Summarizing the year
Similarly to the previous season, we would like to summarize the passing year and take the opportunity to pass our gratitude to the Volunteers and Sponsors without whose help, the results of our work would be much more modest.
As in the previous years, a primary concern for us was the renovation of the historical buildings. 2017 was less spectacular in this area. The main highlight was receiving the funding to start the renovation of the old pump house. The works were financed by the Council of the Łódź Voivodeship with the amount of 26 250 PLN and allowed us to rebuild the portion of the roof. The work totalled to 43 013,21 PLN thanks to the money from 1% of income tax for 2016.
A pleasant surprise awaited us in the end of the year. Thanks to the funding by the Łódź Voivodeship’s Conservationist Office in the amount of 22 000 PLN we were able to complete the roof reconstruction above the most damaged parts of roundhouse roof above stands 12 and 13. Again, we had to back-up the financing with own capital in amount of 11 000 PLN. This time, due to limited budged, we needed to resource to the donations made by members of PARE, our fans and a crowdfunding via zrzutka.pl portal.
A record-breaking financing from the city council of Skierniewice (14 500 PLN) was devoted for the track works. Thanks to it, we were able to buy some reused concrete track ties and pay for their transport. A ballast was provided for free by a sponsor. This time we passed on manual labour and facilitated the hardest work (ties laying, resurfacing track base) with a rented backhoe loader.
We continued the projects aiming at developing the volunteers initiative in the Engine Shed. Thanks to the support of the National Board of Heritage (17 600 PLN), as a part of programme “Volunteering for Heritage”, we organized eight volunteers camps, during which participants helped up in the upkeep of the Shed’s surroundings, repainted the fence and the turntable and helped us in the renovation works by the engines class Ol49-4, Ty51-1 and TKp 6042. As a part of the programme, we also prepared new, multilingual promotional leaflets.
Summarizing the financial aspects of our activity, we managed to collect over 80 000 PLN for the renovation works. Therefore, we nearly tripled the amount received from 1% of income tax (26 000 PLN).
Due to the time-consuming track works and turntable repainting, we did not devoted as much time for rolling stock repairs. In 2017 we finished the paint job by the steam engines class Ol49-4 and TKp 6042 “Śląsk”. We also started rust-proofing the class Ty51-1 displayed outdoors.
In 2017 we also intensified activities concerning the exhibition of railway signalling and traffic equipment. We gave a new life to an old block device with key interlocking brought from the station Gawrony. Years of service and subsequent storage in unfavourable conditions left the device in a sorry state. Thankfully, it was intact inside and is still operational. With a lot of effort put into cleaning, repainting and repairing the wooden parts, the device is again pleasant to the eyes.
We continued to expand the railway telecommunication exposition by preparing a third room for this purpose. Initially, it was housing the small portion of the Siemens exchange. After moving it to the target place, the room will be re-purposed to display two Polish-built town exchanges of type FT-200 (Strowger system) and CK-20 (crossbar system). We thought that it will not take much effort but there were plenty of “surprises” that expanded the renovation time line to nearly a year.
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This year we did not managed to break the attendance record finishing with a 5555 visitors crossing the gates of the Shed. We guess that this was due to two factors. First of all, unfavourable weather nearly halved the number of guests during the usually most busy time which is the Skierniewice’s Festival of Flowers, Fruits and Vegetables. Second, there were much less events addressed to the fans of vintage cars which we used to host. The biggest event was the 30th anniversary of PARE which was attended by 546 guests.
On behalf of the members and volunteers of PARE, we would like to express our gratitude to all sponsors and supporters.
Supported PARE in 2017:
