Yeah, sorry, it's a bus.

I saw this yesterday here in San Francisco. Anyone know anything about it, like who owns it, and what their plans with it are? It appears to be identical to UP #27, which is owned by CSRM and stored in the Sacramento shops. I believe #27 had operated in and around Los Angeles.

http://flickr.com/photos/rrr/2665771103/


Speaking of Sacramento, here are AT&SF 5021 and 2925 in their current location on the levee. There is a small train of freight cars behind them. I think they probably look worse than they are. The cabs have been sealed up with welded plate, and most of the metal has been painted or treated. It was nice to be able to see them, and I hope that they will be cosmetically restored as part of the technology museum project.

http://flickr.com/photos/rrr/2665358711/in/photostream/ -There are a few other photos if you go to my flickr site at the link here.

Words fail me at the moment. A long way from the way they looked in the roundhouse all those years.

Union Pacific's bus operation (Union Pacific Stages) in the Los Angeles area originally had 10 of these PD4103 (? - I've been away from buses for a few years) model buses that renumber in the 20-series. These were primarily used for the connecting service to and from the East Los Angeles station connecting with Long Beach/San Pedro, Orange County locations, and Pasadena and Glendale. One of the buses was lost early when it was hit by a Pacific Electric 1100-class interurban car. The bus connection and the East Los Angeles station started in the late 1920s to replace local passenger train service connecting with the through trains. Service operated up to the coming of Amtrak.

At that time the UP subsidiary was sold and the new owners renamed it American Pacific Stages. The company had ICC interstate rights and were used by the new owners to run charters with new buses besides providing Amtrak connection service. In time, the company was sold to another operator for its operating rights .

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CSRM is having to move equipment and find new homes for some of the collection because it is losing all space in the old SP shop area except for the interior of two buildings. And then if it wants to develop displays inside the buildings not all of the space will be available for railroad locomotives or cars. While striving for expanding the exhibits into the old Shop complex the Museum was unable to develop a non-display storage location.

The day the steam locomotives were moved several weeks ago, I was doing research in the reading room of the Library and Ellen the former Librarian and now Curator for the Museum came through, stopped and told me that the locomotives were being moved. It was kind of like, 'What are you doing up here when we're moving a 4-8-4 outside."

Thanks for the pics of #5021 and #2925. I always figured they weren't really as bad as they looked, with the "jewelry" safely tucked away in storage and the cabs welded up. Still, what a tragedy of an opportunity lost! When the pair came to CSRM in the '80s, here were two locomotives that didn't NEED to be restored, and could have gone on display (or even operated?) with comparatively minimal work. Now just think of the time, effort, and money that will be required just to make them presentable for static display. Sad, sad... IMHO CSRM needs to deaccession them and let them go to a museum that will do something with them. 22 years is long enough to wait.

I have heard these criticisms of CSRM before, but I wonder if anyone else could have done better? There are a lot of big engines out there, yet how many of them moved into buildings since 1986? How many of them moved at all? (2903 to Union in '95 from one museum to another -is it indoors?) These engines still had asbestos, and were a little on the large size for most rail museums.

I understand CSRM pursued several plans to house the engines, but each one failed due to economics or politics. The donation of the equipment was tied to the SP/Santa Fe merger. When the ICC pulled the plug, the Santa Fe did not follow through with the money they had promised to help house the equipment.

California State Parks is not well funded, and big public capital projects like new museums are a lot easier to fund than non-public storage buildings. The Museum of Railroad Technology as proposed in the late 1980s was really a "back of house" storage and restoration facility with a minimum of exhibits. CSRM invested a lot of effort into trying to get that built, but the recession of the early 90s killed the project. Ultimately, CSRM did not succeed at raising the money and political support necessary to acquire a site and house the collection.

I have been disappointed that these engines have been out of sight and outdoors for all this time, but I hope it will be easier to pay for their restoration as a part of the new technology museum project.

To add to what Brian said above, I don't think it is so much an issue of needing exhibit space in the shops, as needing to perform the structural rehabilitation work to the shops buildings. All the remaining equipment will need to be shuffled around to accomplish this. About half the space in both the Boiler Shop and Erecting Hall do not even have tracks in them as they were set up for machine tools, work benches, and staging.

For what it's worth, 2903 has indeed been stored indoors since it was acquired by IRM. It had formerly been stored outdoors at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

CSRM has for the last several years deaccessioned a number of pieces, including the Santa Fe doodlebug to New Mexico, the Santa Fe "Little Buttercup" to the San Jose Historic Railroad Group (stored inside at the Trolley Barn) a snow plow to a group in Truckee, a narrow gauge caboose, log car and side dump to the SPCRR, passenger cars, a steam crane and the SP Krauss to PLA and a Santa Fe diesel to IRM... I suspect I am missing several other transfers...

I understand that at least one of the big Santa Fe engines could be available.

For a number of years now, C&O K4 class Kanawha #2789 has been kept indoors in the Hoosier Valley Railroad Museums Shop building about 99.9% of the time. She has generally been pulled out for visitors to photograph during summer days, when the museum is open.

Les

ATSF 2381 (Alco S-2, built 1949) is now at San Diego Ry Museum in Campo, CA. after a well-documented trip from Sacramento. It's missing one headlight, and the exhaust stack is also missing (could the turbocharger also be gone?) For further info see sdrm.org.