When he once again asked for funding from the city to renovate the train that has sat idle next to Main Street for decades, Paul Swain, who had been working to maintain the project, did not immediately get the support from the city like he used to.
Swain asked the city for $5,000 to restore broken windows and repaint the train at Propst Park at Tuesday night’s meeting of the Columbus City Council. However, council members voted 5-1 to table the request until Swain comes up with a proposal to further develop the train into a publicly accessible asset.
Ward 2 Councilman Joe Mickens was the lone dissenting vote. Raising concerns over amending the current budget after the city went through last year’s financial crisis, Mickens said he would hold high standards toward unbudgeted spending.
“We have set out the budget for this year already,” Mickens said. “If you want to set this forward going to next year’s budget, I would be more than happy to support you.”
The city used to appropriate money intermittently for the train’s preservation, Ward 6 Councilman Bill Gavin told The Dispatch. But he wants to see the train being open to the public instead of remaining fenced up.
“What’s the long-term plan?” Gavin asked at the meeting. “If it’s just sitting there with a fence around it, we are not doing a whole lot of good with it.”
Swain said he is trying to raise funds to clean up the asbestos in the train and make it safe for public use.
“I have been trying to come up with a solution to the problem for that two or three years,” he said. “We can’t get the public down there with (the train being) in that condition.”
Gavin suggested the city could exhibit the train by moving it to the old railroad depot, which stands at the corner of Main Street and 13th Street South in the city, and turn the site into a train museum. The depot, which is now in private ownership, would have to be donated to the city, he said.
“People could actually come to (the) museum and actually see the train,” Gavin said. “It will be functionable and worthwhile to the community as well as of interest to the city.”
The city could also build a roundhouse to exhibit the train, Gavin said.
Swain, a private citizen who has long been an advocate for preserving the train, had a different idea.
“We’re looking at … building a small platform along the track of the train that would look like an old station,” he said.
Gavin said if the train could be further developed, he wants to explore potential state or federal grants for historical preservation to fund the future renovation.
Project updates
At Tuesday’s meeting, city spokesperson Joe Dillon also presented updates on several ongoing and completed city projects.
The city started last week to install more than 4,000 LED street lights across Columbus, starting with the ones on College Street, Dillon said. The installation would be completed during the next few months.
The project would prioritize replacing broken lights and eventually replace all street lights with brighter energy-saving LEDs, Russ Phillips, co-founder of Path Company which provided the LEDs, told The Dispatch last week.
The city issued a bond for the $3.2 million project, the cost of which would be paid back over the next 15 years. The city bought the lights from the Columbus Lights and Water, which no longer requires the city to pay the board fees to maintain them. The project is expected to save the city roughly $33,000 each month on utilities.
The application for a $60,000 Federal Emergency Management Agency fund, which would allow the city to build 11 storm shelters at all five fire stations, is completed, Dillon said. It would take three months to a year for the grant to be approved. The city would have to match 12.5 percent of the grant, and it would be up to the city council to decide how, he said.
The main fire station would have three shelters whereas the other four would each have two, and each of the storm shelters would hold about 15 people, he said.
Building the shelters at fire stations would make sure that emergency responders are safe and therefore have the ability to go on rescue missions, Dillon said.
The city also purchased a $49,800 hot mix truck to repair the roads, he said. The truck would hold four times the amount of asphalt that regular cold mix trucks hold, but would also take four times the amount of time to fix the broken roads, he said.
The new repair system allows the asphalt to last longer, Dillon said. The truck has been in service for two or three weeks and can fix 15 to 20 potholes per day.
A new exhaust system to process fire truck gas is also installed at all stations, Dillon said. The fire department received a FEMA grant of $181,000, and matched 10 percent of the grant amount through the state’s insurance premium tax rebate funds, he said.
Conflict disclosure: Managing Editor Zack Plair took part in editing this article. He is currently involved in legal proceedings with the city of Columbus.
Yue Stella Yu was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 37 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.