The Turbotville Borough Heritage Society welcomes you to our website dedicated to preserving the heritage of Turbotville Borough. We hope you find something of interest and consider joining or supporting our organization.
The "Society" meets the second Tuesday of each month at 7:00PM in the Turbotville Community Hall. Please use the Main Entrance on Church Street.

NOTE: Our organization is in no way affiliated with the Turbotville Community Hall Corporation.

Friday and Saturday, April 7th and 8th saw many volunteers amass around the Turbotville Train Station in order to install a new roof. Since the old shingle roof of the station was cut and dismantled in three separate pieces back in December, that left us with a decision as to how to recover the roof to get the building water tight once again. It was decided that a metal painted roof would be the most effective way to accomplish this. We had initially thought of brown to match the trim on the station, but with a suggestion from our volunteer contractor Frank Cotner, we decided to use his expertise and opt for a charcoal gray that mimics the color of slate. The front section of roof was installed on Friday. This was the most difficult part due to dealing with the dormer and valleys of the roof over the ticket window area that involved many measurements and cuts to complete. The back portion which involved no cuts was completed on Friday in very short order. There are several photos attached showing the progress of the roof installation.

Friday also saw the installation of the two extremely heavy rolling freight doors on the train station. Some minor repairs and adjustments will need to be made to the tracks and doors to ensure they fit and operate properly.

Friday, December 16, 2011 marked the day the Turbotville Train Station would finally make it's 25 mile journey back home. Under the direction of volunteer contractor Frank Cotner of Milton, a large crew of workers were assembled at the site of the former Magee Transportation Museum near the Columbia Mall, Bloomsburg. Arriving at 8:00 am, Frank Cotner and his crew, along with Jim Styer owner of Styer Construction, Turbotville who supplied the crane, started sawing and prying the ticket booth area from the front of the train station at 8:45 am and removed it all in one piece. From there, it was just a matter of a few short hours and by early afternoon, the train station was loaded on one large and one smaller trailer. By 2:45 pm, both loads of wall and roof panels were on the highway, oversize load banners in place, and heading back to Turbotville for its final journey home. Over the course of the coming weeks, weather providing, the reassembly of the train station will start to take place. We would like to thank Frank Cotner, Jim Styer of Styer Construction, Shane Betz of Betz Trucking, Forman's Grain of Turbotville for use of their flatbed trailer, Dave Gray of Washingtonville and his work crew, Lon Tarr for photography, Bob Brouse, and Jay Wissler along with all those not mentioned here for their assistance in dismantling and moving the train station from Bloomsburg to Turbotville.

Follow this link to the dismantle of the Turbotville Train Station video.

Although we are currently focused on the Turbotville Train Station Relocation Project, the goal of our organization is to preserve as much about the local history of Turbotville as we can. With this in mind, if you have items you would like to donate for display, please let us know? We will gladly accept any items relating to the history of Turbotville in order to start an archive of information for future generations. Items such as billheads, newspaper clippings, maps, calendars, photographs, business cards or other paper documents can all be scanned and/or copied for inclusion in our archives so that you may retain your originals, if you wish. Other items such as local business advertising items, signs, crates, or any other items that contain Turbotville information may be donated fully to the heritage society or offered on loan for display once the train station project has been completed. We have already started to receive train station items, railroad related photos, and items that will become part of the permanent display in the train station. So, look through those boxes in the attic, basement, or garage and see what treasures you can uncover. Allow us to share those items, no matter how large or how small, so everyone can take a glimpse into the past of our town. Please contact TBHS President Michael Sechler at msechler@turbotville.org or by phone at 570-649-5289 about what items you have to include in the TBHS archives?

That's exactly what we're trying to find out? As work continues on the Turbotville Train Station Relocation Project, TBHS is actively seeking items to be included in the train station for display. One such item we are searching for is the original clock that would have hung in the train station when it first opened on December 13, 1886. The Wilkes-Barre & Western Railway Company was reported to have issued a clock to each station it built along the rail line and those clocks contained a number on the back that signified which station the clock was issued to. If anyone has any information about the clock or its current owner or location, please contact us. We would greatly appreciate any photos, history, or information about the clock to include in our archives.