It’s hard not to think of Sen. Chris Murphy when in New London these days, as construction gets under way on the National Coast Guard Museum on the city’s downtown waterfront.

After all, it was Murphy, waving his magic chairman’s gavel and wielding a lot of the influence that comes from Democrats’ hold, for the moment anyway, on Congress and it purse strings, who rescued the museum project.

Honestly, his $50 million in new federal funding for the museum construction was the kind of dramatic, high-stakes rescue the Coast Guard is known for.

If not for the senator’s $50 million intervention, the foundering project, adrift with lackluster private fundraising for more than a decade, was destined to sink like a stone, another of New London’s lost dreams.

I was among the many local proponents of a less-complicated location at Fort Trumbull, especially when it looked like there would never be enough money for the downtown site, on the wrong side of a major rail line.

But join me, as the first construction crane is about to arrive by barge, in celebrating the momentum on what is sure to be a spectacular attraction on the waterfront.

Indeed, the permits are in place. A lot of the money, private and public, is in the pipeline. And work has literally begun.

I got a quick dockside tour recently from Bill Seddon, who is going to supervise the entire project for construction manager A/Z Corp. of North Stonington.

The first phase is the creation of a waterfront pad for the building, which will entail a new retaining wall and fill, on the east side of the historic Union Station Building.

The permits require that a substantial part of the disruptive work in the water is done before the end of December, to accommodate the local winter flounder population.

The work might be somewhat apparent from downtown proper, when the first crane arrives to prepare the site from the river side.

Work is also under way on getting bids for the next phase, the start of the building itself, which could get going as early as the spring. Meanwhile, work off site by the Coast Guard on interior exhibits progresses.

Workers have already created a new vehicular right away astride the building site, which will be used to bring materials and heavy equipment in and out, sometimes across the railroad crossing at the south end of the station and sometimes across the Cross Sound Ferry parking lots.

Already, with work beginning, the project has breathed new life into the waterfront. And when a train is at the station, loading and unloading passengers, with crossing gates down and bells clanging, you can picture what a busy place the museum concourse on the riverfront is going to be.

Seddon himself, whose father was a Coast Guard master chief, heading a family with lots of Coast Guard talk around the dinner table, is a reminder of the Coast Guard culture New London is cultivating anew.

Seddon, who is 63, said he came out of retirement to direct the project,

He’s a quiet guy, but I got the impression in the short time he showed me around the site, that something is taking shape there that he and the Coast Guard and all the rest of us will be very proud of.

This is the opinion of David Collins

d.collins@theday.com