...that this is one of the cars on NRM's disposal list? Exhibited indoors and appearing quite good back in June 2006.

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=465341

To be fair, it is on the list as "awaiting disposal" whatever that actually means.

After having a little time to review the list of equipment that had been scrapped or was being "disposed" at National Railroad Museum last month when I posted about the ACL Manatee River, and after seeing this photo, I decided to go ahead and comment again. If you think I am wrong to comment, then so be it. But, I think this is an important topic whether we are discussing the 20 pieces of equipment (yes, 20) at NRM or a single piece at some other museum.

In the list are 20 pieces: 4 cars already scrapped (Manatee River and 3 freight cars), four locomotives, five other passenger cars including CNW 7411, a caboose and the balance being misc. freight cars. If the photo of 7411 is indicative of the general condition of the passenger cars being disposed, seems to me scrapping is a bit severe. I ask again: Was Manatee River really that bad?

I hope there are some behind-the-scenes efforts being made to get some of these cars out of Green Bay. I also hope that "awaiting disposal" doesn't automatically mean "to be scrapped." One car on the list, identified simply as "ATSF RPO" is indicated as "sold awaiting transport." Hopefully that means sold to another museum.

What are our obligations with regard to disposal of unwanted equipment? Is scrapping without making available to another museum group at a reasonable price (and not necessarily scrap price) the best thing to do? Sure, deaccessioning a piece and gifting it to another group is not a quick process nor economically beneficial to the owning group. However, I hate to think what would have happened had a large museum not made available a certain combine that will soon be the last remaining piece of revenue passenger equipment from this Georgia shortline. We were fortunate that we could afford to transport the car and restore the exterior, and thank goodness we could afford to do it. BUT...if that museum had not made the effort to let it be known that the car was available, it would now be scrap and that piece of history would have slipped away.

Are there any pieces in the NRM collection that are significant pieces of history that they should either offer to other museums or perhaps even give away to a group that would better appreciate its history and significance? I invite your comments.

What other equipment, extant or not, is on the whole list?

Joshua

Why is this museum on a disposal binge?

Is "the list" availble on-line someplace? Would someone be willing to post it here?

Why is there no comment from any NRM rep on this board? I can't imagine that they're unaware of RyPN.

Why dispose of so many freight cars? Freight transport was certainly more important to the "national railroad story" in the US than say, a British A-4, no matter who it's named for.

The CNW combine looks like it has some serious belt rail and window post problems, but that may be distortion from the camera angle.

Looking at their website, NRM seems to want to be known for the A-4, the GG1 and yet another "Big Boy". Is that really a "national" group of equipment?

Howard P.
Nomex Suit, CT

The belt rail on that C&NW car doesn't look any worse than that of the former Reading coach that New Hope & Ivyland just rebuilt last year.

I don't want to flame any organization here, however I must question their motives for ridding themselves of a large amount of restorable equipment. Is this due to the rising cost of steel?

Kevin

Well, this question at least we can go to the standards to answer. The ARM Recommended Practices state that :

"A deaccessioning policy recognizing the museum's trust responsibility is to be developed in advance, for removing items accessioned into the permanent collections. (Note: Objects not accessioned into the museum's permanent collections do not need to go through a formal deaccessioning process.) Whenever possible, and consistent with the museum's fiduciary responsibility, the museum should dispose of deaccessioned objects to other museums, historical organizations, or similar education institutions, and by means of gift, trade, or sale, in that order. The policy addresses:

a. Use of funds generated from deaccessionings, restricting such use to acquisition of additional objects or care of museum collections.

b. The conditions which must be present for deaccessioning to be considered, including such concerns as non-relevance to mission, poor condition, duplication, or lack of authenticity

c. Any conditions or restrictions stated in original deed of gift. If possible, the donor of an object should be notified of any deaccessioning decisions made regarding an item he or she has donated, purchased for, or otherwise made available to the museum

d. Conditions by which members of the museum, its governing body, or staff must abide in order to receive any deaccessioned object."

So, the ARM policy strongly implies that best practice is to offer equipment to other groups if possible, consistant with fiduciary responsibility. I would read this to mean that you are not obligated to care for an item for another 20 years while some group theoretically raises the money to move it by holding bake sales or whatever on one hand, but on the other hand neither should you publish a list and say 'move it in 30 days at no cost to us or we cut it up.'

Now, putting on my own nomex suit, I am going to preach some heresy.

With each passing year, I grow more impressed with organizations that keep only those things that a. fit their mission, and b. have a reasonable hope of being stabilized or conserved in the reasonably near future.

On the other hand, I grow less impressed with organizations that keep a huge rusting yard full of so-called 'history' indefinately. Benign neglect is not a collections plan. Parking 50 pieces of equiptment in the unfenced and unroofed yard and hoping you win the lottery some day is not a collections plan, either.

So getting back to NRM, I do not know if they offered this equipment to anyone in any systematic way. I hope they did, because I believe that would be best practice. And I single out for praise organizations like the California foursome of WRM, Niles Canyon, Golden Gate, and Portola, who swap and lend equipment to rationalize collections and get the right objects into the right custodian and site.

But I will not fault NRM or any other group for acting to get the number of hungry mouths down to what they can reasonabably hope to feed for the long haul. In my opinion only the organizations that have the courage to do this are going to survive and still be around 50 years from now.

I guess the only pearls of wisdom I have to offer are these:

1. if there is something you want, whether a specific road's cars or just generic cars of a certain era, make yourself known from time to time to anyone who has the kind of things you need. Even if they don't want to deal now, they will think of you first when minds change. And start building an aquisitions fund so you are ready to move the instant it is available.

2. Remember that in the long run, and setting aside the powerful feelings that can begin to form around specific examples/pieces of equipment/eras/technolgies, etc., the chief problem we face as a field is HAVING MORE STUFF THAN OUR BUSINESS MODEL WILL SUPPORT PRESERVING. This implies, as a matter of logic, that we will see a lot of scrapping--either intentionally, or as a result of natural and/or artificially-accelerated oxidation (i.e., arson).

We all have personal feelings about whose oxen should be gored, and whose shouldn't. But gored the oxen will be, on average, until our collections are right-sized to match our business models.

Erik - this implies the existence of a rational business model. They may have one - I don't know. Maybe somebody from there will share.

I concur with Howard's comments about the car. It appears the belt rail is bulging out in the center of the car, and there is copious visible application of bondo along the belt rail and uprights - which could indicate some serious deterioration of the center of the carlines, and below - but not yet enough to bow the side sills. The rubber roof is a good thing, the junk coming out from under it is not, which makes the roof sheathing questionable. I've achieved better ( but less durable) short-term cosmetic results with masking tape and spray paint, so the decent paint job shouldn't be considered a valid indication of structural intergity. If the interior wall sheathing is rotting, there may be a serious quantity of Vitamin A becoming friable which leads to some real fiscal liability for a potential restoration. But gain, the car would need to be truly inspected before the reliability of these impressions would be validated.

What is missing here is reliable information.

dave

I would like to hear a reply from NRM too. But there seems to be some questionable rust on the car, a good paint job can hide many structural problems.

I think they've been pressed for storage room in the past. But they've just built a new building in recent years and they've been deeded some ajoining land as a donation in the last year.

As the moderator, a warning that we need to be careful about rumor mongering… I suspect we are mostly operating in the absence of knowledge in this case.

With that said, I have never visited this museum but I have visited the web site of the National Railroad Museum… I now know what their private event schedule is (I see weddings, an Alzheimer’s fund raiser and a Boy Scout event…), I have learned they have 70 pieces of rolling stock which includes a Big Boy and a GG1… They have a “professional staff” (paid?) of 12 and over 100 volunteers… I have a copy of their photo reproduction form… I have viewed on line exhibits, they appear to have very nice professional exhibits in part based on models, a spectacular wall of drum heads, and end with the aforementioned Big Boy (apparently 4017). They do a Thomas event, A Polar Express event, they have invited me on a tour of New England (with photos of lobsters)

I still know little or nothing about their railroad rolling stock collection, their mission or why I should visit (as a train guy)

The web site seems more suited to a wedding/event venue. It appears that none of their membership post here (which is not required, no matter how much some of us expect it.)

I don’t know if the rumors of a de-accession list are accurate, or false, it they have ever restored anything, what their mission statement, collection focus or any association with any professional organization is…

I keep coming back to the feeling they are primarily an event venue.

In the last week a visited a nearby historic house museum only to learn they are open 2 days a month with less than 2,000 visitors (to the “museum”), but have an income of $650,000 from weddings and parties… and another $100,000 from “events”. To some extent their focus has followed the money, to become a party venue, not a museum… In their case they still remember they are a historic house museum and keep returning to that core.

So, remember that this group is apparently unrepresented in our discussions… So don’t project your assumptions…

Furthermore, as a long-time and third-generation-on-two-sides photographer, might I suggest that it's distinctly possible that the aforementioned bulges in what should be straight lines may be as much the result of photographic distortion than actual damage?

Such distortion tends to be acute in wide-angle lenses, often necessary for photography in the often-confined quarters of a rail museum. Unless someone can affirm to us that the photograph in question was taken with a perspective-correction lens (or a bellows camera) in the hands of an experienced photographer (not bloody likely--the lenses cost thousands), than I'm more likely to blame lens distortion than rust/Bondo for what I see in that photo.

Just for "fun" here is the same photo with some of the lens distortion corrected.



Original photo: Steven Langsford

Randy, I looked at the same list of qualities in the Web site, but saw them differently: I saw strong community outreach and profile (Boy Scouts, etc., especially offering the Railroad Merit Badge, one of my favorite hobby-horses), a good business model for earned income from facilties rental, and some evidence of collections planning and control (research policy, photo policy, etc).

In short, I see a fairly typical Web site for a smaller, professionally-run museum with a well-diversified revenue base and a good community profile.

Not a typical railroad museum Web site, I agree--but I don't necessarily mean that as a compliment to railroad museum Web sites.

Amen.

Alan Maples

Ask and ye shall receive. Here's the list as it was provided to me only recently:

ATSF (flatcar) awaiting disposal

ATSF RPO sold awaiting transport

ACL Manatee River (sleeper) scrapping in progress

Blackhills packing co. (refrigerated boxcar) awaiting disposal

Burlington Northern (tank car) scrapped

CNW 7411 (baggage car) awaiting disposal

Georgia Pacific (locomotive) awaiting disposal

Milwaukee 18A ( E unit ) awaiting disposal

M&SP and ST M (locomotive) awaiting disposal

M&ST and ST M (hopper) awaiting disposal

North American Car Co (hopper) awaiting disposal

Northern Pacific (baggage car) awaiting disposal

PRR sleeper Cascade Cliff awaiting disposal

Pittsburgh Shawmut and Northern (caboose) awaiting disposal

Reading Company (passenger car) awaiting disposal

Reading Company (passenger car) awaiting disposal

US Army (locomotive) awaiting disposal

Western Refrigerated Line (refrig boxcar) scrapped

Wisconsin Public Service (hopper) scrapped

wooden boxcar awaiting disposal

The list is not especially big on details, but it is all that was provided. Maybe it will be helpful to someone. Note: I did not have this list at the time of my original posting regarding the Manatee River. I was only advised that that particular car was in imminent danger of being scrapped, but in fact it was already being scrapped and presumably is now completely gone. I never received a response from the museum.

That's a frequently expressed notion here -- "why isn't ABC railway museum here representing?" But you know, it's not easy to get an account on this forum. It took me six months. The first sticky explains why... but until I saw that, I kinda figured it was a private club or I was blackballed for some reason and I was disinclined to keep trying.

That's if they find RyPN. There is no "national directory of relevant internet forums", and even if there was, RyPN is not the only forum out there. It's entirely possible that they're not on this forum, unable to get on this forum, or not on forums at all, either because they're not computer savvy or not the sort to participate in online forums. Forums aren't for everybody. Kevin Keefe isn't here and he writes for a living. What percentage of your museum's crew posts regularly?

What's more, individuals at a museum may not see it as their place to speak for their museum. There's no upside for them and a big downside if they put their foot in their mouth. Hard enough to avoid in real life, harder on the Net!

So when ORM is silent, or NRM is silent, I'm not surprised.