By Matthew K. Roy
Staff writer
November 19, 2008 10:07 am PEABODY — Most people clean out a desk or empty a locker when they leave a job. They fill a box with family photographs and the various odds and ends that cluttered their cubicle. Maybe they leave behind an old, coffee-stained mug. Leaving wasn't as easy for the former director of public services in Peabody. When he resigned late last month, Dick Carnevale left behind a 1940s-era H.K. Porter steam locomotive. It rests on a small section of tracks in the overflow parking lot beside the public services headquarters on Farm Avenue. Carnevale, a model-train enthusiast, brought the battered relic to Peabody and planned to salvage it. He envisioned the restored locomotive on display downtown near Railroad Avenue. But Carnevale's exit set in motion his train's departure. Its days on city property are numbered. "The mayor directed that it be off the site by the first of the year," Carnevale said yesterday. Transporting the locomotive is sure to be as hard or harder than it sounds. Built in Pittsburgh in 1941, the engine weighs 126,000 pounds when in working order. Carnevale first spotted it at JRM Hauling and Recycling in Newbury. The company donated the train and covered the cost to move it to Peabody nearly two years ago. During a brief phone conversation, Carnevale wouldn't discuss how he planned to transport the train or where he might put it. All he would say was that he was responsible for moving it. Mayor Michael Bonfanti could not be reached for comment yesterday. John Christopher, the city's lawyer, confirmed that the city gave Carnevale 60 days to remove the locomotive. It passed its useful life in Pennsylvania, Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia and Steamtown at Bellows Falls, Vt. By the time it arrived in Peabody, it was rusting and partly disassembled. The high cost made it impossible for the restoration to be anything more than cosmetic. The estimate to rehabilitate the train's appearance came in at $20,000. Carnevale hoped to use grant funding to pay for it. He also gathered a group of local railroad buffs willing to lend their expertise. Bonfanti supported Carnevale's efforts, primarily because the restoration didn't cost the city anything and it could potentially boost tourism downtown. When Carnevale left last month, Bonfanti said the project showed "good intent on Dick's part." "(Carnevale) brought (the train) in and he tried to get some grants, but it didn't pan out," the mayor said at the time. Mayor Peter Torigian hired Carnevale as public services director in 1994. His resignation last month coincided with the mayor announcing the police would investigate "rumors" involving the Public Services Department. But Bonfanti did not link the rumors and investigation to Carnevale's departure. Carnevale said yesterday that he "voluntarily resigned" as director. Mike Moulison of Peabody, a senior at the University of New Hampshire, was among the train enthusiasts who attended meetings Carnevale convened to discuss the train. "It is the Tanner City, and the railroad played a large part in the city's history," Moulison said yesterday, recalling a time when steam trains, pulling boxcars packed with animal hides, rolled in and out of Peabody. "I definitely feel like it would have been worth it to have something to honor that," he said. Moulison wants the train's future to be brighter than its past. "I hope the locomotive finds a home better than the dump in (Newbury) where (Carnevale) found it," he said.
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