ROANOKE, Va. – After a tragic fire in 2017, the Commonwealth Coach and Trolley Museum is asking for the community’s support to build back what was lost.
The goal of the museum was to provide services at a low cost to mostly non-profit organizations.
They tell us the fire took out 12 of their buses and basically destroyed what they had. They are rebuilding this Roanoke resource from scratch and have now turned to the community for help.
“People would call us and ask, “Do you want the pieces?” and we would spend the whole day taking pieces off, storing them so that we could restore another one like that was already in the fleet for later. It just about put us on our knees, we didn’t know what to do, we didn’t have anywhere to go,” said Bev Fitzpatrick, former president of the Commonwealth Coach and Trolley Museum.
The museum is in need of volunteers with mechanical and bodywork skills.