I'd like to, but they seem to be in some odd format I can't open and read.

dave

Well two thoughts come to mind:

1. The fact that the NJ Museum "Friends" group dropped out of the litigation two years ago does not excuse their continuing record as an embarassment to serious railroad preservation.

2. The Lackawanna Chapter, RLHS has also been attempting to stabilize and restore the DL&W station at Delaware Water Gap. I commend the handfull of volunteers that have toiled at this effort. While restoration has not happened (no funding), they have at least stabilized this structure. The group really has two factions: the locals who have been trying to save this station and the out-of-towners that saw the Chapter as a vehicle to bring their lawsuit. I don't think they will appeal this court decision so I expect they will quickly disappear from the Chapter, after sadly wasting 5 years of restoration time and, sadly, giving the locals a black eye in the process.

Nineteen pages of brief just to read that in Missouri "possession is 9/10 of the law"!

Steve Zuiderveen

As is always the case the only "winners" in this were the attorneys who generated somewhere in the area of $50,000 in legal fees to reach this point. From the outset I've been a dissenting voice on the R&LHS side of this issue not because I didn't see merit in the Chapters argument that St.Louis was clearly guilty of grossly neglecting the 952 for many years,but rather that what will you do if you "win".
I hope the Chapter will accept this verdict as enough and not appeal this further as some want,as the chances of having an appeals court overturn this verdict are practically non-existant IMHO.
I guess there is some "silver lining" in all this in that at least St.Louis took the 952 out of the weeds, gave it at least some surface cosmetic attention so that today it's not the shameful derelict it had been allowed to become prior to this legal action.Too bad the $50k in lawyers fees couldn't have gone into that effort but I guess sometimes you gotta "hit 'em upside the head" to get their attention???
Let's hope this is the final legal chapter and that St.Louis will not let her slip back into her previous condition??
Ross Rowland

Wrong conclusion. The lesson everyone needs to take away from this is that if someone loans something, and never documents the terms of the supposed "loan" in a written agreement, eventually the "loan" will be viewed as a gift, and the original party will lose their standing. This isn't the first time this has happened, and it won't be the last.

Important point; get it in writing.

Yes, exactly. The judgement specifically comments frequently on the lack of a written agreement. Secondary issues are the passage of time and the expiration of the statute of limitations for damages.

The real interesting note was that the county was also covered by sovereign immunity. So even if the county had liability for negligence in the care of this engine, good luck collecting!

Lesson: be very careful in any long term contractual agreement with a government.

That's a good point about getting any agreement nailed down in writing. Don't forget that the 952 "deal" was originally between the R&LHS and Dr. John Roberts not the County.
My only experience with Dr. Roberts was in late 1975 when we experienced a broken whistle on 2101(AFT1) enroute from Chicago to Birmingham. It happened at the end of a long day just outside St.Louis and we called Dr.Roberts who was at the museum and asked if we could borrow a whistle from one of his locos in the collection until we got to Birmingham at which point we'd ship it directly back to him. He flatly turned us down saying "we don't cannibilize our precious historic icons". Fortunatly a radio producer heard of our plight and did an on air story of our need and Roberts refusal to help, and 2 St.Louis individuals surfaced immediatley with whistles to loan and the next morning we were on our way in good voice!!
Needless to say it endeared Dr. Roberts to our crew forever. Oh well, it takes all types!!
Ross Rowland

I can't speak for the Museum of Transportation, but here is one former employee's take on this story. These are strictly my own thoughts.

Hopefully this issue has finally been settled and we can all move on to other more constructive things. There are surely lessons to be learned. One is that the term “permanent loan” should never, never be used between any groups or institutions. If you can’t agree to transfer ownership of an item for internal reasons, which may well have been one problem in the long history of this situation, try to find some other solution. Second, whatever you do should be well documented in writing with no verbal, “off the record” side agreements. It’s hard to fault those who caused this situation, as today’s standards are hard to apply to 1951, but whatever they said to each other back then died with them, leaving the problem to fester for years. Third, if you don’t provide financial or other measurable support to an item it is hard to maintain any claim over it. After some period of time it will be considered abandoned no mater how strong your emotional attachments. If you really care about the artifact you should support it. If you will only provide support if you have control of it you will find it hard to convince others you are really concerned for its condition.

In this case one organization found it could not care for its locomotive and arranged to place it in one of the only railroad museums that existed at the time. Remember that the B&O Museum had not opened yet. Other than Travel Town in Los Angeles and the Henry Ford Museum, only the Smithsonian in DC and the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia had steam locomotives in 1951, and they weren’t interested in this one. Up until the 1980s all of the attempts to house the MOT collection in buildings or even sheds were unsuccessful. The will was there but the money never could be had. That left all the locos there out in the open, not just this one. #952 was placed so the ridge to the west would give it some shelter from the wind and the worst of the weather. Over time this worked out badly. When the first shed was put up in the mid 1980s it was very hard to get it off the end of that track with several cars behind it and the track falling apart under them. In recent years MOT was accused of all kinds of underhanded motives for this, but the intention at the time was to try and protect the loco.

Note that there was no government involvement at the start of this saga. The agreement was between an independent museum and a rail historical society. The museum came under government ownership about 30 years later, which could not have been predicted at the time.

At the risk of dragging this thread off-topic:

Chicago to Birmingham via St. Louis? Did you miss the left turn at Albuquerque or something? (Seriously, can you offer some commentary on the route and the reasoning?)

Back on topic: the phrase "Permanent Loan" ranks right up there with "Jumbo Shrimp" and "Military Intelligence" in the lexicon. The dictionary definition of "permanent loan" is "gift."

JAC

Actually, MOT volunteers and employees did a lot more than the "surface" cosmetic restoration you mentioned.

Besides crafting a new steel cab to replace the DL&W applied fake wood cab (made partly of plywood), great care was taken to make the locomotive appear as it did in DL&W service. 952 today sits where she has sat since the end of the restoration, under cover in the Museum's Roberts Building, and on display. She is certainly in much better condition than many of the non operating steam locomotives in this country.

Ron and John:

I want to disagree with your analysis that a "permanent loan" is a bad idea. Let me explain why.

If an organization has an artifact that it deems valuable but does not have a place to keep it and/or display it, and finds a museum that is willing to accept it and/or display it, it is a good deal for both organizations. But what happens if that museum someday goes "bellyup" for whatever reason and the scrap merchants come along to dispose of the museums assets? Then the artifact in question is NOT part of the museum and would be returned to its owners and thus saved.

Conversely, by the loan being "permanent", the owners of the artifact cannot come back someday and say to the museum that accepted it that they now wanted it returned to them.

I will say that such an arrangement should be in writing and signed by officers of each organization. Thus a "permanent loan" is a very good deal for both organizations and can be a bonifide way to find a place for an important artifact that might not otherwise find a home.

Les Beckman (Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum/North Judson, Indiana)

I just deleted two posts, containing flames about the late Dr. John Roberts, and another commenting on the flame. I tried to edit the second one, but accidentally deleted it in its entirety.

If that poster could repost the section without flames, I would welcome it.

Please remember everyone, flames will not be tolerated against the living or the dead.

Let me kindly restate a flame-free version of my previous post. I actually deleted it, as I saw no need to respond once the offending post was removed. Anyway, on to the substantive point:

I never met the man, but from what I hear, Dr. Roberts was an unusual guy. I heard he was hard to get a long with, which would fit with his refusal to loan Rowland a whistle. That being said, his policy of not parting out anything has led to the fact that almost everything at MOT is still intact, locomotive jewelry-wise. Roberts' odd hobbits probably was a contributor to the 952 litigation. Verbal agreements, done on the side or through informal channels were the way business was conducted back then.

Even with his personality, Roberts did have a pretty neat vision, and because MOT was around way back in 1944, the museum managed to save equipment that otherwise wouldn't have made it into the preservation era otherwise, the 952 is an example. Who knows what would have happened had MOT not existed. The same goes for the Purdue Collection, and countless other items in the museum. The museum is infamous for the deplorable condition of the artifacts and property that occurred in the 1970s and early 1980s before Saint Louis County assumed ownership and operation of the museum. It is an image that the museum is still trying fight. I encountered another visitor at another museum recently who when he found out that I lived in St. Louis was telling me what a "junk hole" MOT was. I asked him if he visited in the last 10 years, he hadn't. Still, with the problems, the museum does pretty well, and it a great place to visit. Equipment is under cover, there are long range plans to cover the last bit of the collection that isn't under cover. There is long-term planning, and a site plan is in place. While much of it has come too late for some pieces of equipment, the bulk of the collection is safe. The 952 wasn't willfully neglected by the museum, but was a victim of the problems that befell the museum in the 1970s and 1980s. The locomotive is rather nice, and is under cover now do to hard work of volunteers.

I hope the R&LHS chapter decides not to appeal, as I wish them luck in restoring the Water Gap depot. I think both organizations have better use for their funds than to pay more attorney's fees

I totally agree that what happened to the 952 was not willfull but rather a symptom of a larger institutional issue. I also applaud the late Dr.Roberts foresight and dedication to saving from oblivion many wonderful examples of our by-gone history that otherwise would have been lost forever.
As I stated above ,in my opinion the Chapter is fortunate that the verdict came out as it did as what would they have done with the 952 if the court had ordered St.Louis to return it??? IMHO it's best off where it is and now that its been cosmetically restored and under cover and being enjoyed by the public-leave well enough alone.
I'm very hopeful that those who have been financing this legal battle within the Chapter will come to the same conclusion???
Time will tell.
Ross Rowland