two points:

1. Tom, if I recall the steamers on the W&W during the collecting years have almost all gone on to restorations or at least homes with a purpose. One might say the W&W years were good as they kept the artifacts safe until the right home came along. None have been scrapped, correct?

2. I am glad IRM is doing what they can and storing steam inside. In 20 years IRM may be our "Barrry" where groups turn to find the next restoration candidate. I find nothing wrong with this approach for IRM but it is right for most museums who have niether the funds nor the room.

rob

> ...Building on your TRS-80 analogy, if you found a TRS-80 with a
> broken case, missing the power supply and half the keys from
> the keyboard, without a monitor, and with severe motherboard
> corrosion after a prolonged basement flooding, would it be worth saving?

Yes. What I am saying is that 50 years from now, and that is the key point in the example, the usable TRS-80 parts may be quite valuable to some one restoring old computers. Some of those keys could be used by someone with a better machine, but missing some parts. What ever processor RS used may be quite valuable as older TRS-80s used in "tourist service" have worn out their mother boards for what ever reason. Ok, the analogy gets a little rough here.

Might be interesting to note that we threw out the TRS-80 Model II, Model III, and Model IV Portable computers that we had, yet kept the Model I and a Model 100.

I have no idea why, it just seemed like the right thing to do.

Saving these engines was the right thing to do.

J.R.

Seems like one will fill in a hole in the collection, and the other be offered to a good home? What's debatable about the propriety of doing this? Now, if you want to discuss the rationality of the collections policy or how one defines a "good home" OK, but that's another ballgame.....

dave

There's another problem with this analogy:

IF we're using the "broken" TRS-80 as the basis for discussion, yes, maybe the parts are valuable to someone else. BUT this presumes two things: that someone else out there WANTS to restore a TRS-80, AND that there aren't 3,000 other identical machines out there.

Yes, a 1960 El Camino, a 1967 Karmann Ghia, and a 1956 Studebaker Deluxe in non-running condition shouldn't be randomly scrapped. BUT: do you know where they sit UNTIL someone restores them or scavenges the parts?

A JUNKYARD.

That's the job for Larry's Truck & Electric, Pielet Brothers, or maybe Jerry Jacobson or someone with cinder blocks, a big back lot, and forgiving neighbors, preferably in arid Arizona or New Mexico. It shouldn't be the job for a railroad museum.

There has been a lot of equipment that has sat in storage for many years and then either been brought back to life or been cleaned up for proper display. I think the main point is to not to let the museum look and feel like a junkyard. Out of sight storage is a form of preservation and as long as the museum sticks to it's true mission it's all good. When there is rotting equipment stored everywhere you've got a problem.

Keeping these steamer away from the scrap man and stored is a part of their preservation. Who knows where they might be in 50 or 100 years. Look at all of the LS&I steamers that were stored for many years and how they ended up. Some have fared better than others but they are all still with us and a number of them run showing a new generation what steam is all about. Who would have known back in the 1970's when there were all in dead storage looking a lot like a scrap line.

To address the junkyard reference, what if the people with the locomotives(or cars in this case) weren't willing to pay for them to be sent there, would you let the parts be sent to a scrapper, or would you salvage them yourself. Not to mention the 2-6-2 is one of only 2 left in existance, so if we scrapped it, and one of them was being restored, their wouldn't be another one to get a template, or even an idea for a part from. Unless a closet full of blueprints that we didn't know on them just showed up, and even then, blueprints don't give the same detail and visual reference as seeing a part that's actually been built. As for saying this move "." What's being waited on for 428 and the shay in the shop both require time, and waiting on outside sources, and anything else that might have been worked on did not suffer from the loss of a fraction of the work force for a few Saturdays. You also say that our philosophy of save all the locomotives from scrapping is flawed "This is not true, there is a difference between the number of steam locomotives vs. diesel locomotives out there for scrapping or saving. And we do take into consideration the cost of the move, and how it will effect our budget, but seeing as some of the dedicated staff aquired a grant for another project, the funds to move the locomotives were a little easier to part with.

I don't have a dog in this fight, but it seems the gist of the going nowhere debate is a disagreement with the priorities chosen by the management at IRM. Please take it up amongst yourselves, and share with us instead a list of equipment and other stuff you wish to deaccession and under what circumstances, so that some of us might find a way to help you remove unwanted rusty iron from your site.

dave

Dizz,

Somebody over on the IRM LIST mentioned that one of the locomotives was a wood burner and those are not exactly common. I would guess it was the Cypress Lumber Company locomotive.

Can you confirm?

By the way for the Roster hounds out there; they are listed on page 51 of J. David Conrads Steam Locomotive books.

Ted Miles

No it is not a wood burner, it burns coal. I have heard this rumor roaming around the shop but the locomotive was built for burning coal. I think this rumor started because it was a logging loco, and people assumed that it burned wood. The original Baldwin spec sheets say it was built for coal, thats not saying it never burned wood, but it may have been posable. And incase if you are wondering at the present time this locomotive is for sale. And YES the wheels do turn. A little oil and some pounding on the esentric gears did the trick. One insetting thing about this locomotive is that it has a factory installed water syphon with all parts accounted for but the rubber "river" hose.