The auction is this Saturday:

http://jmwauction.com/auctions.html#a2

Some drool-worthy stuff lurks.

And some heavy hitters came too.

Wakefield cover art went for $9,500

Green handpump car $8,500

Yellow Handpump car $4,500

speeder $1,700

These are all I had interest in. The farm wagons went for a few hundred dollars.

A few interesting builders plates , the Chucky type puppet kind of creeped me out

A few thoughts:
It is too bad some more detail wasn't given for these items, such as where that C&O arrival/departure sign came from, or where the station signs came from. Or who the subjects of those B&W photos were. The station signs look like they could be ex-O&W, but I don't recognize the towns.

Young people today just don't collect like that any more, even the ones with the space and the money. Just isn't the interest today. Not just the Rich collection, but also look at the other collections being auctioned off.

While this is OT for this forum, some advice, if you every come across a collection such as this to dispose of: the baseball-autograph-memorabilia field is rife with frauds and fakes. I would be especially suspicious of any signatures from the old Yankees hall-of-famers - the Mattingly/Mantle signed photo, for example. And I am not sure what the old Dodgers uniforms are supposed to be.

The people who owned these state-owned or -supported railroads in New York, Ohio, Michigan, etc. sure did very well for themselves. Looking at the areas they served in upstate New York, such as my hometown of Norwich, or northern Michigan, etc. I just don't see much benefit for what the states invested in them. Topic for another time.

Chris.

The yellow hand pump car sold at auction was the one that Morris County Central RR founder Earle Gil had acquired from the Canadian National Railways back in the early 1960's.

I still recall with great sadness the day around 1982 or '83 when NYS&W employees came to Newfoundland to remove the pump car (along with some other items) that Walter Rich wanted for his personal collection. This was after MCC vice president Tony Citro sold the MCC assets to Walter's company (Delaware Otsego System) in early-1982.

The pump car was displayed during the MCC's years at Whippany, and later at Newfoundland, NJ.

It was also used as a prop for the front cover art for the Ohio Express' LP 'Mercy' in 1969. (The rear of the same album featured the band in front of former DL&W 2-6-0 No. 565, which was owned at the time by MCC vice-president John Maris.)

The album photos were taken at Whippany, and the pump car scene shows the band fending off the villain who has a damsel in distress tied up on the pump car deck.

Ha... I have been cataloging a massive collection of sheet music for the past two years at my university and I actually have music for that, WITH that cover...

I've noticed a few other covers with railroad equipment as well.

Does anyone know what the status of the railroad & community museum that was planned to be developed using some of Walter Rich's collection? Some information on prior plans for this museum can be found at: http://nyow.org/Articles/Franklin_Museum/franklin_museum.html

There were many items in the auction that would seem to make good museum exhibits or contributions to a museum library/archive.

Thomas,

Unfortunately rumor is the museum is DOA and the docent's employment was terminated over a year ago.

Many of the items at the auction were items that were destined for the museum. Including O&W silverware, station signs, a CTC machine and other O&W specific ephemera. Farm equipment and many items specific to the Rich Family were also sold. Including family photos of Mr. Rich. Even Mr. Rich's high school varsity jacket was auctioned off.

I have no information on the fate of the Warwick other than it is still in the building.

Thank you for that update. Is there any news on NYO&W 116, a NW-2 that was restored by the NYSW. This locomotive was moved to the Delaware & Ulster and I remember hearing that it was destined for display with the Warwick.

As far as I know, the 116 was never destined for the museum. It is still at the D&U.

A good friend of mine has been a serious collector of all manner of railroad publications since the late 50's ( i.e. complete collection of Trains mag., complete collection of Railway Age mag., etc.) and has been been contemplating disposing of his collection as his health is not good ( he's in his mid 80's) and he confirms the above post that today's fans have zero interest in anything old and in written form.

He told me just the other day that his vast collection will probably " end up in a 40 yard dumpster, a week after I'm gone".

Times and tastes change !!

Ross Rowland

Thanks for the expressions of interest I've received via back channel from a number of fellow RyPNers.

My friend reports that he has found a new home for his extensive collection ( 500 plus) of railroad books and that there will be a public announcement regarding their new home sometime in the future.

As to the magazines, he reports several offers from private collectors ( to take them off his hands for no charge) which he is now considering.

Best regards, Ross Rowland

Ross and others,

With one estate, we filled FOUR 40-foot dumpsters. Two to overweight. The guy had 40 years worth of expense accounts, documentation and studies of transit systems and proposals (including the original "monorail salesman" from "The Simpsons") from all over the globe, railroad and transit publications from every corner of the globe (some in languages even I couldn't figure out!), etc.

The fact is not so much that the younger generations aren't interested in the stuff you and I and others used to collect, but that SO MUCH "stuff" is out there now that it's literally impossible to digest it all, let alone store and properly utilize it. And then there's the issue that folks who have "hoarded" this stuff for so long too often expect that they absolutely have to appreciate in value, and that such a complete set has to be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars. Not any more, sorry.

A complete set of Trains Magazine alone takes up about twelve linear feet of shelf space, as I recall, or perhaps six to eight wine-case-sized boxes if you don't use binders. That, alone, is more than a great many households have in reading material of any kind. Railway Age, in our library, takes up about a dozen or more four-foot reinforced shelves in the Maryland Rail Heritage Library. Our set of Railroad Magazine from 1922 forward takes up several more shelves, and that's just before the merger with Railfan in 1979. Yanking the Model Railroaders to "deep storage" when we realized utterly no one could remember the last time anyone looked up anything in one freed up four shelves, and we have a DVD digital set of MR "on loan" to us.

The "obsessive-compulsive" railfan of years past would have to subscribe to Trains, R&R, the regional magazine of his areas (Railpace, Pacific Rail News, whatever), and the "special interest" magazine of his choice (PTJ, L&RP, a specific fallen flag's T&H society mag, etc.) to stay informed. It's no exaggeration to say that this equalled about 120-150 pages a month on average. It's all they can do to keep up with what comes out new, never mind dredging through back issues of Railroad for old, obsolete locomotive rosters or fictional tales, or poring over old issues of company magazines indexing relevant information about their chosen railroad.

I've had to dredge through, and ultimately discard, thousands of pages and folders of well-organized but utterly redundant material such as articles clipped from Street Railway Journal and hand-written rosters of interurban and short-line equipment (down to cylinders and tractive effort of the steamers), from back in the day when the only possible hope you had of accessing such information was by assembling and shelving it yourself. Thanks to one late member who was a regular contributor to Extra 2200 South, we now have ten binders full of what appears to be every imaginable roster of every imaginable line, sometimes updated per decade or hand-annotated. But if you know where to look, you can find most of this information online already, and more is streaming online monthly. There's also the raw utility value of much of what's out there. The GG1 operator's manual that's sitting on my shelf is strictly a collector's item and not something of practical value today; if I were smart I'd sell it while there are still "foamers" interested in GG1's.

The bigger problem is attempting to make this ocean of information interesting and relevant to others, something we as an avocation are increasingly failing to do successfully. Some of this is no fault of our own--Rowland of all people can confirm how the railroad industry, insurance issues, etc. have increasingly obstructed attempts to "showcase" big steam locomotives before the public. But we also have a "national railroad history group" whose primary mission for 20+ years has seemingly been to run rare mileage trips for its better-heeled members, and another with somewhat more effective academic and educational missions that has stayed largely hidden and out of sight even among its prospective members.

The problem is not that no one cares. The fact is that we have failed at making folks care, and care enough to assume stewardship of a ponderous bulk of paper/rolling stock/photos/data, much of which we have to ultimately concede is not worth the trouble in a global scheme of things.

And sometimes I just mutter to myself, "I can't be an enabler of this illness....."

So I've got this 3' by 3' by 3' box that has a carefully organized collection of vintage traction/tram b/w photo prints from ALL OVER Europe. This would be some traction documentarian's dream come true. So how do I find the one S.O.B. on the planet crazy enough to take possession of it, scan them all, enter the data on the back of each one, and archive it online or make a book or DVD out of it?

No, the fact is that the times have changed. I have, in my garage, an extensive collection of Trains, Railfan and other magazines. At one time, I also had model railroad magazines, but they were all given away (and even for free, finding a home for them wasn't easy!)

I used to refer to them frequently. I'd see something and say "I remember seeing a photo of that in Trains..." I'd then go on what my wife called "a quest" and dig through my collection searching for the information. Usually I'd find it, though sometimes it would take a day or two.

Then Al Gore invented the internet. G. Oogle invented the search engine. Eleanor P. set up this website. Now when I want to find out what happened to Podunk and Western #781, I simply use Google and/or come here. My allergies are thankful, and the dust bunnies and spiders live undisturbed in my garage.

My interests haven't change. What has changed is my means of accessing the info. I really don't need 20 feet of shelving with old musty magazines on them. At some point I'm guessing I'll give in and get rid of them. I certainly wouldn't start over collecting them.

So it's not that folks aren't interested in personal transport, it's that you're still selling buggy whips...

Very true on the technological advances. We younger folk (27 myself) prefer to access things digitally and use the space that a book collection would take up for something different. I have the capability to store more information than I could ever read and absorb in a lifetime on a small USB stick on my keychain. That's pretty amazing when you think about it.

On a side note, there are still collectors for such things if you can find them. A more prominent example is record collectors. Some go so far as to build shelves around the entire home to house extensive collections of records. Book collectors, however, are an odd breed nowadays to begin with. Collectors of railroad related books and magazines are even fewer and usually it's small amounts of information specific to a railroad/railroads they follow and research. There are some odd tidbits you can still only find in books, but anything you'd generally want to know is probably on the internet somewhere.