Hi y'all,

I just learned of this Sunday, so after seeing pictures and stopping by today, I felt I would post it...

Cadiz Railroad combine #9( possibly #8), purchased from Hicks by the Cadiz in 1908 and used until being given to long time Cadiz engineer "Dicky" Mitchell in 1936 is being dismantled. Between 1936 and 1938, with the help of the RR, the combine was converted to a home for Mitchell and his wife. Mitchell retired from the Cadiz in 1948. Him and his wife lived there until they passed away.. The car has changed hands a few time since then and is now being dismantled by the current owners. I don't have contact info but am working on it.

Stuart

http://hickscarworks.blogspot.com/2014/ ... ch-in.html

For those who don't read Randy Hick's excellent blog, here is more on the car. He indicates he knows who to contact.

Thanks for the update, but from the pictures above it's even more dismantled now than it was when I first learned about it. The third picture above at least gives you an excellent view of a typical truss design for a wooden coach.

It should also be mentioned that our friends at North Freedom are now in the process of restoring Munising #64, another Hicks-built coach, and I'm sure they will do a beautiful job as always.

Its absolutely unreal that in this day and age people still dont think of offering beauties like this to anyone ! Its still has its truss rods for goodness sake.
Very very sad the owners should be made aware of the significance of any remaining useful parts ...but what a potential loss of a restorable and beautiful car. Anyone see a number above the door when they visited ?
Is it a Hicks build or rebuild of an older car.

Mike Pannell

This one appears to have been built new by Hicks. For a small car builder that only lasted a decade and went under in 1911, a surprising number of Hicks-built passenger cars have survived, likely because the company seemed to work with a lot of smaller railroads that were more likely to keep outdated equipment around longer. Hicks-built survivors are detailed here:

http://hickscarworks.blogspot.com/2009/03/hlc.html

Mike:
Its unfortunate, but not every one shares our sense of history nor vision. The current owners appear to have already put a price tag on the car (which seems reasonable) so they do have a feel that there is some monetary value to it.

I learned a hard lesson just about 14 years ago in working a similar situation where the car was ultimately lost (the PRR "Seaside car"). We should have paid cash for the car up front and then signed a rental agreement for the property for some extended period of time, say for one year. I learned that in cases like this money talks, not some story about history and such. Its lost on some people, and for the most part they have no interest in a donation of the car nor in some story on fund raising to move it.

If this guy was asking $3K for the car, pay it, but tie it to a property rental agreement (no doubt paying rent) to allow time for it to be prepped and moved properly. Again, this is based on a hard lesson on my part that I am still pissed about 14 years later.

J.R. May

Many of us in this field have learned the hard way--quite often from dealing with the heirs of otherwise well-meaning and charitable individuals--that some people ONLY view and value things in terms of how much money can supposedly be extracted from someone else for it, often grotesquely inflated out of proportion to common sense and "the real world."

Not to say that viewing things only in terms of historical value (often also inflated as well), and not its potential earnings capability or real-world maintenance costs (even the property taxes for the real estate it sits on), isn't also foolhardy. The best of preservationists always have to balance the two extremes, occasionally frantically.