RE: Tornado preparations for museums. If you can see this link, it shows a UP train derailed by a recent tornado at Hallam, Nebraska, which wiped out the whole town. This is on the stub of the old Rock Island mainline east of Fairbury, towards Omaha. Haven't seen one yet of a passenger train so affected, but there must be some out there.

http://www.theomahachannel.com/slideshow/weather/3339027/detail.html?qs=;s=9;p=weather;dm=ss;w=200
ryarger@rypn.org

Also, more recently, a tornado struck a live steam group's site on the prairie east of Denver:

Last Tuesday evening, a tornado touched down at the track site,
north of Byers, CO. The passenger pavillion, a 100' long shelter with
benches and a roof, was completely removed from the site. Even the
concrete footings were pulled up and scattered over 200' away. A
scale water tower was destroyed, except the tower roof was left in
place. The rest of the water tower was gone.
Track damage consisted of about 80' destroyed by flying derbis.
The good news:
All track repairs were made today, Saturday. Track is all back in
service. Over 3" of rain caused the right of wasy to resemble a
jungle.


ryarger@rypn.org

Gold Coast Rwy. Museum in Fla. got hit by a
hurricane. Among the indignities, some cars were
damaged by falling roofs that were to shelter
them from the rain!
The trolley museum in Bloomsburg, Pa. got flooded
by a huricane.
Wilmington & Western Rwy. in Del. often gets hit
by floods.
Shore Line Electric Rwy. in Branford , Conn., is
threatened by rising ocean level, and has already
been soaked by a 100 year flood.
I forget the details, but remember a photo of a
stuffed-and-mounted display loco in Calif. that
fell over during an earthquake.

104577.651@compuserve.com

*Baltimore Streetcar Museum, hit by tropical-storm-induced flooding in 1979 and 1985......

*A certain roundhouse roof in Baltimore that collapsed under snow in 2003.....

*Flooding at the Roanoke Transportation Museum in (I think) 1985, requiring a crane to righten the C&O 1604......

LNER4472-NOSPAM-@bcpl.net

> I forget the details, but remember a photo
> of a
> stuffed-and-mounted display loco in Calif.
> that
> fell over during an earthquake.

That was ex-Amador Central RR 2-6-2, a standard gauge Baldwin displayed in a park in Ione, CA, that rolled on its side.

In addition to having its trainshed colapse onto its "inside" equipment, the Gold Coast Railroad Museum had a 3-foot gauge 0-4-0 display locomotive (ex-Winston Co. 48, originally a Cooke-built 0-4-0T) roll over outside from high winds.

Speaking of Tornados... an honest-to-goodness "Texas Twister" hit the Austin & Texas Central RR a few years back and toppled the (then disconnected) tender of the ex-Texas & New Orleans Brooks-built 2-8-2 786. The mike held the rails, but the tender got sideways.

Another snowfall-related roof colapse happened at Steamtown USA at Bellows Falls, VT. The snow-laden roof fell in on a number of locomotives that were damaged (mostly minor). I believe this was when ex-Meadow River Lumber Co. 2-truck Shay 1 lost its cab and became the "Shay convertible" you can still see today at Scranton.

A little less serious was when ex-Canadian National 2-6-0 89 crossed pathes with Hurricane Agnes in a Wilkes-Barre, PA rail yard in 1972 while enroute to then-new-owner Strasburg RR. Flood waters completely submerged the engine. Water lifted freight cars in the yard off their trucks, but 89 stayed on the rails.

Regards,
Jim Robinson