These cold winter day's being indoors are great for catching up on things in the preservation world and after reading and seeing the photo's of the old wood sideframe KCS boxcar down in La. i got to wondering how much other RR equipment is still out there forgotten along some RR or just left sitting out in some private barnyard or pasture across the US and if any of it is worthy of preservation due to really being something old and rare?
There's probably countless freight car bodies scattered across the west but has anyone actually kept tract of whats out there and where? Here in Northern Ohio there used to be a few interurban trolley car bodies that were sold to farmers in the late 1930's wich were used as farm outbuildings for storage and even some being converted into cottages.One could still see a few of those left up to the early 1980's but most of those were in poor shape and the better ones had been rescued years before.I remember seeing several 40ft. steel Erie box cars on farms down around the Marion,Ohio area.Most if any steel freight cars that were left have probably been scrapped during the past few years with the high scrap prices.I was wondering if anyone else had any photo's of some neglected freight car,caboose,or trolley bodies still around maybe waiting for that last chance to be rescued or just live out their last days until the elements slowly take over.
I've attached a few pictures of a old tank car at Sheffield,Ohio
that i took about 10 years ago.I have no idea if it is still there? It was shoved to the end of a old industry track on the L&WV Ry.That remaining 5 miles of track is still owned by NS but the tank car is on private property.The old main has tree growth growing up thru the rails since the line was abandoned and so does the industry spur.The industry has since built an addition over that industry track and now the tank car is or was stranded on the remaining 100 ft. or so of track on the southwest high bank next to the big trestle over the Black River.It was kind of a neat old tank car,the wooden side and end walkways were rotted and some parts of it were falling off,trees were growing up all around it.One wheelset had those real old cast ribbed wheels,the other set had the smooth backsides on its wheels.It still had lettering DUPX 5116 and a build date of 4-20.
I don't see it ever coming out of there in one pc.but i guess anything is possible but it's probably cut up and gone now? It's kind of neat seeing old stuff like that and you don't see it very often.About 7 years ago a friend and i were walking some of the old abandoned B&O grade East of Chilicothe and over to the side of the row on the side of the hill was a collapsed shed made out of wooden box car doors.I wish i would have had a camera to take a photo of that because even though collapsed it had character with the surrounding scenery.The rotted doors still had some of their hardware left on them like the handles and latches.I found one of the door lock latches laying on the ground and it had B&O RR cast into it with raised letters.I'm sure there's probably not much left of that shed now but at one time maybe it was a trackside section shed or something from years gone by.
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