Selling public property generally involves announced bids and sealed envelopes; preferably using a Vickery Auction (the winning bidder pays the second highest price)

https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/r ... y-auction/

Otherwise an enterprising arbitrageur merely flips the property, either in total or through parceling. Of course the whole purpose of the creation of the authority was the preservation of the ROW intact...

Steamtown is more than just the locomotives. I have found the collection of Nathan drawings to be very useful and staff to be very responsive in providing copies and assistance.

What is the legislative mandate that requires Steamtown to do more than they are currently doing?

There are legitimate fears, in the eastern Pa. rail scene, of granting too much power unto what some would call a "rail baron."

We can enjoy the steam, F-units, RDCs, and fancy trains all we want as railfans. But business associates of the Reading & Northern spin a different story. Muller/the company has litigated against several would-be "competitors" who occupy trackage that would neatly fit the R&N "empire," and the funny part is that some of the targets are not even themselves completely virtuous (such as "designated operators" supposedly granted operations under no-bid contracts with seemingly automatic renewals without "performance review" by the owning authority, in one alleged case).

"Let Muller run it!" is fast becoming the asininely simplistic "foamer" proposal to replace "Let Strasburg restore it!" for a reflexive, and thoughtless, "foamer" response.

I'm in no position anymore to weigh the pros and cons of various Pa. DOs like the R&N, North Shore network, D-L, Wellsboro & Corning, or anyone else of that ilk. There was a time when I was tied in enough to hear both the hosannas and the harrumphs, the laurels and the kvetching, and I'm watching it all over again with my home county now a part of the situation, from 2000+ miles away.

But one last thought to shut up the "foamers" who still recognize diesels won the battle over steam decades ago:
What happens to the "Alco-haulic" savior of Schenectady/Montreal-built diesels if Muller takes over?

THANK YOU. I think the same thing with every spam anti-government post that ends up in this thread, written by someone with an axe to grind. The only explanation as far as I can tell for the demand to exceed its mandate is that it was named "Steamtown" by the previous, nearing-bankruptcy entity founded by a seafood baron's inheritor, whose collection of mainly-Canadian non-Lacakawanna locomotives were included in the sale. If it had been named something national-park-ish like the Pullman National Historical Park (how about Lackawanna Shops National Historical Park?) I don't think anyone would be complaining that it isn't the premier restorer and operator of steam in the USA, which wasn't its mandate. I have never heard one complaint here that the aforementioned Pullman entity isn't restoring and operating Pullman cars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g00NplDnLLQ

I never said there was a legislative mandate to "do more than they are currently doing".
However SNHS exists due to a legislative mandate and that is a distinguishing attribute between SNHS and GCR that makes this sort of straight-up comparison inapplicable and quite frankly illogical.

Point of fact; part of the problem with Steamtown is the absence of concrete legislative mandates. This is not particularly new; Congress has been alienating its legislative responsibility for decades. When Nancy Pelosi made the infamous quip about passing the bill to find out what was in it, many people were shocked--especially with this view of the legislative process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ8psP4S6BQ
s
Yet she was right. The typical bill makes tens or hundreds of references to "the Secretary" who actually fills in the huge holes they leave in haste.

And so it’s left to the Secretary (of the Interior, in this case) who immediately ships this to somebody else until it its some Director or Chief who actually puts the clothes on the mannikin.

And then the Congresscritter goes out and declares he or she won the war for the noble cause. Now every little girl can have a pink pony. Feed bills? Stable fees? Those costs, which incidentally benefit the Amalgamated Stablers are now "fully funded" through "targeted investment" in "critical needs".


The fact is that the law that created Steamtown was something of an exemplar of the modern legislative process that reminds us of the adage that there’s two things a man should not see made for him “his laws and his sausages”. Indeed it is nearly 400 pages of largely unrelated provisions (also provided funding for radio broadcasts to Cuba) that gave this direction:

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STA ... Pg3341.pdf

See Section 2 on page 249:

“(a) PREPARATION OF MANAGEMENT PLAN.—The Secretary shall prepare a comprehensive management plan for the Site, which shall include all of the elements required for general management plans under section 12 of the Act entitled "An Act to improve the administration of the National Park System by the Secretary of the Interior, and to clarify the authorities applicable to the system, and for other purposes" approved August 18, 1970 (U.S.C. la-7), and shall be submitted to the Congress no later than September 30,1987.

(b) ADMINISTRATION OF SITE.—(1) The Secretary shall administer the Site through cooperative agreements and grant agreements, as appropriate, with the owner or owners of the property. The Secretary may provide financial and technical assistance in planning interpretation, maintenance, preservation, and appropriate public use of the Site and associated rolling stock in order to further public understanding and appreciation of the development of steam locomotives in the region.”

Now whatever one thinks of the phrase “planning interpretation, maintenance, preservation, and appropriate public use of the Site and associated rolling stock in order to further public understanding and appreciation of the development of steam locomotives in the region” an honest person have to ask themself a question:

Is a single, infrequently running locomotive, with a general loss in the number and frequency of operations, the failure to protect a weather-damaged structure and a general neglect of parts of the collection stored outside, the anticipable loss of critical mechanical staff and their rare skills noted by the NPS in 2018 and the termination of an agreement with an outside entity working to restore a locomotive to operation meets that mandate in any reasonable interpretation of the statutory language?

If you think it does. please explain how and show your work.

Argumentum Ad Hominem AND projection in the same sentence.

That's quite the accomplishment; here's a tip of the cap to you.

If you think it does. please explain how and show your work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g00NplDnLLQ

My bold. BTW you lose the right to call responses to you "argument against the person" when you post and post and post (and post an post and post) the same argument over and over and over. In university courses I taught, from introductory Politics and Government courses (American National Government and the like) up to senior-only political theory courses, in my syllabuses and in class I would warn my students not to use a phrase like "You're only saying that because...", that we have an obligation to consider any "leading contending theory" regardless of who is making it. But once you've made your point you lose the right to have all of your words considered. You long ago moved from making a "legitimate" (though weak) point we all have an obligation to consider into harassment and an attempt to monopolize the conversation through sheer wordiness. I'll bet that if I ran all of the posts in this thread through a character counter that your posts would outnumber others' posts 10 to 1.

This explains so much. Thank you.

Of course for the benefit us poor benighted fools, can you summarize the argument that you answer over and over and over and over and over?

No way. If you aren't able to do it yourself, I'm not doing it for you.

Of course, you could just stop reacting iike my Bother-in-law's Labrador puppy.. hasn't quite grown into those massive paws and when his retriever instinct kicks in, he comes sailing into sliding all over the tile when he's trying to make a perfect 90 degree turn. Of course he doesn't understand the idea of friction and just can't resist. But he's just a dog, but he'll learn.

Maybe I'll drop another Mises quote and watch you go bonkers again.

You can't summarize it, because you can't understand it. You don't have the education, experience or the objectivity to understand it. Based on your commentary here, you object to any comment that questions the efficacy of government. I imagine that for anybody sitting in your classes; it was a little like going to a class on fire suppression and finding out the instructor was a pyromaniac.

At least CZ concedes the obvious.

I have three university degrees, including a PhD. from a major research university, and have taught both politics and political economy at several major universities. But my background is working class, my father was a truck driver and I have worked as a truck driver over the years as a second job. Thus I have plenty of education, experience and objectivity.

From reading your stuff I'll bet you have never done a day of hard work in your life, certainly not equivalent to unloading whole semi-trailers by hand at CVS stores in the summer in Florida, as I did when I was university faculty down there.

Oh cool, now you are switching to the argumentum ab auctoritate fallacy.

Those are credentials. So what? What special insight does that confer regarding the ISSUE AT HAND?

I really can't take anybody who goes bananas over a quote seriously, sorry.