When Orrville Railroad Heritage Society purchased the DABO facility in 2015, it came with rolling stock, locomotives and miscellaneous materials. Some of it has already gone to other preservationists and is being refurbished and reused. Thanks goes to those good folks.

We've set up a web page to display some of what is still available. We'll be adding more details and more items as we're able get through everything. The "big stuff" is all listed but there are tons of parts, pieces, flotsam & jetsam that we have yet to inventory, finish the descriptions or complete the counts.

Please take a look and if anything catches your eye, make an offer or at least an inquiry. We'll entertain any reasonable offers. You can contact ORHS by phone, through the website email or email/PM me directly from RYPN. Thanks for your interest.

Here's the link to the Inventory page: http://www.orrvillerailroad.com/dabo/inventory.html

Good luck finding this stuff new homes. You are going to be hard pressed to sell those cranes for $20 & $25K and another $10K for the flatcars. At best the only thing you're going to be able to do is give them away to a good home with the receiving museums finding the money for transportation to their new homes.

Yup, I hear ya. But, we're realists. The crane prices were based on an appraisal in place and we know that moving them ain't cheap. Hence, the make-an-offer statement in the web page heading. But we did succeed in getting you to at least talk about them. A step in the right direction....

What is the story on the side boom tractor?

The sideboomer came with the property. I don't know much about it. I have no idea the last time it was run and it isn't in running condition now. It has a gas engine if I recall. The hoses and seals will likely need to be replaced at the minimum. I'm going to try to get down to Orrville within a couple of days and I'll check it out closer, see if the engine turns, take a few more pics and update the info.

I couldn't get a good grip on the crankshaft to see if it would turn. No obvious water on the dipstick but somewhat over full with dirty oil. Draw yer own conclusions. If you send your email address, I'll upload a Zip file of additional photos to Google drive and send you a temporary link to download.

You have a lot of great stuff there. I hope you can find some good homes for it.

The West Chester RR tried for 4 years to find a home for our 1889 J&S Coach. It was finally donated to a group and was relocated to their facilities. Unfortunately none of this equipment can be moved on their wheels (Can't see the cranes' trucks) as they are all friction bearings and also are too old for normal freight moves. Everything needs to be trucked out which is costly not only for trucking, but for rigging at both ends of the move. Unfortunately the perceived or appraised values are just what someone thinks the value may be. Your group needs to realistically look at how to find homes for these items. Look at the usual railroad sale sites and how long older equipment has been listed. Unfortunately the market size is shrinking as more and more groups are running into financial and membership problems as well as changing demographics of visitors.

We're hip to the state of the preservation industry. Also to the costs of moving anything both by truck and on it's own wheels - ref. my response to tomgears in one of the earlier posts. The saving grace is that a pretty fair portion of this stuff is usable as/is or can be restored and put to use. I've seen a lot worse come back from the dead. Personally, I'd like to see the steam cranes run, I wasn't around when they did their last lifts.

One of my "claims to fame" is that I claim to be part of the last / most recent crew to load a steam locomotive onto a railcar with a steam crane. The year was 1989 (if I remember correctly) and I was a volunteer with Bluegrass Railroad Museum in KY. We purchased 0-6-0T #717 and spent several days rigging a flat car and prepping for the lift.

The crane performed flawlessly, and very, very slowly. I was amazed that the 70 tons on the hook didn't even make it work hard.

That likely was the ex-C&O DK-8. Also of note, the RSD1 in the background.

Sold so far:
F-unit portholes.
Boxcar #30, ex-B&O #474725, formerly D&RGW #60608.

Pending:
#401: Industrial Brownhoist C/N 11594, 1945, 250 ton steam wrecker, PM #DK-8, C&O #DK-8 to #940001, CSXT #940001.
Bucyrus-Erie C/N 33779, 12/1944, 250 ton steam wrecker. NYC&StL #X50006, N&W #550006.
52' flatcar, boom idler, ex-CSX #940062.
46' flatcar, boom idler, possibly ex-DL&W.

We'll keep you updated....

Please keep us posted on events with the two wreckers. I hope they find good homes.

Wouldn't happen to have any miscellaneous steam parts laying around that would be for sale, would ya?
Justin

Justin,

Everything obviously steam locomotive related is gone but that doesn't mean there aren't any smaller parts around. We've only gotten completely through one storage car out of six so far. I'll add you to my list in case we run across anything.