Series of serendipitous events leads to restoration of historic mural in train car

by Jacqueline Mitchell

It took 1,498 hours of scraping glue with 267 scalpel blades and 96 hours of carving and painting. But once the painstaking work was done, Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad volunteers had something beautiful to show for it: a restored historic mural on CVSR’s Saint Lucie Sound railcar.

The volunteers’ work revealed a 1946 linoleum mural depicting Seminole Indians on the car’s curved bar, which had been shielded by glue and carpeting in 1982 to disguise its cracked appearance.

Lifelong Brecksville resident Carol Schroeder led the volunteer team of “Scrappy Scrapers,” as they dubbed themselves. Members were Polly Bowman, Kathy Eitel, Martha Grzelak, Joe Grzelak, Cherie Harris, Dave Harris, Roy Moore, Mary Spencer, Gary Spencer and Eileen Strauss, plus carver and painter Regis Schilling.

Getting started

“Back in 2013, our then-president and founder of the railroad, Craig Tallman, approached me and asked me if I would head this project to remove the glue from the mural,” said Schroeder, who has volunteered for CVSR for over a decade. “Back in the 1940s, murals were very common on bar fronts in parlor cars, so we were pretty sure there was a mural there; we just didn’t know what condition it was in.”

Schroeder had never been involved in such a project. She and the other volunteers reached out to ICA Art Conservation in Cleveland to find the best way to remove the glue.

Andrea Chevalier, director of conservation and head of paintings conservation at ICA, told them they couldn’t use a solvent because it would damage the linoleum. So, the Scrapers landed on surgical scalpels as their tool of choice.

They sat in front of the mural – “We had these little benches with wheels like the mechanics use,” Schroeder said – and slowly removed the glue.

The team worked for three years, from January through April, when the car was available.

“After that, during the summer schedule, the train was out and being used,” Schroeder said.

The volunteers – whom Chevalier described as “a highly skilled, creative, meticulous bunch” ­– would stay for hours at a time, depending on their schedules.

A serendipitous series of events

Once nearly 1,500 hours of glue-scraping were logged, the volunteers had a new challenge: replacing a damaged portion of the linoleum.

“The word serendipity is synonymous with this project,” Schroeder said.

One of the Scrappy Scrapers, Dave Harris, had experience selling commercial floor coverings, and he was the one who identified the mural as true linoleum, Schroeder said. He contacted a manufacturer in the Netherlands, which agreed to donate a piece of linoleum to fill the damaged area.

“Serendipity No. 2: In 2013, I took a spur-of-the-moment cross-country train trip,” said Schroeder. “As I was boarding the train, the gentleman standing next to me saw the logo on my jacket and said ‘CVSR – do you still have the Saint Lucie Sound?’”

Schroeder told him she volunteered in the car.

“The next thing he said was, ‘Well, I was there in 1982 when they glued carpeting on the mural,’” Schroeder said.

She learned that the man, Dave Farren, was a freight engineer from New Jersey, and he and others in his yard worked to restore the Saint Lucie Sound in 1982.

“The best part of the story is he had photos of the mural before the carpeting was glued on,” Schroeder said. “We would not have been able to complete this restoration without the photographs.”

Serendipitous moment No. 3, Schroeder said, occurred at CVSR’s 2018 volunteer appreciation dinner, where Scrappy Scrapers Cherie and Dave Harris were sitting at a table with other railroad volunteers.

One of the volunteers asked Cherie how the mural restoration was progressing, and she said they were still scraping glue. After they finished this step, she explained, the true challenge would be finding someone who knew how to carve and paint the new piece of linoleum.

Regis Schilling, one of the railroad’s brakemen, was sitting at the table and said he had learned to carve linoleum in high school.

“We asked if he’d be willing to help with the mural, and the rest is history,” Schroeder said.

Appearance and history

The mural depicts the daily life of the Seminole Indians, a tribe native to Florida. The Saint Lucie Sound originally ran on the Florida East Coast Railway.

Schroeder said the scene contains a hut, a Native American spearing a fish, an alligator and a woman and a young girl with a cat. The artist who designed the mural is unknown.

“That’s why finding those pictures was critical,” said Schroeder.

CVSR obtained the Saint Lucie Sound in the 1990s.

“Back in 1993, Dennis Haslinger was president of our board of trustees, and he owned the car at that time,” Schroeder said.

Haslinger passed away in 1995, and his family gifted the car to the railroad, along with an endowment for maintenance and future restoration.

The Saint Lucie Sound is now the railroad’s premium parlor car, and guests can choose to ride in it when they book their train tickets.

“It’s one of the few linoleum murals still in existence,” said Schroeder, “and preservation is CVSR’s middle name. We wanted to preserve everything we could to bring it back to its original state. … The project was a labor of love for the Scrappy Scrapers.”

For more information, visit cvsr.org.

Featured image photo caption: A group of Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad volunteers, dubbed “the Scrappy Scrapers,” stand outside the Saint Lucie Sound train car. The volunteers, led by Brecksville resident Carol Schroeder, spent years carefully restoring a historic mural inside the parlor car. Photo courtesy C. Schroeder