I've started a new topic specifically targeting this locomotive. There is another thread going "hot and heavy" concerning preservation and this big engine is being used as an example of "the surplus population".

Other than spray painting and smashed glass, has anyone been in the locomotive in recent months or weeks? What do the cabs look like today? What is missing today? Pictures?

Is her exterior in redeemable condition?

I was up close and personal with the '76 a couple weekends ago. She's in sad shape. Although she's now inside the fence, many years outside amongst the locals have taken their toll. The inside has been torn apart by vandals and copper thieves, vagrants have started fires inside and until recently, the floors were covered with human waste and drug paraphanelia. The body (especially on the ends) is rotting out with most body panels very thin and rotted through. There are long holes along seams (similar to N5C disease). All the windows are missing, which has left the interior open to the elements. Hardware is missing, most of the pantographs are missing, etc.

It's pretty sad considering the history of this particular locomotive, but I still say remove anything that could be used on the other preserved Gs and scrap it. We have enough GG1s preserved (including one in its natural habitat!) that future generations will know what a GG1 is. Is scrapping the '76 a hard decision? Yes, however it is better to use funds to finish the restoration of a better candidate than start with a rusted out hulk like this. If it was the only GG1 in preservation, then it would be most worth it, but with several others around in better shape and/or under cover, it just makes no sense.

Sometimes you have to look at something like this realistically, not emotionally. It's tough, but there's a saying that goes "You can't save them all, nor should you". The money that would be spent on this one GG1 could provide restoration and paint to at least 3 others. Three others that would be kept under cover, not out in the west Baltimore elements.
Russ

I guess the saying goes, "Somethings must die to allow other things to live." Or words to the effect. None of us want to see the engine scrapped, but I guess for the better of the preservation of the other GG-1's, we sometimes have to be hard hearted.

Martin

If you have deep enough pockets, you can save anything. So it comes down to the fact, does the owner have those deep pockets? If not, allow others with salvageable GGs to harvest parts from her and scrap her out.

Later!
Mr. Ed

I've got no objection to harvesting internal parts. Even the motors if someone pays for a crane lift. While it would be a wonderful dream come true to make one run by any of several means including custom winding a new transformer, and restoring it in-kind, modern electronics, or hacking in some trolley gear, 4876 is highly unlikely to be the candidate for anything like that.

I see no reason, however, that 4876 could not be cosmetically restored. At the very least, could steps be taken to prevent further deterioration? I hope so! Given how much it would cost to make it road worthy just to move it, the path of least resistance that results in this engine being saved would be for the present owners (B&O Museum) decide it warranted inclusion in their collection.

That doesn't mean I have any delusion about them suddenly spending big bucks on it. But assured of a place at their facility, others can try to raise some cosmetic restoration money without the sky high burden of having to find another place for it to go and tremendous work and cost to make it movable. I think that is reasonable.

Am I primarily motivated by the Federal Express accident? Yes. So? Look at PRR setting aside an engine just because it once carried film about Lindbergh. Didn't transport the man...didn't have anything to do with the famous Atlantic crossing...no, only because it transported newsreel film. So there are flimsier reasons to want to save an engine than a spectacular wreck that had a mostly happy ending (no deaths and engine returned to service).

So here is an engine that operated nearby for a long time, was unique to its owner, and the particular example at hand has a great story associated with it, one that will get younger visitors to look up from their iPhones. What's not to like?

Anyone willing to contribute $10000 of their own money to the project?

$1000?

$100

No?

Then it's really not that important to you, is it?

Without money, it's not happening, and even with that money, perhaps it'd be more worthwhile to spend it on something that's a bit more unique.

And yes, it will take a LOT of money.

Throw aside the all-too-real money issues. Here are the hardened realities:

1) 4876 is of an oddball, non-standard air-intake design--I think it was the only one with that specific hybrid rebuild with both upper and lower intakes.

2) With their welded skin and body, it's a one-piece construction, in effect. There just AREN'T external/cosmetic parts to salvage; even the few there are (marker boxes, pantographs, doors) are already damaged beyond feasible repair, as seen in the photos supplied by Brother Kap.

3) If any GG1 needed parts, they could have been salvaged from 4873, privately purchased and stored at Whippany, NJ for years before BEING SCRAPPED.

4) There are NO internal cosmetic parts to salvage out of 4876. No cab gauges, no handles, no lights, no ammeters......... nothing.

5) The only folks crazy enough to dream of running an operable GG1 in the future have a) the only one rumored to have intact electrical gear, and B) A WHOLE SPARE GG1 SITTING RIGHT NEXT TO IT FOR SPARE PARTS!!!:
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=193903

6) If you want/need a "cosmetic only display" GG1, there are two to choose from in #5, in perhaps slightly better physical shape.

7) The museum in question has ALREADY "disposed of" a GG1 that someone else locally, thirty years ago, expended thousands of dollars (make that tens of thousands in today's money) to acquire, ship in, and restore cosmetically.

8) Another group (in Pa.) has already proposed acquisition and restoration of this loco, and found the moving costs insurmountable and/or their proposal unfeasible--they were basically "never heard from again" after some bombastic public announcements.

So, the only real reason FOR saving 4876 is the "cool" factor of it smashing out of control into a major terminal without killing anyone.............

Sorry. Simply NOT worth it. But don't let me stop you from trying to persuade the Museum otherwise, or getting it for YOUR back yard......

I've dealt with several pieces of equipment which were full of excrement... however the excrement was NOT human-generated but from animals. Usually humans leave graffiti and steal copper.


I have to wonder, what on earth was B&O thinking, storing it out there, and failing to secure it, every single week for many many years. Couldn't you have bumped something less trashable, like a freight car, and put the G in that slot? "If you didn't have a place to put it, why'd you collect it?????"


The pantograph damage looks like the standard damage you see when a pan hits a close clearance, such as a tree branch or a trolley wire. That in an of itself is no big deal; happens to pantographs all the time and the tubes are designed to fail first, and you renew the tubes. As long as the rest of the hardware is present, it's no big deal.


It really depends what else is going on underneath. For instance the skin deterioration is probably happening to all GG1's everywhere, so may not be a distinguishing factor that makes THIS G worse off than another. As for the apparatus that may be stripped, "complete" is nice but you have to take it off anyway to overhaul it, so doe s it matter if it comes off one to go on this one. One thing about this one - the "restore to date" is fairly obvious, since its career had a high point. Or low point as it were.

In any case -- here's the point about restoration. Beauty is >>NOT<< in the eye of the beholder. What turns your stomach is not necessarily relevant to a restoration. Case in point worrying about the shape of the skin. The apocryphal example is some piece will look like bloody crap and half the people are saying "it's a goner, must be scrapped". Then somebody throws a nice coat of paint on it, and suddenly the unit is worth saving.

And then their are the two in Cooperstown jct. One was going to Henry Ford. Had asbestos removed and ready to ship moved about 100 ft. and just sits there. Some day maybe something will happen with the two of them.

Robertmacdowell-
It isn't just that the skin is rusting out, it's the whole situation.
-It's in really sad shape
-it's been ravaged inside and out by the elements/bums/druggies/thieves
-It's at the B&O and they don't have any plans for it as they have much more important pieces of their collection to worry about.
-It's prohibitively expensive to move anywhere but the B&O
-No one is opening up their pockets to fix it.
-It's taking up track space that could be occupied by something else outside the fence
-There are many more GG1s more deserving of the time and money required to do even just a basic cosmetic restoration (4800 anyone?)

I could go on and on.

That said, should someone want the thing, I'll be more than happy to lend my rail car moving expertise. Be forewarned, it'll cost upwards of 100K to move.
Anyone?
Russ

Kinda worth mentioning that while we all regret the sad state of certain G's, one that suffered from vandalism is back in (almost) black. #4877 is the latest success story of the revived URHS initiative in NJ. Full DGLE elegance!

Rob

One does not prove the other. One of the most daunting challenges for preservation is having the unit in the first place. No matter how interested you are in restoring an <X>, no matter how skilled you are, no matter what financial resources you have -- the bottom line is, it ain't gonna happen unless you also have a unit to work on. Ask the Friends of the 261 all about that.

So what often happens -- what usually happens -- is that opportunities (like parting out 4873) that SHOULD happen in perfect socialism, DO NOT happen because of all that silly private ownership and freedom stuff. How many CTA-4000 series got scrapped incl. trucks and motors, whilst interurban carbodies sit around waiting for same? How many useful parts coulda got saved off Alco S1's, F-units and the like now rushed to scrap by some private owner? Anyone get anything off the MOT's Wabash GP35? Nope, these things get scrapped, they get scrapped whole. Because the decision from "beyond reselling" to "beyond any use" goes real fast.



Oh good grief. Who's going to go INSIDE a GG1 cab, anyway?


Again, in non-socialist America, what we "collectively" have doesn't matter. It's what the right people have in the right place at the right time.

And the people who want to energize a GG1 aren't crazy. You wanna know who's REALLY crazy in railway preservation? STEAM guys. They're working with a technology that is far more obsolete, far more obscure, and divergent from modern practice in that field (who uses fire-tube boilers, least of all horizontal ones?) At least the GG1 is borne of a technology still in common use. Where do you get a GG1 motor rewound? anywhere. Where do you get a superheater?

And what on earth is going on with those units in New York, anyway.

Thank you to Ed Kapuscinski and Jeff Lisowski for posting the photographs of 4876.

For my two, well maybe three cents, The car body could be repairs and painted, and I think the owners would be chasing rust forever. Certainly the markers require serious work. It's difficult to believe the old girl has been allowed to sit in the environment she's in for so long.

Thought: People may not be willing to shell out money to try and preserve the whole locomotive, but I'm betting they'll cough up cash to own the nose door of this engine, or perhaps a lens, or something similar. If she's scrapped, I would start with auctioning off parts to private collectors, then let her go.

Still I'm reluctant to say goodbye, to call it a day, to consign a visitor in history, to certain obscurity.

For the record, the B&O Museum is at best a reluctant player in this drama, and at worst a completely innocent victim of good intentions.

The locomotive was "rescued" from NJ Transit by a well-meaning, typically-underfunded individual/group (whom I know but won't reveal here) with the long-range goal of putting her in Washington Union. I think it was after agreeing to take it that the group/person heard "You want to put WHAT?!?!?! WHERE?!?!?! Oh, no, nonononono.... NOT THAT one!!!!" from Amtrak, and the B&O Museum was either volunteered, drafted, or guilt-tripped into (depending on who you talk to) "temporarily" storing or otherwise taking custody of the loco. That was over ten years ago, as I recall.

Incidentally, I had a talk with a top Amtrak official in person last night, one based in D.C. and working on track matters; WUS is part of his jurisdiction. He said, definitively and unhesitatingly, that "There is NO [bleeping] WAY IN HELL Amtrak will let ANYBODY put ANY locomotive on ANY track down there permanently just for public display, and ESPECIALLY not THAT one! They're so short for space down there that they're even trying to kick out the private cars that show up down there now and then! Even the railroad executive cars!" So, unless you want to roll one over to Railroad Hall at the Smithsonian........ oh, wait, Smithsonian HAD claim on one of these GG1's, and then gave it up when they realized enough would be saved elsewhere.... and they STILL need to find a place for a particular Alco PA..... eventually......

Steam technology continues in use today--just not necessarily in the form of reciprocating pistons driving wheels. With steam, you're not mucking with watts, ohms, amperes, volts, and all that funky stuff. The fact is that steam has survived as long as it has with steam thresher groups and the like because it's simple. The only thing "obsolete" is that no one's routinely making those boilers, pumps, injectors, etc.--and as steam guys will show you, those can be engineered around.

With electric, you need a substation, an overhead or third-rail system, and the associated infrastructure. And I'm going to have to tell my guys at the streetcar museum how they can get a GG1 motor rewound "anywhere"--and see if they can apply that to the motors they just had repaired/rewound not-anywhere......