Stationed in history
Scott Becker, left, executive director of Pennsylvania Trolley Museum, talks with the Hackett family, Susan Buergi, Louise Hackett and Paul Hackett, who donated the Wexford trolley station to the museum after 80 years in the family, before ceremonies dedicating the station at the trolley museum Friday.
The old trolley station was once home to the Wexford Post Office Deli.
An old photo of the trolley station in Wexford
Trolley freight waybills found in the attic of the old Wexford station
Stepping through the doors of the old Wexford Trolley Station Friday transported Louise Brooker Hackett back to the structure’s days as a post office, when her uncle, Al Brooker, sold candy bars as well as stamps.
“I could always get a Hershey’s here,” said Hackett from inside the 650-square-foot space, now located on the grounds of Pennsylvania Trolley Museum in Chartiers Township.
Hackett’s family, the Brookers, owned the structure for more than 80 years, donating it to the museum in 2014. Built in 1908 for the Pittsburgh, Harmony, Butler and New Castle Railway, the building accommodated passengers and freight as a trolley station. When the station closed in 1931, station agent William P. Brooker, Hackett’s grandfather, purchased and relocated it within Wexford, where it was used as a post office, antique shop and as the site of the popular Wexford Post Office Deli from 1983 to 2014.
Trudy Brooker Purvis, Hackett’s sister, managed the building and arranged for it to be given to the museum. A ceremony opening the station to the public Friday was held in honor of Purvis, who died in 2014.
“I thought it was wonderful that it was donated so the community can get the benefit of it,” Hackett said.
Tours and talks will be held today and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with the last trolley leaving the station at 3:30 p.m.
“The station is brimming with history,” said Scott Becker, executive director of the museum.
Becker thanked the family for maintaining many original details.
“You never changed a thing. You didn’t hack it up, and that’s really important to us,” he said. “A lot of things in this building are original. It’s remarkable.”
The interior features antique wooden, curved waiting benches, a crank telephone and a potbelly stove. Volunteers painted the exterior its original forest green with deep red trim.
“When you walk in, it looks like a trolley station,” said Becker, adding one day, it will be again.
Museum officials have plans to eventually extend an existing trolley line past the Wexford Station, allowing it to serve its original purpose.
Transporting the station from Wexford to Washington was a great feat, said Becker. Because it sat directly on the ground with no foundation, soil around the building was excavated and utility lines dug up. The sills, or base, of the structure were all replaced, as were the floor joists. The roof was cut in half and brought to the museum in sections. In June 2015, the building itself was trucked to the site, where it was placed on a foundation.
“Local contractors and a lot of volunteers helped. It’s really been a major project,” Becker said. “And without the Brooker family, none of this would have happened. I look upon them as a key part of the equation.”