Keep your fingers crossed for the Mid-Continent Railway museum in North Freedom Wisconsin. They are experiencing major flooding, with water up to the shop buildings. Area rivers are expected to continue to rise through Wednesday. If anyone is in the area, keep us posted and if you can spare a few $, send them a little help.

Steve

Looking at their web cam this morning, the water is over the tracks at the station but not over the platform. Looks like they moved rolling stock to higher ground.

http://www.midcontinent.org/netcam/

It looks like they are about to start to load up inventory from the depot/gift shop. Waters have surrounded the antique depot and gift shop. Lots of valuable stock, books, cash registers, display items, too much to list that would be destroyed if the water rises as much as is predicted. The 1947 Plymouth inspection car is now out in the water and I imagine is a lot of the other stuff. The shop building can be seen in the background. It and many cabooses that have been converted to private RV's for workers are near the river The view from webcam #2 looks south east to the over the rolling stock/shops, to the river. This could be very bad.
Steve

I left there at 6:00 PM last night CST, and the river was close to coming over the road just to the east of the web cam. I heard the river was going to crest on Thursday. Yikes, never saw the river this high in person. I worry about the bridges. Hopefully car shop and engine house remains safe.

On the way down to MC Sunday morning there was so much water on the roads that it was hard not too plane when going fast that 45 mph. Those counties in the area of Sauk, Portage are really wet {duh}. On the way home water was coming over a lot of the two lanes I drive on. Glad I got out when I did, as it wouldn't be much longer before some of the roads were going to be impassable. Hitting that deep water at hiway speeds at night would not be good. Good luck down there. John.

I've been watching the flooding on the cam here (in SE PA) for the past few hours and boy its hard to watch.

Best wishes to anyone, railroad or non, out the affected areas.

Joshua

I hear ya.
Watched a couple houses slide into Lake Delton on the news today. I also tried to see how Circus World Museum was doing, pretty sure there located on the Baraboo River. There web site said there closed due to flooding. Lots of irreplaceable wood wagons there.

As I recall the one display building for the wagons is up high above the river. But, other wagons, rail cars, and the main museum building are near the river.[/quote]

Besides the concerns for washouts, damage to buildings and displays I worry that the bridge won't make it. It the water get to the sides it will act like a dam and that will be all she wrote, then further up the hill, the mainline gets close to the river again, that washed out during a previous flash flood back a few years ago. It is hard to watch. I live 3 to 3.5 hours northeast of there and I don't know what I could do to help at this point. The clean up alone will be monumental in work.

While there on Sunday we finished putting one of the trucks back together and put it back under the coach it belonged too in the car shop. I don't think the water will get high enough to float the coaches away, but I feel better that it is off the jacks anyway. This is just terrible, the potential for irreplaceable loss is unreal. Like the poster before said, send some prayers down that way. John.

Once upon a time, FEMA would fund damage repairs at a museum just like at hospitals, schools and other government facilities. Changes within the last 8 years have reduced museum eligibility. However I know of an instance involving a railway museum within the last two years where debris clearance and emergency repairs were funded by FEMA even though permanent repairs were declined. Emergency repairs included immediate reconstruction of washed out track to restore service and the cost of an excavator to push logs and such away that had collected against a rail bridge.

Web cam images from Mid Continent make it appear as though some emergency repairs and debris clearance will be warranted and I heard on the news that the requisite disaster declaration has been made. Hopefully Mid Continent has someone versed in the disaster claim process.

--Richard

In the example of the webcam 2 image where the coaches are in water to the top of the trucks, what work has to be done to return them to service? Do you have to repack the journal boxes, or can they be dried out and refilled with oil? Will a power washing of the running gear suffice? What about brake work?

I suppose if any of these cars have auxilliary power units, those would need a lot of work. The older lighting systems and batteries are robust, and might not need a lot of repair, corrrect?

I recall that N.P. #328 was subject to flooding up to the boiler while on display in Stillwater, Minnesota, and Strasburg 89 was flooded to its smokestack during delivery in the 1960's. I believe the Texas and Pacific operated trains using steam power through water at journal box height in the late 1950's. Is much of this older equipment more robust in high water?

Many railroads maintained steam locomotives into the diesel age for this exact reason. Diesel electric locomotives can only run through standing water that is less than 2-3 inches above the rail head. Steam locomotives can run through water much deeper than that-so long as the firebox is kept out of the water (don't want to extinguish the fire). If you read the better railroad anthologies, you'll find plenty of examples of steam locomotives making it through conditions much worse than flooding where diesel electric locomotives would stop dead in their tracks.

How awful, my condolences to Mid-Continent. I'm dumbstruck that the webcams still work. Or have they failed and this is the photo of the time of failure? (at my viewing, water is within 6" of the bottom of the coach floors.)

The journal boxes need to be flushed out, pads replaced. The diesels will have to have the same treatment to the journals, the traction motors will have to come off the axles...motors baked and roller bearings serviced. The stadco gen set under the 440 sent out to be overhauled. Brake cylinders and valves torn apart and serviced. Centerplates cleaned out and serviced.

All journals need to be serviced prior to an inch movement.

I just checked a few moments ago, and it appears that webcam #2 is still working, but that webcam #1 stopped as of this morning.

Les

This was posted on members page, just an idea of how bad things got as far as the flooding goes. Damage assessment is going to be frightful.

"The river crested last night at 28.47 ft. A record. By noon Thursday 27.91 ft., noon Fri. 26.47 ft., noon Sat. 24.73 ft., noon Sun. 23 ft. When it gets down to 22 ft., water will have receeded enough to get to the depot and camp cars. A week from now, on Wed. the predicted water level is 12 ft. One foot below flood stage".

Jason are you sure the journal pads will have to be thrown out. While I would replace the Lacks or any mainline journal pads for cautionary reasons, the camp cars and display cars I would think the old ones might be saved. I would try washing them out and drying them first. If we were a class 1 RR and had a supply house with the correct journal pads I would say jack them up and put new ones in, we ain't got time. But being that these may or may not be readably available and I don't think we have bales of packing laying around, it would be worth trying. I have repacked journals that had bearings go bad and were full of water, dirt, oil and bearing matter. Clean them up and reuse them, especially for equipment that doesn't go more then a few miles every 10 years. Just a thought, because I am not sure where we can get that many odd sized journal pads. Maybe China? Not trying too argue, just trying to figure out a system of how to repack as quickly as possible. A portable air compressor and those Duff air jacks that nobody thought we needed are going to be busy these next few months.

Totally humbled by this. John.