After working with a lot of outfits, Silk Road is one of my first choices, but you really have to think about how it needs to work.

They run into a lot of empty backhaul situations, and if you're in the right place, and ready, you can get a much better rate on the backhaul - but its on their schedule. I've had clients wait up to a year, patiently, for the phone call and then WHAM - can you do it next week? We're comin' through!

They are real proud of things they've done that would seem impossible - like moving California Amtrak cars (bilevels) via highway.

Back to the Seashore discussion - yeah, I knew that guy and he moved cars for us as well. I have a picture of the steel Stratford 164 car with dual axles welded to the back of it and a truck tongue on the front; legally licensed as a truck trailer.

I suggest this every chance I get, but on anything less than an 85' car, you really want to thing about what it might take to build a ramp track and transport equipment as a flatcar load on its own wheels. If the weight and clearances don't get you, it has some real potential that way. There's been some relatively epic moves done in the last few years as rail flatcar loads - particularly steam. For the price of one crane operation, you can build a receiving 'dock' up to the 4' level, crib the flatcar stable, and roll it on, then weld it down to the deck. You may need to crane stuff on at the origin, but at your operation, you can cable it off.

Because of doublestack clearances, a lot of moves that NEVER would have worked before may work now.

We just watched a ridiculously heavy ex-PRR donated six-axle flatcar get flatbed-trucked as a 'wide load' to a railroad museum. At the origin the steel mill used their overhead rail crane to load it. At the receiving end, multiple backhoes lifted one end at a time, jacked it up off the truck trailer, cribbed it, drove the trailer out from underneath, and repeated the process to set it back down on its own trucks. Brilliant. No specialized crane involved.

A number of the smaller steam engines at Mid Continent came in on flat cars. Granted these were in 50-60 ton range. They built temporary raised cribbed track and rolled them off. A number of freight cars as well. I helped with a few. Sometimes we used a crane for the freight cars. The pressed steel, Fox trucked box car comes to mind as I had to weld a bracket back on the flat car before we put it back for interchange. The Louisiana Cyprus Lumber Co #2 {small 30 ton mogul scrap condition now} was moved by lowering the flat car by removing end truck, the rolled the engine up like a rollback truck. Except of course then they had to jack or crane up the lowered end and replace truck under the flat. Richard Hinebough engineered the move. Steve Butler has pics of this particular move back in about 1960. Lots of ways to move things, like always you need to do your homework and be creative. You don't have to spend like Washington DC does. Of course if nobody is watching how and why you spend like this, then why ask why? I would not let most museum managers have my credit card nor would I hire them to watch over my money or hire contractors to do my work. There may indeed be some honest and productive museum managers somewhere, but none around here.

We moved the former Copper Range #29 by truck on 3 low boys. We had to take the boiler off frame for clearance reasons, but that lowered the wt of all three trailers to almost no special wt permits.

What I have noticed at one of the mid-west museums is that the current managers only seem to know how to throw money at a project, rather than tap into there own labor force who actually know how to do things. If some of the managers were to be held responsible for wasteful spending {as our politicians should be} you might see some of the parasites drawn to the non profits find other lines of work.

I do not criticize the original movement in this thread as I am not involved. But this trend of wasteful spending by non profits who are in dire need of monetary support do need to be held accountable before they run their employer into bankruptcy by foolish and unrealistic spending. Whether it be buying a new generator, repairing a boiler or hiring everything under the sun out to people who are not the right choice. Like hiring felons to clean out your shop, no joke this happened. The ex-cons ran off with about $60,000 worth of brass, bronze injectors, crown brasses, lubricators, you name it. Then didn't notify the authorities about the theft? Better stop I am getting lathered up now. Cheers, John.

Concur with the others who think this was a bit steep, though there is always someone willing to take all the money you'll give them. We moved CN 5288 from Tobyhanna to Chattanooga 9 years ago (wow, has it been that long?) for somewhere around $60k as I recall. The volunteer work and donated materials we received probably saved us $15-20K, so that would have been around $75K total. The move included prep time, special train charges on the Delaware-Lackawanna (thank you, Donny C!), two cranes at each end, fabrication of rigging including lifting beams (HEAVY duty!), tie downs by a professional crew (thank you, Marvin Winters!), high wide charges by the RR's (CP & NS), the use of a very special flatcar (1 of 2 in existence), insurance, travel and hotel charges for a crew of six for almost a week and two planning trips ahead of the move. I know RR rates have gone up quite a bit, but even double would not have added an egregious amount to the overall cost.

Best,
Mike Brown
TVRM

I wish people would stop mis-reporting what happened with the first truck. The trailer assembly was engineered by the same company that makes the Tru-Hitch system, which were the end units. The trailer never got out of the parking lot due to a nervous police officer that called in DoT to double check the load. No problem to this point.

The two guys that were sent didn't know how to measure the overall length of the truck because it was longer then the tape measure they had (couldn't figure out how to add). Their measurement of the height of the car and the width of the car was a full foot more then what the trucking company, the escort (route surveyor) and I measured (the 3 of us were within 2 inches of each other on the measurements). Every statement from the inspectors were: We feel ..., I feel..., not the rules are..., the permit says... Yes the trucker looked like Uncle Abner from the backwoods of the Adirondacks, but he was the second partner of a well established trucking company in NW Connecticut. The state was so helpful that after the move was canceled no one at the DMV, or DoT would tell them what documents they needed, who to see or where to go to get the trailer assembly approved and certified. Everytime they called the person they last talked to was either not available, or no one knew of them, and after he re-explained what was going on, they would say, you need to talk to... and would forward him to a voice mail. 2 other owners or heavy haul and odd load trucking companies and the head rigger of a local crane company, had been by the day of the attempted move and none of them saw a problem with the load or trailer based on their experience and the CT statutes. Back in the original posting for the car's move there is a fuller explanation of what happened back in August of last year.

But anyways, yes the move was completed via another hauler, and the total for 4 cranes (2 at each end, due to the car length, wood construction and no 40' lifting beam available) and hauling was $14,000 to travel 50 miles, with the museum doing most of the prep-work and acting as extra hands on the loading days, which was not too much.

Rich C.