Diesel Locomotive Seminar added to ARM Annual Conference

The Pennsylvania Trolley Museum is pleased to announce that noted diesel historian Preston Cook will be presenting a detailed presentation the morning of Saturday October 6th covering the "Sustainability of Historic Diesel Locomotives in the 21st Century."

His presentation will include:

1. Overview of how major components of diesels are built. This will provide the audience with essential understanding of details of items for the later topics.

2. Manufacturer by Manufacturer overview of present parts availability and technical support for critical machinery.

3. Alternate sources of parts and technical support.

4. How not to plan a restoration.

5. What you can and cannot substitute.

6. Upgrades you should consider.

7. Technical publications and their importance.

8. Projects that are practical, projects that are not practical.

This 3-hour seminar will be followed by lunch and then a 3 hour "field" seminar on diesel maintenance using a 1930 Baldwin-Westinghouse locomotive powered by a Hamilton 400 hp engine, a 1942 Porter Center Cab Locomotive powered by two Cummins 150 hp engines and a 1950s EMD Geep powered by a 567C engine.

The seminar is open only to registrants to the Association of Railway Museums Annual Conference which runs from October 3-7, 2007 in Washington, PA near Pittsburgh, PA. Save $25 by registering before August 31st! Download registration materials at www.pa-trolley.org . Email vsm@pa-trolley.org or call 724-228-9256 for information.

Fantastic idea. My hat is off to Preston and the organizers for pulling this together.

Erik, thanks for your comment. I am doing quite a bit of research in advance of this meeting to try to pin down the parts and technical support available for engines and electrical rotating equipment on a manufacturer by manufacturer basis, both from the OEMs and alternate sources. There is a lot of telephone time going into this study, and I am making some visits to suppliers. I am also trying to document the critical problem areas that are likely to be obstacles in planning future restorations, and identify possible "work-around" options. I hope to make this a very informative session for those who can attend. My presentation will NOT just be limited to EMD, although that of course is my background experience. I intend to be applicable to a wide range of locomotive types including some that are likely candidates for preservation in the near future. It is a valuable learning opportunity for me, too. I am finding a lot of new information in the course of putting this together.

My thanks to Dave and his friends at the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum for inviting me to take part in this.

Preston

This really sounds like an excellent seminar. Is there any possibility that this presentation will be recorded and made available for sale, say in DVD format, for those of us that will not be able to attend?

We are discussing a number of suggestions that have been made for preserving the information that is being gathered for the presentation, we have not reached any decision on the best way to do it at this time. Because of the very technical nature of this topic my feeling is that some form of written summary might be more useful, a videotape cannot convey the screen details adequately. Of course the problem there would be getting the time to put a written version together, as I am also taking care of equipment that is in operation 24/7.

PC

I think this presentation should be captured on video, even if it isn't 'perfect'. It can be augmented with the written information and references. Perhaps you can get a community college or some other non-profit with a media center to make the recording. It would really be nice if the afternoon session was recorded too, but being either outdoors or in the barns would be more challenging, probably needing multiple cameras, mikes, lighting, etc.

P.S. I also recommend it be a High-Definition recording.

To answer some of the questions that came in about making this presentation more widely available, we reviewed the various issues involved and decided that print publication was the best alternative for reasons that I will explain below. Consequently the portions of the program that were adaptable to this kind of presentation have been written up into article form and submitted to a publisher. Since there is no guarantee at this time that the article will actually make it to publication I will not go into identifying who I sent it to.

The big problems with distributing this in an electronic media format were the "fair use" provisions of copyright laws, the licensing of music (since the presentation program had two slide-music segments), and adapting several portions of the discussion that had very frank references to failed restoration projects. Regarding "fair use", some things that I could legally show in the program for educational purposes would have been copyright violations if the program were handed out commercially. The music segments would require my being there to be played legally as they are not licensed for commercial distribution. The discussion of failed restoration projects obviously would have required much editing since it included newspaper articles demonstrating the step by step self destruction of one of the examples I chose to highlight. It was easier to just drop these things out of a printed version than to try to chase all the necessary permissions that would have been needed to include them in an electronic one.

I realize these issues might seem trivial, but people who have distributed disks of PowerPoint and ProShow presentations in the past have had them end up in a lot of places they did not intend, including on eBay. It is simply not worth betting the farm on the assumption that copyright holders will not take action to protect their intellectual property rights, I try to keep the use of any copyrighted materials in an educational presentation just as correct as possible. Besides, print publication provides a very enduring record.

Thanks for your understanding, and thanks to the many folks who provided nice feedback comments on the presentation at the conference.

Preston Cook