Would you still smile at the suggestion of sticking the first three or four feet of a retired 757 into the lobby of the Freedom Tower in New York City?

Granted, nobody died in the Union Station runaway, but the whole notion of trivializing a serious incident is just the same.

I would have to agree with the Amtrak officials on this one. WUS is not a museum. Preserve the locomotive if someone is will to spend the time and energy to do it. But, to display it at "the scene of the crime" is completely inappropriate as long as it is a working passenger terminal dedicated to moving passengers SAFELY.

No one is seriously suggesting this unit be displayed at WUS and I hope it doesn't get de-nosed in the interest of ironic art. So this sub-discussion is even more meaningless than our usual meaningless chatter. The 9/11 analogy is wrong because those events had a horrific outcome. The Federal Express crash had an an outcome that was great compared to what it could have been or might be expected. A few feet of 757 would make no sense in NY anyway since those two aircraft were 767's.

Did any cars get scrapped as a result of the crash or did they survive just like the G did?

Steve

Steve-

An interesting question. I have often heard/read stories about the 4876 that day, but don't recall ever seeing a list of what cars were on the train that morning. Anyone have such a list?

Les

http://ctr.trains.com/~/media/images/on ... -1024.ashx

If it's subscriber-only, sorry.

Very nice. Personally, I've often felt a more accurate descriptor would be (2-C)+(C-2) to illustrate that the guiding trucks are part of the pieces that are being articulated.

Steve

Dave,

It's interesting that you would mention this idea… As a graduate of Industrial Design in Virginia Techs School of Architecture, Our department worked closely with developing an exhibit on Loewy in the N&W Roanoke Station that was re-designed by Loewy back in the day. My understanding is the station complex that also houses the O-Winston Link Museum also still houses a small long term tribute to Loewy and his Industrial Design with links made to his re-design of the N&W Roanoke station. The Industrial design staff at Virginia Tech worked with the Loewy Family when putting together the long term exhibit and it was also discussed at great length with the family and the station group as a whole to restore and bring down the GG-1 #4919 presently on display at the Virginia Museum of Transportation a couple of Blocks away. But like Washington, the space around the present N&W Roanoke Station is tight and with no remaining station tracks a considerable investment would have been necessary for long turn display of the GG-1 at or near the "Loewy" Station. Long and short of it this station already has a Loewy Museum that's indorsed by the Loewy family and there is a GG-1 #4919 just a couple of blocks away and as it turns out no space or money for it here either, when all the pieces are already present.




Steve in Roanoke

I never put that much stock into Loewy's contribution since the basic body design was already there in Old Rivets and the P5a modifieds. Smooth it out...welding instead of riveting? Big deal. And then came the Classic Trains article which debunks even that much, showing models that suggest a streamlined, all-welded body was always the plan.

Steve

Playing devil’s advocate again…

Concerning GG1 4876 specifically…

Is there anything that makes this specific GG1 special other than the Washington Terminal incident? It appears that any interpretation of that event is highly unlikely. So, If not interpreting that event, ask yourself why you are restoring this unit, instead of one of the other “preserved” but under loved GG1’s, most of which seem to be better candidates.

Now more generally:
1) How many GG1’s survive? (I believe 15)
2) How many are in stable homes, with at least occasional maintenance work, hopefully indoors, presented in some way to the public?
3) How many places are there, without a GG1, which would be willing to take and preserve one? (and have or might have resources…) (some of which may not yet know they want one)

If the total of items 2 and 3 are less than item 1, then we have a surplus of preserved GG1 locomotives.

If there is a surplus of locomotives (I suspect there is) in a world of limited resources, we need to focus resources on those with the best homes. In a rational world (rail preservation is not always rational) we would identify those with “special” histories… for example Old Rivets or a locomotive which pulled a particular special train. Maybe Kennedy’s or Roosevelt’s funeral train, or the train that fell through the floor of the Washington Terminal. We should also do a condition assessment. Some need more work than others, requiring more of our limited resources…

Increasingly there is an issue of how to move things around. In a perfect world a preservation we would take the best units and send them to the best homes… or alternately, a preservation consortium would move all the surplus GG1 locomotives to a surplus Air Force base in Arizona, cover the windows and store them for 100 years until someone wanted them… Of course, this requires money, railroads willing to move them, and an admission that we can’t save them all right now… and a unified preservation movement… where we can collectively agree that the 15th GG1 in preservation is more important that a 6 axle Alco in Wisconsin or a wood flat car in California.

A few museums are doing the next best thing… building large buildings and bringing the car body which may not be restored for the next 100 years indoors, reducing additional deterioration and preserving that car/locomotive/object so later generations can restore it if resources are available, if it still has relevance 100 years from now.

To update an old saying….

Posting “I Like GG1 4876” on Facebook and $3.00 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks and will eventually result in the loss of the artifact…

Writing a check for $300,000 to the B&O museum for the “Restore GG1 4876” fund will make a difference. Kick in another $150,000 to help fund inside storage and you have assured the locomotive’s survival. (you can substitute 3000 people writing checks for $100 each… some amount of volunteer time… etc…)

Randy

But there's also such a thing as maybe no more of certain things should be going to scrap anymore at all. Of course such a statement is never totally true--when something is really down to being a pile of rust then it becomes academic. But I think it's true about certain categories of things when such things are not quite that far gone.

Should we still be scrapping steam at all? E units? F units? Look at those F's that were scrapped recently, just because it was more economic to collect the money from the scrapper and buy a couple from somewhere else. No, no one can be forced to actively preserve something just because they happen to be the one holding it when the music stops.

But I think a moral case can be made that they should at the very least just let it sit. If it totally degrades into rust that's another matter. That's not the case with this G and sure wasn't the case with those F units which would have still made excellent exhibits and could have been restored somewhere down the line. So in that regard B&ORM has done the right thing by letting it sit and not scrapping it. If there were laws that would be it: At the very least you let it continue to exist.

So yes, save the 4876 partly because of the crash but also because I don't think any G's should be scrapped anymore at all. I do not dispute any of the logic in your post. It's just my opinion. I wouldn't scrap a Big Boy either just because it fell out of the 1,2,3 counting. If you have one and don't want it and no one who wants it can afford to move it, that's too bad...you have to hold on to it for the time being. Sort of an implied covenant you made when you got it.

At least that is how things should be.

Steve

Yes, and your reward will be eight pages of morale-sapping criticism from your friends on the Interchange.

That's abit harsh, Erik. Both sides have aired some really valid discussion points. Ultimately, somebody, or some committee, will make a decision regarding the 4876's fate, but extinction is forever. I recall when it was determined the last Dodo bird was located in the 1800's, a major American museum, here un-named, sent a team out to shoot it and taxidermy it for preservation. That was the logic of the time. I think we have better resources today, and one must acknowledge the history of this specific locomotive.
If Alex #4 is right in saying some discussion about the locomotive has been raised at an offical level, in part due to the eight pages on this board, then possibly we have been of some service. At the least, people are thinking about what is happening or not happening to one locomotive in the yard in Baltimore.

No, its not. its a completely candid report of how I feel after watching four years of my sweat equity and a large amount of financial equity traduced here.

Just spitting out data here.........



*Sixteen, of which I count 13 as "preserved":
http://www.spikesys.com/GG1/survive.html



*Use your own judgement. 4876, 4917, and 4909 can at the moment be regarded as "not yet preserved," and I'm not sure I'd call 4879 safe yet. In addition, according to a meeting I had last night with one of the Amtrak officials mentioned earlier in this thread, Amtrak wants 4859 out from the Harrisburg station track it occupies. It is, I believe, now officially the property of the Pa. Historic & Museum Commission, leaving them with THREE GG1's, definitely one more than they need by any stretch of the imagination unless they put one somewhere besides Strasburg's museum. I may not be happy with the current condition of the ones in Altoona and Roanoke, but we're not talking anything like the recent discussions about the Kentucky Railway Museum.



*I am in discussions off-list with a possibly proper and willing party for one. I emphasize, "possibly."

Considering the "blow-back" from GG1's being stuffed and mounted in Dallas and Elkhart, I'm not sure I'd suggest a GG1 to any potential museum aside from a potential exhibit specifically in PRR electrification territory--say, Wilmington, Lancaster, Elizabeth, South Amboy, Perryville, or the like. (We've mentioned the B&O RR Museum--pros and cons to that exist as well.) But there's nothing preventing the likes of the Science Museum in London or Chicago, or a Lionel Museum, or even some rich eccentric making the efforts and raising the necessary funds to save one of the "questionable" ones.

Keeping with the Washington runaway theme and thinking outside the box for a place for preservation and display. It was Eisenhower's inauguration that happened just after the wreck. Why not someplace around Gettysburg since that was Ike's adopted home.

The "bad penny"/cat keeps coming back to haunt us:

http://dcist.com/2013/01/post_55.php

Not a bad story, all told--none of the glaring errors I usually see in such articles.