Or donate them to non-profit group and take a tax deduction for the appraised value.
Keith

[quote="Loco112If the seller wants dollar he is going to have to quantify what he has, or pay someone to quantify what he has, or take what he can get from whom ever is offering, or just keep them.[/quote]

Or, scrap them as he has already done with the rest of the machine shop.

If Midwest wants to buy them as cores for higher than scrap value, fine....or anybody else for that matter. Whether they have any value as cores is unknown, but we know what cast iron is worth by the pound.

Perhaps somebody will take a chance and make a real offer....if so, fair market value will then have defined itself. Let us hope they go to a good home.

dave

OK, a fact: I'm advised a few months ago there was an auction in Kentucky, and a locomotive air pump in a similar situation sold for $350.00. It was complete but unused and rusty, and had its governor attached to it with a pipe nipple.

If anybody has a better comparable please post it here. We're finally getting past theory into reality.

dave

Glad you found a price Dave. That is exactly the kind of information I was hoping for. I appreciate everyone else's input too. Things are looking up for the pumps now!

I have an old Shop Services catalog from the early 90s and in it a compressor was worth $750.00 core credit. I extrapolated that to about $1,200 in today's dollars assuming that the compressor is complete and rebuildable.

I did not know that there were industrial an railroad versions of these compressors. I always thought that railroad compressors were just repurposed for stationary use. Learn something new every day!

Has anyone purchased these compressors? I'm just curious.

Bernie

I sent the offers to the scrappers but haven't heard back on what they want to do yet. They are supposed to decide soon as they told me to plan on removing them late next week since demolition is getting close.

Those are Westinghouse 9.5" air pumps, the same kind can be found on many locomotives, including D&RGW 346. In good running order they could be worth around 10 grand or so, in their current state they might be worth nothing. Like Dave says they need to be torn down to know how bad they really are. and yes you can sleeve an air pump, but it is a last resort. being as the one is missing a top head and I can see the top gasket surface is messed up and needs to be remachined, I believe that is evidence of the condition of the rest of the pumps. you might get a few hundred bucks at most because to get them running will be a lot of work. I know this because I have polished my fair share of dog turd pumps that somebody "got a really good deal on".

It looks like these are going to go to some outfit thats close to where thay are located.

I still need to piece together a couple of the 9.5" pumps.

The plan is to create an interactive dispaly. Maybe one pump "in motion" and the pump of the worst parts into a cutaway and get it to one of the RR museums. I'd also like to add a pump governor.

I'd take a pump throttle valve (that came along about 1940), just incase I could ever get a Cross Compound pump to do up a similar display, but for superpower, for a second museum.

So anyone with junkers or just junker parts, please save your parts and I'll pay you for the scrap value and cover the shipping.

We got the pumps out today! Just in time too as the scrap shears were chewing outside the building. I should be shipping them to a new owner very soon. I appreciate the advice everyone gave here and via PM.