I've been pretty busy...but how did I miss this? The photos say this old coach was scrapped August of 2008! It sat there for YEARS, and I recall there was a group working to remove it from the property... pretty sad. Anyone know what happened?
http://photos.nerail.org/showpic/?photo ... age=1&key=
http://photos.nerail.org/showpic/?photo ... age=1&key=

From 2003: http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-8/3 ... sidesm.jpg

Hi,

I just saw this as well. Shocking that such a nice looking coach, and as old as it was would be scrapped. I thought the Cape Cod line or some tourist operation was looking at purchasing and moving it. And if they did or didn't, they or some one might have at least informed others to prevent this out come.

Wonders never cease.

Karl J.

And some time back I reported on the availability of a Rutland combine up in Vermonet. Its a wood body on a steel frame and in fairly good shape. Just a reminder......any one have an interest in it before that is cut up? Last I heard it was free and must be moved in 2010 I believe.

J.R.

A shame but should we be surprised? I like wood cars so I certainly am disappointed.

In accepting Chapel Car Messenger of Peace, the Northwest Railway Museum incurred the responsibility for moving it. So $10,000 - $15,000 to (responsibly) move a wood coach by highway, and that is assuming no special assessments from the state or community for moving the oversized load. For Messenger of Peace, that was the down payment on what will probably be a $400,000 project.

Certainly it appears that many organizations posting on this board spend the lion's share of their resources on their steam and other locomotives projects. (It may not be true, but it certainly appears that way based on the lack of discussion about projects other than steam or diesel.)

Is there actually an organization out there who would have been able to financially take on the responsibility of acquiring, moving and rehabilitating this otherwise wonderful artifact, and doing it in a timely manner so that the car would not have "self-scrapped?"

We've come across a possible CB&Q steel-sheathed late wood coach. Several large midwest organizations have been contacted and rendered instantaneous "NO"s while a number of other have simply not responded. (Please don't contact me about it unless you have the finances to move it AND a place to move it to.)

You can do almost anything with a few skilled people, but lots of TLC. (That would be Truck Loads of Cash, or with a wood coach, Train Loads of Cash.)

--Richard

Gosh thats awful, what happened to the trucks and all the hardware....anyone know. We are desperately trying to find wooden trucks and all the trusses,handrails brake gear etc to put our body back to rights.
Mike Pannell
Cheyenne
http://mikepannell254.fotopic.net/

About two months ago I was approached about saving a wooden Bangor & Aroostook combine. The owner was told be the town it had to go. I spent a week looking for a home and one one was interested. Fortunately the owner got help from a state agency that told the town to back off and he is now going to restore the car where it is. (I was going to post it to RYPN but we never got to that point before the car was saved.) I can see that how the car was scrapped, especially if suddenly there was a deadline.

This is bull S#%( a town can keep you from remodeling your house because of "Historic Value" but then they order the destruction of an irreplaceable historic coach BTW did any one contact the SFTM or the BSRM or any of the tons of museums in Connecticut?

Perhaps this a reason to approach state legislators to offer a Railroad Preservation license plate of lottery ticket, with proceeds going toward the retrieval and disposition of such objects? Historical is ephemeral, and once gone, the artifacts are gone forever. A well designed, premium license plate would be collectible, bring about awareness, and generate funding.

The "nay-sayers" will lambaste my suggestion now, and continue to tell us why such things can't be done, but time works against all aspects of industrial objects, when left outdoors. I hate government bureaucracy as much as anyone, but somehow, funding has to be moved into the positive column.

Why? Look closely at this picture from 2003.
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-8/3 ... sidesm.jpg

The presence and condition of this coach was NOT A SECRET to anyone. Least of all the various railway museums around.

The Albany dead line is not a secret.
The Lost Engines Of Roanoke... not a secret.
St. Louis' long deaccession list... you got it :)
I trust I need go on no further.

The point is, nobody cared; or, somebody cared but they expected the status quo to continue forever, and so they didn't make it a priority. *blink* gone.

So, if you want that to stop happening, you need to do something.

We have thousands of railfans and preservationists... all doing, whatever they do. What they are doing is not working. That is not a secret :)

So if you want to stop this loss, you need to do something very different.

Fundamentally, at the core, different.

Than anyone in preservation does right now.

I have to disagree with the last post, if this cars situation was known by so many why the heck wasnt it made known on here ? this isthe ONLY national outlet for preservation news in the country. If people just shrug their shoulders and watch stuff being destroyed how are we to ever acheive our restoration ? its widely known on RYPN that we need trucks, brake gear, couplers, handrails seats etc for our 1887 body restoration......so once again i ask what happened to the trucks and hardware on this car?

mike pannell

Cheyenne

You need to understand the law. The "historic value" of a house has to be registered with either the National Historic Trust (I do not recall the correct name). It takes documentation to get it listed on the Historic Trust. It sometimes takes many years to get an item on the "Historic Register". Once it is, then it can not be distroyed or altered easily.

My Mom was an unpaid lobbyist in the State of Georgia to help get a bill passed to "streamline" the approval process and the documentation. So here we have to get a building, structure, bridge, piece of rolling stock past the Georgia Trust (a lot faster than the National organization) and then the national organization knows that the Georgia Trust has a good system to verify applications and can go through National Trust's system without the same level of background checking.

Many buildings have been saved that way here.

Until something is put on the national register, you can do whatever you want to it and city and county regulations can alter the approval of storage of anything like railroad cars almost at will. Once they are on the register, then the local governments have a much harder time doing that.

If you know of a piece of railroad equipment that should be saved, get it on the national register of historic places as a first step. Then something like this will not happen as easily.

That is why the East Broad Top Railroad, the Cumbres & Toltec Railroad, the Durango & Silverton are registered in several ways. Anywhere from historic places to historic engineering sites. I believe that both the C&TS and the rolling stock are registered. The C&TS as an Engineering site (very well preserved crossing of a mountain pass taking into consideration how Civil Engineers used the land to their benifit to lower operating maintenance costs in the 1880s by following South facing mountain sides as much as possible to allow snow to be melted naturally by the sun) to the rolling stock (which I believe is on the register of historic places even though they are mobile).

The first step in preservation is to get time and that means getting items on a National Preservation list to prevent man-made destruction or alteration. Once on the preservation list, grants are more easily available for restoration (not meaning that they are easy).

It has been very interesting how the preservation and restoration of one of the Rio Grande Southern's trestles at Trout Lake in Colorado (abandoned in 1951) has been restored by first getting on a national list and then preservation grants have been made available to keep it in an abandoned but healthy condition against the elements.

This story has been on-going and reported over at NGDF.

Doug vV

I sense the anger and frustration in your voice. A simple search indicates that this car was very well known to the community on RYPN.
http://rypn.sunserver.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=25132&p=112657&hilit=lunenburg#p112657

What is a more valid question is why did not enough coordination and an organized effort come forth to save it in the Northeast? Where are the B&M fans willing to shell out a few hundred dollars for something they might care to see preserved? Well, you have to say that there are lots of B&M wood commuter cars in preservation, or near it.

My prediction for the next loss is the Boston and Maine wood coach in Tyngsboro. The private owner of this car seems to think it is worth a $100,000 or more, and is not willing to consider any rational evidence to the contrary.

Other sources of data for the car....
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/BM_RR/message/21891
The page http://www.ocnrr.com/coach.htm was last modified December 10, 2005.

You know, sometimes, railfans and museums can be the worst enemy of preservation. In this case, by essentially having "dibs" on the car, this museum prevented any other museums from making a claim on the piece.

The same thing is happening with the Tyngsboro car.



Well, this posting happened nearly a year after the scrapping. But I did remember the previous posting linked above, and I remember going "what a cool car, but what an eyesore the way it is."

But ask yourself. If you had seen that listing last year, would you have really, honestly leapt into action? Or would you have gone "shrug" just like the rest of us?


Several people have taken on the herculean tasks of building databases for both surviving steam locomotives and surviving streetcars. Maybe it's time for a surviving wooden coach database.

But back to my earlier question... clearly, what railway preservation is doing now, is not working. We're losing these artifacts. What should we be doing different? I think I know, but I want to hear others' opinions.

We are past the tipping point, where just knowing isn't enough.

I "know" of wooden cars that need rescuing, but I also know there are limited resources.

Take the case of my dear old Rutland. There are at least 3 wooden passenger cars that need rescuing now. Expanding that to New England as a whole, there are at least 3 more from other roads.

For every wooden relic in the woods like the Rutland van that finally got dragged out of the forest after 30 years for preservation, there are probably 10 others that will not make it past the next 5-10 years.

In many ways, preservation news reflects a model railroad collector's basement - the engines get all the attention.

I agree with RM that a wooden car database is worth the effort - one showing museum cars and others.

There is A LOT available now, both steel and wood. Private collectors are getting some of it, but the scrappers are getting their share, too. What's your fancy?

Rob

Absolutely lets start a wooden car database............i will help with that. We are still trying to contact the owners of the collapsed Mayfield Penn Jackson and Sharpe car, but have had no luck getting hold of anyone but it has trucks and all the good bits we need.
We can raise funds to get these items as they are so rare and needed.

Mike Pannell