Train museum has new coordinator
Published 10:40 pm Tuesday, August 23, 2016
The Suffolk Seaboard Station Railroad Museum has a new coordinator starting today.
Lucas Tiffany steps into the part-time role after having volunteered at the museum for several years. The museum is owned and operated by the Suffolk-Nansemond Historical Society.
Tiffany takes over from Demi Naylor, who has been the coordinator for about a year but is moving to England next month to pursue her master’s degree in museum studies.
Lucas Tiffany is pictured in front of part of the Suffolk Seaboard Station Railroad Museum’s model of Suffolk in 1907 that depicts the railroads and other local landmarks as they would have appeared that year. He is the new coordinator of the museum, which is owned and operated by the Suffolk-Nansemond Historical Society.
Tiffany earned his degree in natural history and interpretation from the State University of New York and landed in Hampton Roads through his family’s military service.
Locally, he has also served as a tour guide at Bacon’s Castle and worked in the gift shop at the Virginia Marine Science Museum before joining the train station as an employee. Among his experience elsewhere is work in the visitor interpretive center in Newcomb, N.Y.
Tiffany said he hopes to begin holding at least one program a month at the station, whether it is small things like book readings or bigger events like the Oct. 29 Touch a Truck, Train and Trick or Treat event.
The train station is a “Pokestop” in the Pokemon Go mobile game, which has attracted a lot of teens and young adults to the train station lately, Tiffany said.
“I want to do something that will get those older teens interested,” he said.
The museum, located at 326 N. Main St., was constructed in 1885 as a passenger station for the Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad. It later also served the Virginian Railroad through 1956, when the Virginian discontinued passenger service. It continued to serve the different lines that bought the Seaboard until 1968, when passenger service was discontinued.
CSX used the station as a freight office for several years and then abandoned it.
In 1994, the station caught fire, and it was in danger of being demolished. But through the effort of the Suffolk-Nansemond Historical Society and a partnership with the city, renovations were undertaken, and it opened as a museum in 2000.
The museum includes a model of Suffolk in 1907 that stretches over two rooms, as well as many Seaboard artifacts such as dining car menus and dishware. Numerous books and items of general local interest and general railroad interest are also for sale in the gift shop.
