A+ Robert. :-)

Yes scrapping large industrial objects is not a zero expense proposition. Chopping metal up into furnace sized chunks can get quite expensive in itself.

It was a bit of a long trip Robert, but you got yourself to where we already knew we were before departing.

It isn't decisions made to scrap from museum or private collections, although a few have been made. It's about 90% not making any decision at all until the options have dissolved, along with a lot of the fabric, thus saving the trouble of actually having to make a tough, potentially unpleasant decision. The other 10% is what's happening in Florida and in other locations, where the collector, be it a person or organization, dies off and there is just stuff to be dealt with by people who are legitimately clueless finding the easiest way out.

So, yes, they must die, but they will largely without any decisive, conscious effort made to kill them until there's no other option, which doesn't mean they should have not been colected in the first place, or that they should. It's just how we let things happen.

Thye best - any maybe only - way to prevent it is to make the stuff relevant to enough people such that there's adequate momentum and support to actually make a pleasant decision to realistically maintain in preservation. So, it's not about technicalities, just about programming and marketing. Lots of people are available for hire to do what enough people are willing to pay them to do to keep your stuff nice and preserved, some will even pitch in and help with the work as well.

Can't actually believe this is news to you......you seem to have a better grasp than most foamers.

dave

And of course those feelings - and the apparent outright rejection of best practices from the museum profession -are what turns it into an emotional topic. Emotional baggage will generally suppress reasoned argument. So nothing changes and the incredible volume of deteriorating objects held by each organization simply drives them closer and closer to irrelevance and oblivion. Pity.

Robert:

I have to disagree. The question really is "Is this piece of equipment worth a $30,00 to $50,000 carbarn space?". When it is put in these terms, a lot that has been collected is not going to survive.

Most museums with sizeable collections could, by applying this test, trim their collections by 10% to 20%. In adddition, the "field of dreams" private collections are likely to deteriorate to the point where the heirs of the collector have no choice but to call in a scrapper. In my previous post, I listed cars at the museum where I am an active volunteer that I felt do not pass this test (5 of 50). If you want car numbers, here they are: 53A,1799,2723,4140,24. I hesitate to do this for any other collection due to lack of detailed knowledge and the desire not to offend friends at other museums.

If you would like me to, I could perform a review of the collection at your museum, if you promise me that no one would be offended.

My point wasn't that you can make a ton of money scrapping pieces of your collection, but more to not be afraid to scrap a piece. As was noted above, even of you come out even on the scrapping, any salvaged hardware may be of use to someone who has a viable 'whateveritis' and you've just freed up space that cost you money to maintain for something more deserving.

What really gets me though is the lack of reality in the railfan/rail preservation world. This GG1 is a prime example. If I posted here that I was cutting it up next month, I would be flooded with 'Dont do that' and 'How dare you' and 'give it to us' emails until my gmail exploded. The problem is everyone wants it saved, but very very few are willing to put their money where their mouth is. It happens time and time again. We here at CRHS get emails quite often telling us we should save engine XYZ, and we politely tell them we can't without the monetary support. Next thing I know, it's on some forum that the CRHS won't save 'ol 97 and we're a bunch of uncaring nitwits.

In the case of this GG1, it's 'Dont scrap it' and 'Why would you do that?' the reason I would (If I was the B&O) is because no one who can support it wants it and if it's given to someone who wants it but can't support it, the end is the same. It rusts away to nothing. If someone comes along with the money and the means, I'd be happy to help them preserve it. I don't WANT to see it scrapped, but reality is a cruel master and one that eventually must be faced. That's why the B&O recently cut up some other cars. They knew they weren't going to do anything with them and they offered them to other preservation groups and had no takers. They met their end a couple weeks ago.

My point is, if you want to see something preserved, come up with a reasonable plan, find financial backing and like-minded people, and do it. Be responsible about it, be involved with it, and quit harping on the Internet about how someone else should be doing it. While I'm not completely sold on it, I give a lot of credit to that RCD guy (The F40 society guy) because despite the naysayers (myself included), he's doing something, and that speaks volumes.

Russ

Art and Western Star,

Understanding your POVs, I offer this suggestion.

It will be very hard to take the emotion out of the railroad picture if folks that care (i.e. the doers, financial backers) are presented with a Hobson's Choice of either "proper preservation" or scrapping.

For some organizations, the strictest "proper approach" will work wonders, for others you risk alienating the people that continued preservation relies upon. There are simply too many varieties of rail presevation (from the Smithsonian down to old Fred's backyard) for a single standard (free of emotion) to cover.

Honestly, the drive to remove emotion may be a quicker path to destruction than percieved over collecting for many groups. That needs to be Gaddressed on a case-by-case, organization-by-organization basis.

Here is a test case, appropriate if the "Windber collection" mentioned up thread is on-topic:

The East Broad Top has been in "private preservation" for 50 years. Talk about over collecting! Scores of unused hoppers, miles of unused track, buildings collapsing due to the ravages of time. Should most of it been euthanized 30 years ago? That arguement would deem the recent work of the FEBT irrelevant, as they slowly bring elements back from a prolonged state of suspended animation? Shouldn't the excess have been cut up when the future was bleak?

When it comes down to it, the owner of the artifact - be it museum or individual - will decide when the burden of an artifact's existence outweighs the benefit.

There's nothing wrong with museum standards for museums that can support them, but I would not cast too broad a net. We need our small players who thrive off emotion as much as Sacramento's and Smithsonian's.

To Russ' point, this isn't about pleasing foamers, it is about the individual situation. If #4876 was chopped tomorrow, I'd raise a toast to my many personal encounters with her in operation. Any complaint would have to come from someone who had raised money to save her and was rebuked... an unlikely scenario.



Rob

A reminder that comprehensive proposals for acquisition and preservation of all surviving elements of the EBT have been made by both Federal and Commonwealth agencies in past decades. Both proposals were essentially rebuked by the owners.

Though I applaud the recent partnership actions between the FEBT and the EBT, it's still not going to reach the full potential, absent a benevolent benefactor or lottery winner.

I hope no one starts scrapping objects just because they show a little rust. A decaying object still has much value. One option is to just maintain it in a state of "arrested decay." A museum object doesn't have to look factory fresh, and I actually wish more rail objects were preserved and displayed in as-found, weathered condition. Take a look at the ghost town of Bodie, CA, on the internet to see how preserving something "in a state of arrested decay" can make an outstanding and effective museum. What if the National Park had chosen to scrap Bodie because it was too expensive to make new?

Regarding the Pennsy GG1 discussion above, scrapping a GG1 in the year 2011 seems to me intolerable.

Once you destroy an artifact, it's gone forever. I hope museums think very carefully before clicking "delete" on an artifact, and don't do so just because the artifact shows rust, or doesn't look new...

Bodie is not in an urban area with visigoths and vandals equipped with cordless Sawzalls. What resources were required to simply leave a ghost town alone? Far less that 4876 needs, I dare say. What about preservation of Bodie AFTER the vandals and souvenir pickers had gone through the place like locusts? What would there be to preserve THEN?

There is a lot of this coming, people. Get used to it. Some of us have already been dealing with this problem, and have had to make some hard choices. It hurts, no question about it. But you cannot save everything. That is a simple and difficult truth.

Howard P.
Who has seen some rather nasty-looking GG1s in the last year or so (and some very nice ones, as well).

The corollary to this, which everybody forgets about, is that any time you set aside or designate an item for "historic preservation," be it a lowly paper ticket or the Empire State Building, you burden its owners, future owners, and future generations with the responsibility and liability of future maintenance and oversight.

The absolute worst case scenario of this mentality has to be the Library of Congress. In forming a central repository of "every book published in the United States," we have created a bureaucracy that theoretically has to find room for dozens or even hundreds of books A DAY--at least every book which is submitted for a LoC number. (The weekly shipment from Arcadia Publishing alone must be staggering.)

Public and academic libraries deal with this kind of stuff routinely, "weeding" books by the dozens or hundreds monthly. But part of the process is a methodological analysis of the book's continued value or usefulness (a 40-year-old book on soap carving has far more comparative relevance than a 25-year-old book on desktop publishing: http://awfullibrarybooks.net/?p=15138 ), its availability elsewhere in the system or network, the availability of information elsewhere, etc.

You want to save a GG1, or for that matter a caboose, or a station, or a UP Big Boy or Centennial, or a SP 0-6-0 or operable dining car or handcar, or even the Petrified Forest? Simultaneously commit the long-term mission of some person, group, agency, collective, or endowment/trust fund to go back and erect a shed, or get a paint job every 10-15 years, keep it operable, keep people from collecting petrified wood, etc.

We don't own this stuff. We are merely the temporary custodians. It is imperative for us to leave behind either enough future people willing to be future custodians and pass them on to their next generation, or we might as well be buried in/with them. And this applies to everything from Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid to the old tavern or log cabin to the Concorde and Space Shuttle.

And I would argue that, as an avocation, hobby, trade, or whatever, we--the tourist railroad and museum groups, the NRHS, the R&LHS, the railroad industry, the magazine and website editors/creators, the enthusiasts, all of us--are at best somewhat delinquent in that task, and at worst are nearly criminally negligent in that regard.

If something, like a GG-1, is out of the way and not junking up the museum she can sit for a long time. Think of the condition of the Alco PA types imported from Mexico. Ole 4876 can sit for another 50 years and still not be that bad. If she sits and 50 years from now a group gets all fired up and raises the money to restore her she is still there. Once she is scrap it's done.

> It will be very hard to take the emotion out of the railroad picture if folks that care . . .

When the emotion goes, the passion for whatever cause you're preserving soon follows. If it weren't for "folks that care", there wouldn't be much to discuss here, would there?

In no way was i suggesting taking emotion out of preservation I was suggesting that the idea of this hit list to scrap sounds like a bunch of dotting old men thinning the herd. I know that many times well meaning plans go wrong and things don't have the best results. But instead of finding fault with the collections we have why not present new innovative ideas for management of the collections.

It's not "out of the way:--it (and other "future projects"), in spite of the best "clean-up" efforts of the B&O Museum, is still visible to folks rolling by on the "First Mile" trips; it sits in a place frequented by vandals and "lowlifes," and will rust further and further.



Mexico ain't Baltimore--my impression was that the PAs were stashed in a desert-dry location; Baltimore can be "swampy" in the summer and snowy in the winter.



Do you realistically think that preservation will ease, railroads will relax restrictions on movement, paint and paint booths and sheet metal will be cheap and abundant, and--most importantly--people three generations removed from ever seeing the things in action will have MORE interest and fascination in these things than the current crop of armchair fans? Is that John Lennon's "Imagine" I hear in the background?

There's a fine line between starry-eyed optimism and hopeless delusion, Tom. And someone's going to have to address where the damn thing's going to have to sit in the meantime. Because the B&O Museum doesn't need a "junkyard" any more than the rest of us do.