This discussion is starting to gain the moderator’s interest (and not in a good way)

This discussion is becoming personal and argumentative…

But it is also informative as to how cars may be viewed; by we in the preservation communities they are artifacts, others in our community view them as restoration spare parts, and the owners view them as surplus assets to be disposed of. Each of these views is rational, and defendable, but may be in conflict with those of the other members.

Two of the groups described above are members of our community. A representative of the third group is also a member.

Lets be careful about how we approach the discussion, and comments we make about each other. Your friendly moderators are watching. The discussion is generally good. Lets be careful out there and keep it that way.

Randy et al:

Like others, I believe this has been an exceptionally good thread.

The unfortunate reality of all of this is that we cannot save everything that is out there in harm's way. As much as we may want to, the limitations of space and money, primarily money, make the preservation of many significant or valuable artifacts impossible at worst, and extremely challenging at best.

For example, I would love to find a PRR X-29 to bring to Albany. This would allow me to replicate one of the only two boxcars owned by the Georgia Northern in the 1950's and 60's, GN 501. Unfortunately, if one were offered up right now, and Thronateeska had to pay for its relocation from wherever to SW Georgia, it would be highly unlikely we could do this and pay for its restoration. We have too many other projects already in the works, and the last thing we want to become is a railcar graveyard waiting room. If we decided to do the X-29 project, it would mean another project would be put on hold, a project that there would be no guarantee of finding the funds to do later. But, that said, depending on the situation, that decision might be made, and a piece currently in the collection might be made available to another group somewhere. That's the way it should work.

With money you can afford the space, which allows you the luxury of time by having a secure place to store, stabilize and eventually restore a piece of equipment. Without that money, your options become limited...what is important to the collection and your interpretive goals? Where should limited funds be directed? If we can't save everything, we can only try to save what we can within the limitations of money, time, space and collection objectives.

How many of us has thought (or stated out loud), "If only I could win the lottery, all of these problems would go away and (fill in the blank) would be restored for (fill in the blank) museum. All of us involved in this industry have lofty goals, and there is nothing wrong with that, as long as we realize THERE ARE LIMITATIONS to what we can save and properly preserve in the museum environment. It is fine to have these goals as long as we act on them ourselves, and don't expect someone else to do it for us. If we can't do it ourselves, let somebody else know about it before it becomes too late. That's one excellent ability of this board, with some recent examples of equipment having been moved to a good home thanks to a notice made here. If that's all we can do, it is so much better than doing nothing at all.

I will be waiting anxiously to see Tom's new business model when he can make it available. Many good ideas get floated here. That's one reason I keep coming back and reading and learning and discovering and...

And on that note...good morning everyone! Its a new day, and there's lots of work to be done, wherever you are, so let's make the most of it!

As long as we have the attention of the moderator, I was wondering if there was some first step, although a tiny one, that could be set up. My thought is that many of us know of, or will become aware of, equipment that is threatened in some way. Can a simple list, much as Mr Levin and others have provided, be kept on this site in some way? Nothing complex, just a list that can be updated simply in some way. Much as a links page is handled? Something that is updatable easily?

J.R. May

Rather than limiting it to threatened, why not also use it to offer surplus and deaccessioned items as well? Most equipment trades and transfers seem to come from word of mouth, specific inquiry and smoke filled room negotiations at conventions, so if you don't know what's where or the secret handshake it doesn't help much either the party who wants a specific item with the resources to care for it, or the party with too much stuff who needs to do better with less.

Another trend I have noticed recently is that deaccessions are frequently limited to other non-profits. This has its good and bad points - since I am aware of two private individuals right now who wish to acquire pieces in certain categories with the resources and track records to do a fine job of stewardship of them, but are frozen out because they are people rather than non-profit corporations. Good stewardship and preservation can come from a variety of sources, but generally not our outdoor storage junkyards. Can't we open our minds a bit further?

dave

Instead of focusing on what is gone from South plainfield, how about some conversation on efforts to get the Lehigh Valley "map" boxcar preserved? I have heard numerous "Jersey-stlye" rumors about efforts to secure this car, but nothing concrete.

Anyone here working on it?

Rob

JR
Thanks. I found this site by accident and am glad I did. Since most of the other sites just touch on preservation, I find this site offers most of what I need.

EB
Thanks for coming forward and also for your generosity. It is individuals and organizations like you and yours that allow us to preserve as much as we do. Your efforts are greatly appreciated. And as much as I would love to save everythng, we all know that isn't possible.

Randy
I did not mean or intend my response to Scott to be mean, personal or argumentative. I wanted Scott to know what really happened so he wouldn't harbor ill will towards anyone. I feel I did that in an open and straight forward manner. And if I came off in any other way, I appologize. It was not my intention.

Stephen
Sadly, you are right that we cannot save it all. In my spare time I restore classic cars. I recently found a '71 Mercury Cyclone Gt that had been sitting in the mud for 20+ years. I did not have the space for it but I did let several other Ford guys know about it and am pleased that Saturday it went to a new facility for parts harvesting. Sine the subframe and most of the floors were gone, it was only a parts car but these are parts that aren't reproduced, just like the parts we need in our efforts to restore and preserve our stock.

Dave
If I use deaccessioned in my next Scrabble game, will I be challenged? LOL.

And Scott has contacted me regarding the trucks for his N5 and I am hoping that we can get together on getting both of our needs satisfied.

Later!
Mr. Ed

J.R., you raise an interesting point. Speaking as a member of the RyPN Board for a moment, let me share some general background about the organization and its current resources.

From time to time people make good suggestions like J.R.'s for new services from RyPN. Most of these we are not able to act on. Let me explain why, using this idea as an example.

Technically it would be relatively easy for RyPN to set up a form to allow people to create items for a list like the one J.R. suggests--similar to the way Flimsies works. The hitch is staff time to support the list. "But what staff time," I hear you say... "People would just input things on the list and it would be generated automatically..."

It is our practical experience that everything--and I mean everything--requires staff time to support it. Take for example the proposed rolling stock list-- I can easily imagine many scenarios in which disputes would arise over whether the person who posts the object has authority to do so, whether only owners should be able to post, whether one should be able to post without the owner's permission or over their opposition, whether posts should be pulled if the owner objects, etc. Each of these will result in emails to the RyPN staff, which will have to be considered and responded to. Sometimes our initial feedback will not be viewed as acceptable, generating more correspondance. We know this to be true, from 6 years of practical experience.

Meanwhile, at the moment staff time is exactly our most scarce commodity. Our kind donors are supporting us financially at a level that covers our cash expenses. We do have good moderators to help with the Interchange. What we lack is volunteers to help with the editorial responsibilities. I am on long-term sabbatical from the editorial side, and Hume is essentially shouldering the entire load alone. As a result, we are not in a very good position to take on additional projects--no matter how small--that run the risk of increasing the load on our too-small staff.

So the long and the short of it is, the RyPN welcomes good ideas, but the best way to help them come to being is to bring us a proposal that includes resources (ie volunteer time) to implement the idea and maintain the new service indefinately.

If someone brings us both an idea and a plan to staff it for the long haul, the Board will consider it very seriously. But if the proposal is to offer new services with our existing volunteer base, I am afraid my own response would be that the staff is already overextended, and not in a position to support new services in the near term.

I don't mean to jump on your very good idea, J.R., but it provided an occasion to explain a little about RyPN's current staffing position, and set some expectations about the level of service the community can expect from us.

I rehashed the pros and cons of such a list in previous posts on this forum. The major problem arises in seemingly "making available" pieces that were acquired in "good faith" of long-term preservation, and no matter how carefully we carry out the practice and assure the long-term benefits to both sides, *someone* is likely to be peeved to no end.

This syndrome is so bad that I have had one party (thankfully in a non-railroad field) confide to me that he would never, ever promote the "availability" of the collection he has in public, only in VERY private discussions with museum boards. No matter who he offered the item(s) to, someone else is going to be insulted, no matter whether or not the items in queswtion would be an albatross in the wrong hands or not.

Another problem with such a list is that it is presumed such pieces are truly "available". I doubt we can find a truly "orphaned" piece of equipment anywhere; somewhere, someone has an ownership claim. Thus if I, for example, suggest a couple vintage freight cars sitting near Baltimore's Penn Station, I'm recommending pieces that are still owned and used by Amtrak. What right do I have to suggest a goal for someone else's stuff, noble as my intentions may be?

Lastly, any piece on such a list would have to be carefully vetted for ACTUAL conditions and circumstances. Some Fiddletown & Copperopolis enthusiast can slobber over the "last surviving F&C dining car" sitting in a field in Arizona and strongly advocate its preservation; but a practical operations person may instead point out that it's sitting on mismatched standard gauge trucks instead of its narrow-gauge trucks; it hasn't had an intact window in 50 years; it's sitting in a canyon accessible only by mules; and the only thing holding it together is the termites holding hands........... but run from the pitchforks and torches of deluded F&C fans if you scrap the car and put it out of its misery......

Hello Everyone,

I've read some great discussion on this and realize that there are some talented people and great thinkers that read and post on this board. I also realize that not everything can be saved as much as we want it too and that it will take a lot to change the thinking of many of the people in this field today to make the railroad preservation industry better. With that being said, I like the idea of a place where museums can post articles they have for deaccession or trade. Prehaps if all groups were approached, made aware of and apointed someone within their group that was approved by the moderators as the duly recognized representative from that group, could something like this work.

I've seen how things work and get sick when I hear about stuff like an IC E-8, way out of it's territory used for spare parts for a Pennsy E-8 when there is a Pennsy E unit in IC territory that could have been traded to save the IC unit, since there are only 2 now..... Stuff like this is sickening and Musuems need to communicate better with each other about surplus equipment. It's hard and it's hard to get around poeples attitudes about equipment, but it makes a better working invironment for all groups, when communication is open and more options are presented, than cutting equipment up, because it doesn't fit or we needed the space or it's to rough to work with.

Many times have I said boy if I won the lottery I'd do this and this, etc.... That hasn't happened yet, but I have gone out and bought 2 locomotives with my own money and saved them from an uncertain future. Now, the future is still a little uncertain for them, but unless a few things happen, they will not be scrapped. They may become yard ornaments, unless I can find somewhere willing to store them, so they can be restored to operation again, but I'm working on that. I offered a piece of equipment on this board with the hope that someone would want it, because I realize that my family will not have the resources to care for it ( unless lottery is won and then....). We could have cut the car up long ago, but we keep that hope that it is desireable to someone and not for spare parts. I'd like to see it go somewhere in it's service area and be interpretted as such, but we'll see. I have heard rumors of a couple groups fixing to cut locomotives up to trade parts. Now That scares me as one is an FM. Although it is hard to find FM parts, surely they can refrain from scrapping it and at least save it for parts and then donate the remains to a town or something to utilize as a static display... This would make more since, but by scrapping it, one group gets some parts they need and the other gets the money to use for something else, etc... Now this is rumor, but it's something to think about.

Now if the members of Rypn's Board want to think about starting some such posting, I'll volunteer some of my limited time to help in moderating it as I like to see things saved and go to good homes and put to good use, wether it be as a static display or restored to operation. ( I may have to upgrade to cable or dsl, though...but it might just be worth it.....)

Just my 2 cents worth.

Stuart

A few Ideas for a equipment list.
The only persons who would have a say in where it goes are the ones offering and the ones reciving. As far as everyone else, Put up or shut up.
The only person who could offer it would be the owner or dully appointed repersentive. ( As verified by the person maintaing this portion of the site.
It would need to be broken down into to catigories,i.e. Locomotives, pass car, Part, Manuals etc.
It would futher need to be sepeated by for Sale or for trade or donation to a person or group. The final say would be by the owner as to that person or groups feelings on the stewardship abiltiy of the reciving party.
There would be a separte listing of equipment that is known in need of preservation but the ownership is in question. i.e. there has been a wood box car in an abandon factory site that would make a good repersentation of the XYZ railroads car. the thought behind this is if someone is interested they can do the leg work required or someone here could post the info saying who actually owns it. This would serve to put interested parties in touch with each other, who other wise would have never know about each other.
Who ever took on the responsiblity would have to be a filter of sorts to maintain the integerty of the information before posting it to the site and also to maintain the privacy of the parties involved if so desired. The fianl dealings would not be posted to site unless the new and the old owners care to share the information with the rest of us. This would be a site to put parties involed toghter not to showcase or critize people involved.
What other ideas does anyone have for such an addition to this site?
Oh and one more thing, I'd be willing to invest in a dictionary to improve my spelling as well as invest my time to do this!

Erik:
Trust me, I realize the problems such a list could create. One reason I kind of left the idea open ended is that I just did not have the answers for the issues that would arise when I wrote it this morning before going to work. My first draft response was quite detailed and in the process nearly talked myself out of the whole idea!

The resulting posts bring up all the pitfalls. And there are many, no doubt.

This is one reason I used the idea of a simple list. Nothing formal. Avoid any museum politics, private property issues, etc. It must be simple. Pictures are not even required at the start.

I would tend to suggest a list, a Word document, developed by a few people at the outset, then posted as an article. Maybe do it quarterly?

I was thinking of how to break it out, with an eye on simplicity. Perhaps just Endangered and Preserved categories, and with luck items would move from the Endangered list to the Preserved list as time went by. Kind of a RyPN score card of sorts. Some on the Preserved list may be highlighted by an ** to indicate that while in a museum setting, they are still endangered.

That's my two cents and yes I'd be happy to help with the process and updating.


J.R.

There is a publication that used to be done by a lady that loved boats. It's called "Bone Yard Boats." It lists boats (mostly wood) that are in need of preservation. Mostly old cruisers and sailboats and they are all for sale. Maybe this could be a modle for a railroad preservation list. Some of the boats she hunts up and some are placed by people selling them. This is along the lines of Tom C.'s website, but just in a printed format. The subscription used to be $12 per year. I don't have a link to it, but will look as timer permits.

Just a thought,

Stuart

The list of "available equipment" as it has been described has already existed for a few years now: http://www.railswap.org It is free to use, and is frequently visited and posted to by both museums, railroads and equipment dealers.

The problem is that many (most?) museums will hide the fact that they are scrapping equipment until after the fact. The problem in this case isn't with technology but how museums interpret how such actions will be received.

However, having a roster of equipment is both feasable and necessary if we are to be able to appraise the significance of what is in our collections and what else is out there that might be acquired. The success or failure depends on how well we can plan our acquistions, get all of our "ducks in a row," and make a firm offer - which is impossible if you don't know what is out there.

Frank Hicks roster of preserved electric cars is the best example that we have in the US of such a list. The roster is at http://www.bera.org/pnaerc.html

Tom Cornillie

Tom,

Not trying to dump more work on you, but I think your web site list is perhaps a better repository for this type of information. RailSwap is good, and I check it probably 3-4 times a week just to see what new has shown up. But you have direct control over what is posted on your site, since you post it yourself. This is great, but I'm sure you would not want to take on much more work to maintain the page.

My main fear concerning an open forum listing like a RailSwap for historic preservation is the possibility of the owner being barraged by people more interested in "acquiring artifacts for historic preservation", as a friend of mine used to describe the theft of builder's plates, lights, bells, horns, whistles, etc. , than in preserving the complete car / locomotive / transit piece, or whatever. An unsolicited posting of a contact name and phone number or even mailing address or e-mail would be an intrusion on that individual's privacy. Now, if one person made the contact and was given sole authority to "broker" that piece, it might work.

I think there are more problems with individuals or groups being able to rescue equipment than some of us might think. That problem is, as I mentioned this morning, a general lack of sufficient funding to do everything we want or are trying to do. How long have I had that LIRR RS-3 listed with you, Tom? I think I have made contact with more groups on your recommendation than I was contacted by groups interested in the locomotive. Even though I am not giving it away, what I am asking is not prohibitive. In fact, I'll probably wind up losing my shirt on that deal, what with the continuing storage fees I have to pay. I believe it is the cost of moving the locomotive that has kept anyone from acquiring it.

But anyway, if someone can make it work, it will be a great thing to have a consolidated site for this kind of posting.