Question from the cheap seats here...

How many of you have attempted to lay hands on any of the abandoned/unused manufacturing plants in your areas for at least temporary indoor storage? Much of preservation of any kind is word of mouth, A knows B who will introduce him to C, X has a Y to get rid of and Z would like to have it. There's nothing wrong with that, but how can we make it easier and smoother?

In our area, there are a lot of steel mills with large, empty or only partially occupied buildings, most with some rail access. Unless a museum could get clear title, anything stored in them might have to be moved on short notice, the buildings' condition is often dubious, and security may be a concern unless there's regular protection in an industrial park. There's always the danger of county commissioner greed and a sudden eminent domain claim. On the other hand, indoors and locked up generally beats outdoors behind an easily climbed fence. How close, and how good, would such a facility have to be to tempt you to use it?

Also, I have seen several apparently usable metal pole buildings torn down for scrap (often to get rid of tax liability) when they certainly look as if they could have been used elsewhere. There was, for some time, a sort of industrial Freecycle exchange for such things; I can't find it now. The Ohio Materials Exchange should have far more stuff on it than it does. (Our neighbors' bridge is a crane gantry from a Washington, PA mill.) We have talked about exchanging rail equipment and parts, butmany business owners (and places that scavenge closed businesses) have no connection to rail preservation. What's the best way to get the word out that a museum would be willing to dismantle a building of substantial size, or that donations of transportation would be much appreciated?

Becky -

Some years ago, one of the members of the Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum in North Judson, Indiana found out that his company was planning on tearing down a 60' x 100' machine shop at their plant in Valparaiso, Indiana. Chuck asked if the company (at that time, McGill Manufacturing) would consider donating the building to the museum, and their answer was that yes they would, provided the museum dismantled it and moved it off of the property within a set time limit after the building was vacated. The building was subsequently taken down by museum members and moved to North Judson. Although a nice size structure, it was not tall enough to accomodate rail equipment, so concrete posts were poured so that the each supporting post sat 8 feet in the air on those posts instead of resting on the ground as it had done at McGill's. The building after being reassembled, became the first indoor shop facility for the museum.

Some years later, a 60' x 60' commercial building was purchased and added to the FRONT with the new doors that had been added on to the McGill structure, moved forward onto that commercial building to gain rail access.

More recently, the abandonment of the short line railroad that ran from North Judson to Monterey, Indiana (old Erie Railroad trackage) meant that the two stall 50' x 98' short line enginehouse at Monterey was no longer used. Again, the museum took that structure apart and moved it to North Judson, adding it to the REAR of the McGill building. Because of a curve in the track of the rail line coming in to North Judson (ex-C&O trackage), this building had to be offset so that only one track lined up with the McGill building. Eventually, a second track will be built coming in to this old enginehouse from the rear end using a moved track door.

So, of the three structures that make up the HVRM Shop, two were acquired from buildings in place elsewhere, and moved to the museum.

Additional comments forthcoming.

Les

Becky -

As for using unused buildings with rail access as temporary shelters for equipment, I can only state that, although this sounds like a good idea, it may not always be so. There is a gentleman who is a member at our museum who moved some of his privately owned equipment into such empty steel plant buildings. Two problems:

1. Vandalism occurred, even though the building was on private property with limited access. Workers? Vagrants? Who knows?

2. A change in policy found an unused building was to be unused no longer and the equipment had to be rather quickly moved out, now subject to the weather, and the problem in point 1 above.

Certainly there are instances where unused buildings WERE a satisfactory solution to having equipment remain outside. But I think that moving buildings to the museum site (if at all feasible), is better in the long run.

Les

I'm a strong believer in recycling and have been involved in disassembly and re-construction of a several industrial buildings, but I'm afraid the days of easily recycling buildings are over. I suspect most companies are sufficiently lawyered up that they won't donate a structure, fearing a suit if someone is injured, even if it happens 20 years down the road. Also, in many places, zoning regulations are such that recycled buildings don't meet the criteria, and don't even think about a pole barn.

It's a great idea, and has been done successfully a few times. There are potential problems however. One is that it is common to be pressed for space and re-purposing a steel building may not fit the site or the equipment it is intended to enclose. Another is that building and planning codes continue to evolve, and while it may be possible to reuse an old structure, it will definitely need some manner of licensed design professional to sign off on its new life, and may likely need some manner of structural retrofit. The biggest issue yet may be the cost. While this approach can ultimately be cheaper than new construction, the material of a structure is just one portion of a building's cost, and if you are going to disassemble and then reassemble a steel building, you are going to use a lot of person-hours. A lot of money is also going to have to go into your new building site in the form of foundations and utilities.

A big possible advantage of reusing a structure is that if it is of an older, industrial design, it may provide a more appropriate appearance for housing vintage railway equipment than the pre-engineered steel buildings that are common now. These latter structures are very economical, but were not common until the 50s and 60s.

It has also become very popular to use recycled wood as a cladding material to create an aged look, but this is mostly just done as a veneer for its associative value. While the look can be nice, it is mostly about looking "olde time," "home made," and "re-used."

There are other worthy applications of old buildings. They can be used to create an appropriate context while serving various useful purposes. Architectural preservation can be a nice complement to railway preservation. I can think of many buildings, railroad-related and not, that have found a place at various railway museums.

B&LE 643 is a great example of temporary storage in former industrial buildings. She went from the B&O Glenwood backshop to the P&LE McKees Rocks Wheel Shop, then to the car shop, then across the mainline into a warehouse at a lumber yard. Now that the warehouse had been torn down around her, (or did it fall down around her?), she is out in the weather again on a siding that either has been or will be obliterated by the CSX doublestack clearance project.

This can be a great way to save money on a good building, particularly for storage or shop structures. A good steel structure with a heavy craneway would be a great find.

However, there are several difficulties that can make this approach either uneconomical or illegal:

- Building Codes may well have changed, even since a relatively new building was erected. This will be particularly true in areas with heavy snow loading or areas which are earthquake prone.
- Zoning and other municipal restrictions may prevent the erection of an otherwise good structure.
- Demolition of a building is extremely labour- intensive. Even if you decide to just take the steel structure and scrap the rest, you will be amazed at the cost of disposing of the rest.
- Beware of asbestos and the many contaminants that may be found in, around, and under an industrial building. You sure don't want to find yourself being forced to clean up a brownfields site!
- Don't underestimate cost of cranes, manlifts, and trucking to dismantle and ship the structure to your site, not to mention reassembly.
- Engineering services will be required. Do you have a structural engineer who would certify the structure and its new foundation plan, or will you have to pay for these services? Does the structure come with original stamped drawings? Even so, they must be reviewed in light of current standards.

I'm not trying to dampen enthusiasm, but it's essential to reaize what you're getting into when relocating a building.

Steve Hunter

The obvious problems are why I brought this up. I've seen far too many museums, large and small, bite on what looked like a good building or offer of space, then have something happen that cost far more than they could handle. The Bellaire Coal Mine Museum was many years in planning and two years in the building, looked great...and the week after they opened, the company that owned the old Imperial Glass factory decided to tear down the building. In the haste to save what they could, the museum staff accepted storage in a county building that had other uses, and a lot of their stuff disappeared. I never did know what happened to most of it.

643 is another prime example. She's about to be landlocked from the rail system and is too big to move by any other means I can think of unless she's disassembled (and too far from the river for that approach.) The only upside is that she was indeed out of the weather and reach of vandals for that many years.

As it stands, liability has destroyed a great many opportunities for donation or reuse. The brownfield issue is very much a concern, even with a certificate from the EPA (which isn't worth the bushel of paper it's written on if they change their minds.) There should be a way to craft a good agreement to protect everyone involved and encourage companies to dispose of what they never plan to use. Good deeds should go unpunished.

Yup, this. This is why borrowing storage space does not work. "Preservationists" have tried it for 70 years. The happy endings look like IRM, ORM, Seashore and WRM, where the sheer pain, desperation and ongoing losses like you describe finally drove them to wildly overextend themselves and buy land.

We know exactly what happens to the museums that don't. They either fail entirely (and we saw that recently with Lake Shore Electric/Brookins)... or they wind up with woefully inadequate space such as Michigan Transit Museum and Ohio Railway Museum.

"indoor" makes the bargain look sweeter, but the math comes out the same in the end. ANY resources you expend toward living in borrowed storage are resources you cannot direct toward your OWN facility.

What are you waiting for? The real estate market to go down? LOL! Seriously, it may go down a little more but then it's most likely going to go back up pretty fast. Then you'll REGRET not acting now.


Yeah. I just bought a brownfield property, and the environmental work alone was 15% of the deal. I bought another that was "toxic" in a different way; it had so many legal issues (easements, access, build rights) that nobody wanted to buy it. These properties can be great bargains if you are willing to do an outsize amount of legwork and/or paying people. They're bargains BECAUSE of that.

As far as liability generally, that's what LLC's and "Friends" organizations are for. Make sure the buying organization is not your precious railroad/museum, and ownership is structured so it won't just get called an alter-ego or subsidiary. Again, legwork or pay people.

You're going to have to do it anyway on space you borrow. Might as well do it on space you own.