It means your railway museum needs to put its investments in those metals, so that as the metals rise, so does the museum's buying power. A trolley museum needs to care about the price of copper.

As for these coaches, this is a classic case. Every museum has known about these cars for decades. Did ANY take proactive action to get the cars? Nope. There's your answer. They weren't interested for years, they aren't going to suddenly get interested at the 11:59 hour. Partly because late action makes everything more expensive.

How did they get so beat up? The glass is out of them... they look very rough. I thought I saw pictures of them on the ferry intact.

Anaheim, Calif.-based Specialty Restaurants owned the Lansdowne. The company talked for years of turning it back into a floating restaurant. The last plan was for Toronto. It had served as one for several years on Detroit’s waterfront in the 80s. I’m guessing the vandals did most of the damage in Erie. However it seems the engine, side wheels, and a lot of structure was removed before the mid 90s. Anyone else know how Detroit’s restaurant/ferry was converted to a “barge”?
It has been evicted from waterfronts in Detroit, Erie, Cleveland and Buffalo and the restaurant has never materialized.

News item about The Lansdowne's owner, Specialty Restaurants and the decision to scrap is at this Erie Times post.
http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art ... 371/0/news

Here is a thread from late 2005 about the time of the first sinking. Photos from when it was moored at Erie PA in 2004. By that time vandals had done enough damage to render everything scrap.
http://www.railroadforums.com/forum/sho ... hp?t=11009
I wonder if the Hiawatha porthole window still survives.

Thread with photos of the Lansdowne in better days.
http://atdetroit.net/forum/messages/5/1 ... 1207259453

Had Specialty Restaurants offered to donate these cars to a local museum (town depot along the MILW etc.) before they were trashed by vandals there may have been a good chance to put at least one on outside display somewhere.

Is this the other GTW car ferry, the Huron, still afloat at the USS Great Lakes Works in River Rouge:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&g ... 6&t=h&z=18

Reading through the threads that buzz-morris posted; apparently, it is now sunk at this location; here is a picture from the boatnerd.com website. The orange cylinders are the tops of the stacks:

This has just been reported on one of the Milwaukee Road Yahoo Groups. Hopefully some one within the Ranks of IRM & MRHA will report some more on this.

According to an article in today's Buffalo News, the two Skytops that
resided on the former carferry Lansdowne, are going to the Illinois
Railway Museum:

http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/b ... 28953.html

New Story:

BUFFALO

Lansdowne will make final voyage to scrap heap

By Brian Meyer NEWS STAFF REPORTER

Updated: 04/22/08 6:39 AM

An old ferry, stripped down to its iron hull, will make one final voyage this week when tug boats guide it to the old Bethlehem Steel site. After making the approximately 1zmile trip, what’s remaining of the Lansdowne will be turned into scrap metal. Demolition crews have already dismantled the top sections of the 123-year-old vessel that has been moored at the South End Marina, along Fuhrmann Boulevard. The original plan was to perform all demolition at the current site. But John Wargo, president of Wargo Enterprises and Demolition Services, said the company decided to move the hull to a location that could more easily accommodate the massive equipment. Akron-based Wargo Enterprises has been tearing apart the vessel the size of a football field for more than two weeks. Wargo recently bought the Lansdowne from Specialty Restaurants Corp., operator of Shanghai Red’s at Erie Basin Marina, for an undisclosed price. The vessel, which once ferried railroad cars and was later a floating restaurant, was brought here about two years ago with plans to salvage it. But visions of turning the ferry’s skeletal remains into a functioning vessel never materialized. Local officials grew weary of seeing the unsightly structure in Buffalo’s outer harbor. In February, Mayor Byron W. Brown and Rep. Brian Higgins, D-N. Y., told Specialty Restaurants the vessel’s dilapidated state broke numerous laws and insisted it be removed. So city officials said they were relieved when crews started demolishing the Lansdowne earlier this month.
The debris is being trucked to a mill and sold as scrap metal. Wargo said some items will be preserved, including the steam engine.

Rail cars that some believe once served as dining rooms were recently removed from the Lansdowne and have been acquired by the Illinois Railroad Museum, Wargo said.

Two tugs owned by Great Lakes Towing Service of Cleveland are scheduled to tow the vessel to a site near the old Bethlehem Steel slag piles. The final phase of the dismantling mission should take about two weeks, Wargo predicted. “By the end of April or early May, we should be all swept up and gone,” he said, adding that the company has all necessary approvals to proceed. Meanwhile, The Common Council’s Legislation Committee has an item on to-d ay’sagenda that would tighten city regulations involving vessels that come into Buffalo. South Council Member Michael P. Kearns, whose district includes part of the waterfront, said the goal is to pass a law that would ban dilapidated or abandoned vessels from coming into the city. The Lansdowne was an “eyesore” from the first day it arrived, Kearns lamented. “The Common Council is looking at an ordinance to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” he said.

bmeyer@buffnews.com

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Also reported on one of the Milwaukee Road Lists

Hi Milwaukee fans,

MRHA President Bob Storozuk has been negotiating for the salvage of the
SkyTops for "months" with the scrap company and they are still negotiating costs, this just became reasonable over the weekend and as of last night Bob had not contacted IRM, there are still details and costs to be worked out. Be patient, there is room in the building at IRM that MRHA members and grantees have donated the money to house Milwaukee equipment inside at IRM,and as soon as everything is worked out there will be more posted somewhere. In the meantime consider making a donation to cover the cost for the Skytops and their transport and restoration, it will be MRHA's next project to fund through donations. In
other words, now is the time to stop talking and start getting out those checkbooks if you really are dedicated in saving these Milwaukee passenger cars!

Tom Helms
Lake Villa, IL

That's very good news if MRHS can intervene to save them, even moreso if they have covered storage in reserve for them.

How does that sort of arrangement work with IRM, regarding the covered storage?

I would like to see pictures of these hulks now, the pictures of the bardge did not show the removed condition of the cars. If the condition of the cars/shells are as bad as it sounds is it really worth all of this effort? I could of directed the MRHA where a decent Milwaukee Road Coach is located and can guarantee track space for said car.

Before we pass to much judgment, lets see what they are getting them selves into.

I can't find them now, but there was a link in this thread (or a related thread) to earlier photos of the cars on the ferry that showed the trucks in place.

Jeff, I think you're spending way too much time in front of a computer............................go chip some rust, it helps with the voices

Wow, that's kind of depressing. I guess there's some unique adaptive preservation opportunities for the remaining parts of the cars, though. I don't see them ever becoming intact, fully-restored cars any time soon.

Don't worry Dave, a little plywood and Bondo go a long way.

Need to see some pix posted. I had heard the bodies were cut away from the underframes, then the remaining bodies were cut down the middle from roof to floor. I was told the floors and the Nystrom trucks were left behind, as the equipment they were using was not heavy enough to lift the floors and trucks, even with the bodies cut away. In my mind, I see a picture of an old Athearn HO obs body before it is mated to the underframe. If this is true, it will take some really creative interpretation to make something out of the shells. JMO

It was mentioned in the report that the steam engine from the Lansdowne was also saved.
Does anyone know where that will end up?

Greenhouse.




Or, since they no longer have glass, perhaps a jungle gym.

I wouldn't want to ride a car made out of 75% bondo.