Trains Magazine for a great interview
- Virtual Railfan for accepting our challenge to sample BBQ sauce on stream
- and of course the North Carolina Transportation Museum for being such gracious and amazing hosts
We are happy to announce that the EL C380 is not done with its public relations tour - it will be leaving Spencer and heading north with Delaware-Lackawanna M630 1776 to join our Conrail caboose and Conrail theater boxcar at Steamtown National Historic Site for Railfest later this week! Special thanks to Norfolk Southern and the Delaware-Lackawanna for expediting this move so our bicentennial crown jewel can attend two major events back-to-back over 700 miles apart.
We’re sweaty, sunburned, and exhausted, but we’ll be back at it in just five days in Scranton. In the meantime, we have some homework for our followers:
- follow The Female Foamer on every social media platform you’ve ever heard of;
- ask Glenn Holland something obscure about the movie “Emperor of the North;”
- order some of our EL BBQ sauce at https://www.toyx.org/sauce before Mike Cyr and Drayton Blackgrove buy it all; and
- tell Neil Finch he still needs to get that haircut he was supposedly taking the day off for several weeks ago (if he DID get one, we can’t tell the difference).
