As someone who actually has money tied up in British locomotives, I ask......... what in *%#&!@ tarnation are you talking about?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

British railway preservation is no more "publicly funded" than North American rail preservation. Do you actually think the government set up and funded the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, the Severn Valley, the Keighley and Worth Valley, the Strathspey, the Great Central, the Gloucester-Warwickshire, the Kent & East Sussex, the West Somerset, Steamtown Carnforth, the Ffestiniog, the Welsh Highland............. you get my drift. And need I rattle off hundreds of steam and diesel locomotives and carriages, all privately owned?

The Heritage Lottery grants? OK, I'll see you and raise you the ISTEA and TEA-21 grants. Do the latter mean American rail preservation is "publicly funded"?

Yes, they have the National Railway Museum and a couple government-protected sites and museums. And we have the Cumbres & Toltec, the RR Museum of Pa./NC/Ca., and Steamtown NHS.

I trust that Mr. Templin will allow me to speak for my fellow "dateless eccentrics" by saying that his posting powerfully illustrates one aspect of this whole discussion which seems to have evolved into a question of how can we get those with a lot of loose change addicted to trains???
Firstly, seems to me that Mr. Mitchell hit the nail square on its head!! The myriad difficulties involved in trying to actually operate "your" engine once you've jumped through all the hoops to get it into operable condition are such as to scare away 99.999999999999999% of any potential players. To illustrate this point I was involved with Mr. Richard Kughn of Detroit in the restoration of Rdg.2100 in the late 80's. Mr. Kughn (a very successful real estate developer-life long "foamer") put up the lions share of the approx.$900,000 spent restoring her to service with every expectation of operating her in excursion service in the mid-west,and to help him promote Lionel Trains which he had just purchased rather than see it move to Mexico! Just as we were putting the finishing touches on her,Mr. Kughns lawyers came to him and convinced him that no matter how many corporations he used to seperate himself from her operation, and no matter how much insurance he carried that in the event of a catostrophic accident he could lose everything he had. That was it--he ordered her disposed of without her ever turning a revenue wheel!!!
I do think there is much merit in Mr. Mays concept of creating a Heritage Trust to insure that there is a long term future for operating mainline steam and I'd hope we could do that. Perhaps we could get Jerry Joe Jacobson to be the beginning nucleus of it and get other wealthy foamers to assist???? I'll speak to Jerry and see if there's any receptivity on his part.
Interesting worthwhile subject.
Ross Rowland

pm-man,

You counted out 6 projects. And according to J. David Conrad there are over 1200 steam locomotives in this country. Point Made.

I applaude those who have the resources to do private preservation; they are wonderful people who share their knowledge and skills.

Ted Miles

yes, I am surprised that nobody has mentioned the British Heritage Lottery.

I see two reasons that explain why it is there. One is the Brits are aware that tourism is their national product these days. Old stuff brings in visitoors.

The Heritage Lottery also covers sports (think Little League) and other cultural groups like Little Theatre Groups. At a National level is is a painless way of taking money out of your pocket and giving it away.

For our interest here it supports static rail museums, heritage railways and even single locomotives. Boy, it sure would be nice to have something like that here!

Ted Miles

> I do think there is much merit in Mr. Mays concept of creating a Heritage
> Trust to insure that there is a long term future for operating mainline steam

Hmmm, not sure this was me. Its a great idea, but I'd suspect funding would be the issue.

> One might even say that the best steam locomotive restoration have
> been DONE by private owners. A few of the more recent examples:

The list did not even touch on the engines owned by individuals that are in the care of museums. Take #9 up at the WW&F which is still apparently owned by the Ramsdell estate. Pine Creek has two leased engines from an individuals. I am sure there are many others.

And lets not forget the smaller equipment used on private 2 and 3 foot gauge backyard operations where you can see Plymouths or a small steamers in operation. There's a lot of locomotives and rolling stock saved from the torch by these hearty individuals who tend to stick together via a yahoo group.

Can't leave out the folks who own private cars and cabooses. Some are used on the mainline, others sit in back yards as hotels pool houses. They are privately owned.

In short, individuals DO OWN locomotives and rolling stock of various sizes and gauges.

My suggestion remains, how do you expand the notion that such ownership is possible. How do you make such ownership easier, more boat like so to speak.

J.R.

I don't think the ISTEA and TE grants would be a "raise" as compared to the Heritage Lottery. I've quite a bit of experience with ISTEA and TE and have read quite a bit about the Heritage Lottery, I don't think they are in the same league. I think I'd trade TE for the Heritage Lottery.

Since the states have quite a bit of control on TE funds, it isn't a very easy program to label. In Indiana it is a fairly open process from what I hear from my counterparts in other states. Quite a few railroad preservation projects have been funded here through the program. It isn't an easy process for most small volunteer groups to manage and in most states it requires a 20% match of funds due at the time the bids are awarded which seems to trip up many small groups involved in the program (not just rail preservation) and often there is a conflict over what can be applied to the 20% match.

Once the project starts, the costs are often considerable higher than they would have been if the work been done with private money. This is mostly because of requirements to meet various reporting, bidding, and other rules that come with the Federal funding package.

David Farlow
Whitewater Valley Railroad

Thanks Ted and Sandy --- you both make good points. Fact is, its not easy to do ANY of the above.

As someone who has experienced first hand how much effort (and constant stress/ prayer) it takes to run Big, 65+ year old Lima-built steam in the 21st Century this past year, I would agree that it doesn't matter if your a museum OR a private owner --- running preserved equipment (especially steam) is VERY difficult. I feel very blessed to have had the following this year:

1.) VERY friendly railroads to deal with (thank you Mr. Bagwell, Mr. Springsdorf, Mr. Robinson and many others AT GLC, and Mr. Kricher, Mr. Claytor, Mr. Schmidt and countless others at RailAmerica)

2.) Great coal and water treatment suppliers (kudos Ted Williams Trucking of Jackson, Ohio and Mitch at Cannonball Water Group)

3.) People who are willing to financially help you to use your equipment in "out of the box" situations (kudos to John Craft, Pete Lerro, etc.)

4.) Friends who help in the industry in a variety of ways (you know who you are, and most would rather not admit knowing me, so I'll save you the grief of "you know THAT guy? And ADMIT it?)

5.) A group of hardworking volunteers (too many to name, but everyone at SRI knows who you are, and I thank you).

6.) Coworkers who have (for some ungodly reason) stuck it out this year, when every fibre of their being tells them "GET THE @#$ OUT OF DODGE!"

Look, its easier to list WHY and HOW MANY groups, locos, tourist lines, museums out there have quit running than it is to list the successes some times. If insurance doesn't kill you, equipment maintenance, cost of consumption and just the sure economics will. Its a tough business, whether your private, public, or something in between.

I will say this --- those who do seem to succeed treat this as a business. Make no mistake --- if your running historic equipment it can't be treated like a hobby if its going to work --- you BETTER treat it like a business, or your dead --- in some cases literally. We may think we PLAY with trains --- and yes, cars, planes, and boats can kill you to --- but FEW tend to take so many WITH them when they don't treat their equipment with the respect and safety it deserves. If any ONE of us screw up in steam field, public or private, that could be the end -- and it almost was in 1995. Many cars and planes have crashed, and boats have sunk; name me ONE other mode of transport out there where some guys screwing up that you don't even know could TERMINATE not only your employment, but your WHOLE PROFESSION, simply becuase of his ignorance for ONE SECOND? Yeah, no PRESSURE there........

If you can't be comfortable with THAT kind of knowledge, I TRULY suggest that you DON'T go into the industry. Maybe THAT'S why so many of us have ulcers, heart attacks, strokes, etc.

Frankly, I MARVEL at anyone who can make it longer than a month doing this without going completely insane, dream job OR supposed hobby.

TJ "There comin' to take me away, ha ha!!!" Gaffney

Yes, its off topic, but the Nazis were obsessed with art. When they weren't stealing it or hoarding it, they were using government sponsored media to spread their vile messages. They might not have like some artists, but they loved art.

Perhaps you've hear of Lani Riefenstahl's films or Albert Speer's architecture. They may have been trite, propagandistic and may have lacked any merit, but all were art. Imagery, film and statuary were vehicles of mass inculcation. Your dismissals aside, those media are still "art". Maybe'll you'll want to wiki that up and retract your ill-considered characterization of "absurdity".

Similiarly, the communists were also obsessed with art, particularly depictive paintings and heroic statuary.

In any case, the standard argument that arts deserve funding because they will cleanse humanity of its baser urges is baloney. I still think industrial history is worthy of study and edifying and hould be a higher priority than the works of some guy who self-mutilated or medicated because he was "tormented" and lived apart from the mundane miseries of the masses the elite dismiss-the ones that boarded trains to offices, factories and battlefields.

But hey thanks for illustrating the mindset of "art nuts", its much appreciated.

You should get over your resentment of well-funded cultural institutions, and figure out how to learn from their success.

We can't even agree on that- I get really ticked off when the machines that saved the world from the Nazi's (still) meet the torch as unworthy of preservation, when government tells me a cross dipped in excrement is "art", and I as a taxpayer have the priveledge of paying for it. Even so-called "modern art" was tested among so called sophisticated critics and found indistinguishable from the results of children's pigment play.

I really don't care if there's "well-funded" "cultural" institutions as long as their funding is voluntary or at least rational and proportionate.

The most insignificant locomotive should be ahead of any Mapplethorpe, except for the fact that the kleptocracy is operating on their behalf. So, no I won't get over my resentment. Now can we get Congressional spouses and K street lawyers on our boards?

Well, I would certainly say that the heritage lottery funds in Britain have been used to support more railway (and road and stationary steam) preservation projects than any national system we have. I would also venture that the public funding for their projects exceeds ours by an exponential number.

Maybe I should have used the term public support rather than public funding, as they do certainly have more of that as well.

I will say that the English have more respect for history, preservation in general, and a higher regard for old moving things than we. I think one reason they do so is that the Royal Family acts as a promoter of the Britain that one wants to still see as Britain: the creator of the industrial revolution, the Manor Farm, the village pub, the local train-basically the somewhat enchanted isle of all things polished, moving, majestic and magic. The Prince of Wales has been known to take the throttle of Garratts on the Welsh Highland Ry as new sections were opented, and the Queen attended many a steam rally, and ridden behind a preserved steam locomotive or two.

Yes, I will agree, Mr Mitchell, I may have misspoke to a degree...but I will say that the reason the English have such a glorious network of steam railways is that the public supports it, in attendance, membership, and government funding.

Since ISTEA, TEA 21, ect are largely administered by the State DOT, RR projects are way down on the list, as the DOT is just another way to say " Highway Department."

D.O.T.--- "Department Of Tar".

In a certain state of my acquaintance, TEA funds are much more important for things like tree planting along parkways than for historic railroad projects. After all, don't the out of state visitors come specifically to look at the trees in the parkway median?

The UK is light-years ahead of the US and will always remain so; most Americans simply do not really care about their history. Feed 'em NASCAR and NFL, Paris and Britney, and they'll be happy.

Super,
everything you have said is what we call in Texas "pure dee truth." along those same line a local art museum was getting together support for a tour of the Bible in Art. Basically it was pieces of all types of visual art whose inspiration was from the Judeo Christian written tradition. Had the local religeous population not kicked in (ususally a group not associated with major art museums), it wouldn't have happened. It was, however one of the best attended shows they had. On the flip side, an earlier show about "Subversive Art", which had a little Mapplethorp thrown in, was attended by the usual suspects, but the public stayed away in droves. One of the subversive "artists" stated that "Dallas just isn't a big supporter of cutting edge art." Thank God.

Art will always recieve public funding, and historic preservation won't, because the beaurocracy is largly infected with a class of folks Southern humorist Jerry Clower famously described as "educated beyond their intellegence." The mind set is that art elevates the creativity of human kind( and since they support it that makes them better than the unwashed prols that don't "get it"), while history is nothing more than a celebration of white males' driving desire to enslave, destroy, and pollute. Just what they learned in college.

As a recent example:

Thronateeska has been successful in getting funding through county Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) referendums, which have allowed us to do many good things, including restoration of many of the pieces in our small rolling stock collection, construction of an open shed for 4 of our more significant pieces, building improvements and such. In Nov. 2005 we applied for a $6M grant for construction of a new, state of the art Science Discovery Center and Planetarium (about $4M) and restoration of our ca. 1857 freight depot (about $2M). The largest fundings we had received in the past was to the tune of $900,000 for the depot renovation and $500,000 for the railroad restoration projects.

While there was much public support, and even though Thronateeska has been an anchor of public activity in the downtown area for over 30 years, the county saw fit to cut about $2.2M from the request leaving about $3.8 for the Planetarium and Science Discovery Center, resulting in forced changes to the architecture of the structure and deletion of some interior features such as wet classrooms. There were some other factors affecting the project as well, but the net result will be a facility that is less than what it should be, with less capability to use for instruction of the children than would have been possible.

Meanwhile, the county awarded about $3M to help the local Art Museum to move from a perfectly good, fairly recently expanded and excellent facility adjacent to the local 2-year college in the wealthiest part of town, to an old, "historic" former mule barn downtown. This move was prompted by a 10-year downtown redevelopment plan that is attempting to place all of the cultural activities in a downtown central core district to improve tourism. Thronateeska is already in this district.

The mule barn has been studied on several occasions and it is my belief that they will wind up tearing down the entire structure except for the facade and building a proper, modern facility behind it. The same entity that is supporting the move has already torn down at least 2 other "historic" brick structures and built new to suit their needs/wants.

Point is, if the arts community wants money for something, they are more likely to get it, no matter how inane or just plain stupid the purpose. Meanwhile, we are losing a truly historic structure (one of only 4 or 5 antebellum brick depots remaining in the state) for the sake of moving an art museum. As the brick walls continue to crumble with no internal funding to stop the deterioration, the arts community continues spending money trying to figure out how to turn a mule barn into an art museum...

In the name of profit, history will always lose. America finally became aware after they destroyed Pennsylvania Station in NY City and the National Register of Historic Places was established. But just because something is old and possibly historically significant, doesn't mean it gets saved, Again, money talks and everything else walks. And just because it gets saved doesn't mean that there will be any federal money available. Sad that we cannot save history but we can make history with half truths about the status of weapons that a government may or may not have. Money can be found if the powers want it to be found or funded.

Later!
Mr. Ed

I can think of one successful endeavor aided greatly by the TEA-21 -- and she's no highway project.



The TEA-21 was enacted in 1998 to fund transportation programs for highways, highway safety, transit, and historic preservation projects related to transportation. On the Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society's fourth attempt to secure a grant from the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, it won $449,5000. 80% was covered by the TEA-21, while the remaining 20% were matched by the Society itself, as our neighbor David Farlow noted above.

INDOT and our local Allen County Highway Department were very supportive of the rebuild project through to its realization.

It may take one or two (or four!) applications, but working aggressively in tandem with your DOT and the offerings of the TEA 21 is better than investing in acetylene or rust remover!

Kelly Lynch