The NRHS, America’s largest rail preservation organization, today announced the 2012 recipients of its annual Heritage Grants Program.

NRHS will award $50,000 to support 21 non-profit organizations from 14 states and the District of Columbia.

Recipients include NRHS chapters, historical societies, museums and municipalities.

Projects range from the restoration of rare locomotives, passenger cars, freight cars, and railroad structures to the creation of an exhibit featuring the history of African-American railway workers in the Pacific Northwest.

One project involves digitally converting priceless railroad images in a process that will result in a blueprint for other NRHS chapters to follow in preserving and generating revenue from their own collections.

Through these diverse projects, NRHS funding will leverage hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours and in-kind matching donations.

“This year’s applicant pool was the largest in NRHS history and one of the best in recent memory, making the award decisions painfully difficult,” said NRHS President Gregory Molloy. “While we’re excited to fund these important projects, the fact remains that scores of equally significant rail projects will go without our support this year, underlining the urgency of our mission.”

Since the program’s inception in 1991, NRHS has now awarded 221 grants for a total of $548,000 to support a wide variety of railroad history preservation projects.

This year’s recipients and their projects included a grant to the South Carolina Railroad Museum in Winnsboro for $2,500 to repair the museum’s 1924 Pullman dining car, used for educational trips and public charters.