Rochester and Genesee Valley Railroad Museum’s artifacts vandalized

RUSH, N.Y. (WHEC) — The Rochester and Genesee Valley Railroad Museum in Rush was vandalized sometime after 6 p.m. Tuesday and before 8 a.m. Wednesday.

Wednesday morning, volunteers that run the museum got a call from the Livonia, Avon & Lakeville Railroad.

“They called to let us know that the Army tractor truck was parked close enough to the railroad where they were concerned they were going to hit it,” explained trustee Jeremy Tuke. “They had to stop their train and do a walk-through to make sure they could get by.”

When the trustees arrived to see what was going on they discovered vandals had stolen the truck and tried to take off but ran out of gas right. The suspects smashed out two windows of a working train car with rocks and made their way inside where they discharged fire extinguishers.

“A bunch of our construction equipment was gone through and tampered with in terms of batteries… we found a fire extinguisher had also been discharged in one of our locomotives up in our yard and we’re not sure that we’re done finding things,” Tuke told News10NBC.

So far, the damage is upward of a few thousand dollars.

“not huge but again we’re all-volunteer and that’s money that we’re not spending on restoring some equipment or enhancing our visitor experience and also the time that we have to spend to correct the problems,” Tuke said.

When it comes to possible suspects, “when we were out here with the sheriff’s department there were six or seven kids hanging out down the tracks just out of our reach and when we ask them to come talk to us they ran away,” Tuke said, “my personal feeling and based on the nature of the vandalism is… this is kid stuff, this is kids and while I’m glad they’re out of the house and not in their basements, there are other things they could be doing outside instead of vandalizing.”

The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office is currently investigating. For more information on the museum, click here.