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Wikipedia:Today's featured article/January 16, 2014

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A Steamtown excursion in Vermont

Steamtown, U.S.A. was a steam locomotive museum that ran steam excursions out of North Walpole, New Hampshire, and Bellows Falls, Vermont, from the 1960s to 1983. The museum was founded by millionaire seafood industrialist F. Nelson Blount and was operated by the Steamtown Foundation after his death in 1967. Due to Vermont's air quality regulations restricting steam excursions, declining visitor attendance, and track use disputes, some of the collection was relocated to Scranton, Pennsylvania, in the mid-1980s and the rest was sold. Steamtown, U.S.A. failed to attract the expected 200,000–400,000 visitors in Scranton and, facing bankruptcy, it sold more of the collection. In 1986, the U.S. House of Representatives approved funding to begin the process of making it a National Historic Site. Historical research was carried out by the National Park Service (NPS) on the remaining equipment. By 1995, Steamtown had been acquired and developed by the NPS as the Steamtown National Historic Site with a $66 million allocation. Several more pieces have been removed from the collection as a result of the government acquisition. Part of the Blount collection is still on display in Scranton. (Full article...)

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