I apologize if this is already common knowledge to everyone here.

Want the last two Muni LRVs? (Perhaps a useful store of parts or source of a nifty "interpretive display" or cutaway view?)

Apparently San Francisco will give them to you if you arrange to haul them away.

http://sfist.com/2016/03/31/munis_last_two_big_orange_lrv_cars.php

Now, they note in the argument that museums and so forth got the offer to 'save' these cars and haven't done anything. I thought I would ask here, on the off chance there is a museum (or prospective preservation entity of some kind) that wants or could use them. Or, barring that, if there's anyone who might want them for the (admittedly high) cost of accessing them.

I include in this anyone with the appropriate transport ability or equipment, who could at least take them to an equipment yard and store them.. there are precedents for that. Heck, put 'em on a barge and float them down with the houseboats... or has that gone too upscale, too?

Hi


These two cars were scrapped a month or so ago.


Cheers,

Karl Johnson

Can anyone shed light on why none of the museums wanted these? Would the cost of moving them be that high? I realize they were notoriously problem riddled, so maybe nobody thought they could keep them running? Not worth getting for display only?

I recall reading an article in L&RP magazine about some LRVs, pretty sure it was these. By the time the author got down listing all of the problems areas, which seemed to start at the pantograph and end at the wheels, I was left wondering exactly what parts, if any, did work as designed.

Apparently the moral of the story was that just because you can design airplanes that doesn't mean you can design streetcars. They simply didn't hold up the beating they take.

That's probably right, but keep in mind that two of the three big west coast traction museums (Oregon Electric and WRM) already have a Muni LRV and the third, Orange Empire, has sold most of its Muni collection back to San Francisco to concentrate more on southern California. So the only museums at which these cars would have really fit in already had examples. And Karl would have much better insight but I'd guess that Muni didn't want them because they didn't think they could keep the things running and they (understandably) have no use for static display pieces.

Even with these two scrapped there are still seven LRVs around, three Muni and four MBTA (plus maybe two more in England - I'm not sure what happened to the cars that went to Manchester and Derby). So they're definitely not extinct.

Museum's are now thinking more rationally about what could and should be saved. After all, you can not save everything. Local railroads and local railroad equipment is now a much higher priority for many railroad museums than simply collecting for collecting sake. It's much healthier for all - the equipment and the museum.

There is also an LRV body apparently used for storage in a towing yard next to the UP and BNSF in north Richmond, CA. It is visible from Capitol Corridor trains.

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.9720564,-122.3574292,60m/data=!3m1!1e3

That one, Muni 1271, is of the extant seven. There's also one each at WRM (Muni), Oregon Electric (Muni), and Seashore (MBTA), plus three still on MBTA property.

The last of the ones that appeared in the UK was scrapped at the beginning of last month

http://www.britishtramsonline.co.uk/new ... more-14556

Here's the location in North Richmond, Ca. (the business is called Certified Towing) via Bing, which has the advantage of a rotatable "bird's eye view" mode, which lets you see the subject from other angles:

https://www.bing.com/mapspreview?&ty=18 ... orm=S00027

It does look like the car may be on a short section of track; the body looks too straight to just be on the ground, but I could be wrong.

Hi,



As for thinking about rationalizing what is saved for postarity, It seems that every generation in every different interest group wants to save everything.

If the Revolutionary battlefields were to be preserved, the heights on Long Island was a big fight for Washington loosing the New York campaign.

If the War of 1812 battlefields were to be preserved, Washinton DC would need to be preserved.

As for the Civil War, Atlanta, and Memphis are examples.

How about Hiroshima for WWII?

Many more incidents for almost any reason can be listed and the issue would be the some - the future is change and we change things to grow. Representative examples of different era's are needed but trying to freeze history in one era or one subject of history is not the best way to consider everything.

As for Atlanta, the Atlanta Chapter NRHS has a fine collection but it may be too large for the number of volunteers available (at least when I was volunteering in the early 1970s). With Stone Mountain nearby with a five mile loop of track, there was no interest by the State of GA to do anything since it was then known as Stone Mountain Memorial Park with the subject of the War in Georgia.

Stone Mountain is now an amusement park. What better place to have had part of the NRHS-Atlanta Chapter to simulate steam trains? Then have a diesel (or steam) mixed train run around the mountain. Maybe have two trains, one from the 1920s and one from the 1950s.

The opportunity is now lost. Just saving equipment without a plan to focus the preservation is not the best way. (Not slamming the Atlanta Chapter, just one example of possibilities.)

Just reinventing the wheel.

FWIW

Doug vV

Given this, it is not hard to understand why there were no takers for the BV LRVs that MUNI recently scrapped.

I'm not sure what you meant that OERM sold "most" of its Muni collection. I thought it was only one car, the 162. Am I missing something?

They also sold a pair of PCC cars back to Muni if memory serves.

Keep in mind that more equipment has been saved than can ever be preserved long term.

A problem with saving modern light rail vehicles for an operating museum is that they are full of obsolete electronic devices that will be very difficult to replace in the future when they fail. Very few museums have personnel who can trouble shoot a circuit board down to the component level. Special test jigs for the circuit boards no longer exist.

One of the most active guys on our BOD is an electrical engineer whose company does nothing but troubleshoot and repair circuit boards from obsolete welding equipment. He's sympathetic, but unless there's a mass of work out there or existing schematics and specifications the cost for his team to reverse engineer and try to repair (given the problem inherent in chips no longer being available, etc) would be very high. He says building a new control system using available off shelf would be more cost effective, but subject to similar issues 40 years from now. Makes those K35s look good and sustainable, doesn't it?

That said, he offers his services subject to the reality outlined above.

Our 1971 French-built PCC from The Hague has a Westinghouse drum controller with circuit boards instead of mechanical relays. The single recurring problem involves a small fuse that is/was available off the shelf at Radio Shack.

Having experience with The Hague PCC constructed at the same time as the Boeing cars, one wonders why the US did not follow suit and use the European PCC.

Wesley