All,

Please see attached. The Circuit Court of Hamilton County, Indiana has given the Indiana Transportation Museum (ITM) until July 12, 2018 to remove itself from Forest Park in Noblesville. The order was issued this morning.

Sadly it's starting to seem that ITM will lose a vast majority of there collection. I don't even think they could get 587 out by then. I understand from past remarks on here that they were trying to get 587 back together enough to remove her. Good luck to them and this is a major lesson in if you own equipment own the property that is sits on.

It's a shame though, because ITM should have been spending all this time and money getting stuff ready to move by now, and instead, they have been fighting to keep their museum in a town that haven't wanted them there for years. The blame for this should lay squarely on ITM at this point.

Jim is correct. They publicly stated they grossed $500k from Christmas trains this year at their new location up in Logansport. Even if they had half of that left after expenses, that would have gone a long way to moving the core operating collection. They did nothing and apparently spent it on something else. And now, here they are.....

That doesn't necessarily mean they'll lose it, but it may be very soon the property of someone else. The problem is that the narrative being stated in this county is that it's "all junk" with "only a handful" of significant pieces. Which makes pretty clear the county gives not a whit about the history involved, and will not be keen on waiting a year and a half for a Bill Wall style intervention. They are as likely to say "scrap every bit, historic preservation is not our problem".

I am unclear on why they cannot use the railroad; perhaps they can yet move the equipment over that railroad to a location such as their bastion north of Noblesville, where they house some equipment and did add a storage track in the last 4 years.

This will be the third of four South Shore trailers in a couple years to be lost; this is maddening because we are sorely in need of one... well, three. French Lick had two, but had a very abrupt scrap-a-thon in which they cut up over a dozen pieces with no practical public notice. I had even asked about the pair a couple years prior and been told they were not for sale. Yet another case wher rail museums cannot be internally consistent, they snap from "keep forever" to "want gone now" in the blink of an eye.

That is simply not compatible with the fact that it takes at least a year to get two Boards to agree to a sale, and get transport lined up, especially with elder equipment that must move by truck.

Also, they ran several other events out of Kokomo and Logansport; perhaps revenue is much higher than they've said. Also, I do not believe the Court expert's figure of millions to move the collection. Truck moves do not work that way; yes, a single car costs about the figures he claimed, but you cam't just multiply by 5 or 70. When you have many cars to move, it benefits dramatically from economies of scale. The scarce and expensive element is the cranes and their mobilization. Trucks are a commodity. Once you have cranes at both ends of your lift, the cost is small for the cranes to stay longer (you could even buy gantry cranes outright). Then you have a parade of trucks pulling under the cranes every couple of hours to move another unit. The first unit could be $30k, following units could be as low as $5k. Now you're talking figures well within the range of their Santa take.

Here's a roster:

https://www.itm.org/trains

Offer them any money at all and have a truck ready.

OK, I think it can be agreed that ITM brought this upon themselves. But doesn't 2 weeks to move seem ridiculous? On top of that, it seems they cannot use their rail connection - so how are they supposed to move f units, 587, etc? This is a mess.

The court made note of the FACT that the city informed them back on December 20, 2017 that they would not renew their lease at the end of March 2018, yet the ITM did nothing.

As for selling the equipment, there have been offers, but they seem to want to scrap the equipment.

I talked with them more then a month ago and told the head man that they could advertise for free on RYPN and Railswap. Have any of you seen an ad posted by the ITM, on either of these two sites, I sure have not.

I did see a Chicago "L" car for sale on Ozark Mountain Railcar, I thought that was a waste.

They are to run several trains out of Kokomo on Saturday for the Haynes Apperson Festival. They will be using Ed Ellis's equipment.

Since they made a lot of money off their Christmas trains, their Bunny Hop train, then why not spend some of that money and move your own equipment and not pay to use Ed's?

It seems that getting their equipment moved should be first on their minds. But, they are wishing upon a star that some miracle will happen and they can stay there.

AlcoC420 -

According to a report in the Pharos-Tribune (Logansport, Indiana newspaper), these trips will not be run due to the heat advisory currently in place.

Les

This evolution of events has me worried. Use of the land means the new owners won't likely dalley around to sell 100+ pieces of mostly very vintage and historic rail equipment. It's like that old car sitting in the backyard of a house you rent. Do you think the landowner will think about it's value when he wants to redevelope it? What path the landowners take after this will determine what gets saved. Sadly my opinion of Indiana politics isn't good and think very few items will get saved in the worse case scenario. Being how things transpired here it may very well go down as a loss for many in rail preservation if steps aren't taken to ensure the survival of the equipment.

A few groups have approached ITM and the owners of private equipment there about relocating. There have been a few serious efforts developed and representatives from different groups and rigging/transportation companies have been on site, so here's hoping some of that diligence can be put to good use.

What a sad mess. In hindsight, the writing was on the wall the day that HHPA started to consider taking out the connection to the outside world in 2008 in Tipton. That would have been my "uh-oh" moment especially if I was a private car owner. The fact that so many manhours and much money has been spent on trying to stay on land they don't own boggles my mind. I'd wager that if they had demonstrated a good faith effort to move years earlier, they'd either not be in this position or would have vacated already in one manner or another. But then again, I'm not privy to the inner workings of the organization and can only comment on what it looks like to me on the outside.

Correct. It is completely unrealistic. The judge knew that even if ITM had begun moving immediately in December it would have been unrealistic to have moved the entire collection. (Mind that it was one of the worst winters this century, and spring mud season also prohibits heavy moves, so they couldn't have even started til May). From the tone of the judgment, it seems that even if ITM was well on their way, the judge wouldn't have cared.

Now having read the judgment in full, I find it to be lopsided to the extreme - courts have been kinder to Riffin or Righthaven. Such extremism tends to be rich ground for legal error, and thus, appeal.

So the fat lady may not yet have sung.

This would presume that ITM management has access to diligent and savvy legal advisors and representation in the first place, and the evidence of the events of the past couple years or so would tend to contradict that presumption.

Sandy, that can change tomorrow. Do you think a more competent attorney would've gotten a different outcome? I don't. Perry Mason wouldn't have changed the mind of that judge.

My general point is that railway museums just don't move fast, and so signing a lease with a railway museum that calls for a rapid departure is defective by design.

Even if the logic *at signing in 1971* was that "we can always throw together a hospital train quick and move it via Class I railroad"... the county itself obliterated the ability to do that by closing out the interchanges. The county's act forced the museum into the much more time-consuming evac method. I know they're not quite the same parties, but there's fertile ground there, which the judge denied them the ability to argue.