The Little Art Project That Could

About two years ago when the County Commission voted to narrowly defeat funding for a train art exhibition, Main Street Program Manager Sharae Myers refused to give up. Her resilience was recently rewarded in the form of a $5,000 donation from CSX that kept the dream alive until a City donation matching the CSX donation and another $5,000 from local donors will make the exhibit a reality.

Fifteen poly-resin train statues along Corbin, Kentucky Main Street will be made possible by a $5,000 funding boost from CSX.

A public art display consisting of 15 poly-resin train statues along Corbin, Kentucky Main Street will be made possible by a $5,000 funding boost from CSX to help celebrate the city's continuing rail heritage and its downtown revitalization.

"We really wanted this to be a project that connected the community from day one ... it is an opportunity to tell the story, through art, about what the community's heritage is," Myers said. "Corbin would not exist if it were not for the railroad. It's what this town was built on."

An article in the Corbin Times-Tribune reported that each of Corbin's city schools will get to develop a theme for a statue and see the theme to fruition. The interactive nature of the statues will help further the project's goal, Myers said -- to celebrate Corbin's heritage and enrich its citizens. "That is something that helps students to be more than just visually connected, but also connected through participating in the project," Myers said.

CSX representatives Kerry Coyle, Mark Waldron and Kurt Shogren presented the check to Myers at the Corbin City Hall.

"This city has deep ties to the railroad," Coyle said. "And I personally think it's a good idea for the railroad to help support any endeavor in the city to showcase our history here."

"CSX is very interested in supporting the communities that we work within," Waldron said. "It's something we're doing a lot more of."

According to Myers, the City of Corbin will match the $5,000 CSX donation. A Corbin Times-Tribune article on January 14 reported that the final $5,000 of the $15,000 total needed for the exhibit was raised through a variety of pledges from local businesses and citizens.

Corbin, Kentucky and its revitalization program have drawn a lot of regional coverage, and the city was featured in a recent Kentucky Heritage video. Myers says she hopes the trains will bring even more interest in the Main Street area and be a big draw for tourism.

The project, which was originally narrowly turned down by the County Commission, has taken two years to reach fruition. Myers tells the story of a young child who, when first hearing of the train exhibit, had drawn a picture of a train and couldn't wait "until the train would come." When she first heard the trains might not come, the little girl wasn't the only one who was disappointed.

"I was devastated. It wasn't my loss. It was the loss of the enrichment (for the community). That has been the biggest motivator for me, is to make sure it would happen," Myers said.

The Corbin Times-Tribune recently published a letter from Myers where she thanked CSX and other supporters, and in a recent editorial titled "Tangible Trains, Virtual History," the publication applauded the project writing, "If the train project has taught me anything, it's that it's OK to think big. It at least gets things rolling down the track."