Some early Sunday morning thoughts before my favorite omelette at a local diner, probably none it new but I don't remember it being discussed here for awhile-

I have visited a number of museums and heritage railways both here and in the UK and many face a common problem, lack of covered storage. They cover the whole gamut, small to very large and from private collections to stated funded. Some pieces haven't been touched in more than twenty years and I wonder if they will ever be touched. How about that old wooden gondola in the back lot? Or that old Pullman car stuffed on a siding? Or that seemingly as common as a DL&W trailer car ex PRR GG1? That asbestos laden steam engine? Those park engines?

Does anyone think a time time is approaching when mercy scrappings will be more common? It has been happening in drips and drabs. Have we saved too much? Will we soon have have to make tough decisions on long term priorities and viability?

Joshua

PS- love the new board but wish the colors were more in keeping with the RYPN main page.

Ironic, I was just thinking about the same issue. The railroad preservation world has preserved way too much. In North America, there are close to 1900 steam locomotives extant in collections, museums and tourist railroads as well as the ever so common muncipal park locomotive. On a recent visit to eastern Colorado and Kansas, I saw and photographed close to dozen Santa Fe 2-6-2s in various conditions in parks and I didn't even got to every locomotive. While most of the 2-6-2s were complete in appliances, there were no ongoing preservation or restoration efforts on any of the locomotives. The situation is compounded by the limited resources (manpower and money and knowledge of steam) and the desire to see steam run or even get a fresh coat of paint. Most towns see their loco as nothing more than a hunk of liability... case in piont, the Poineer locomotive in Arizona. While there are numerous ongoing restoration efforts on tourist railroads, museums and even a few park locomotives, the time has come to catalouged the extant locos as to their present condition, their ongoing regular maintainence, their overall completeness, their historical importance and their viability to be preserved and/or restore. With this information, a cohesive understanding of what can be done to see steam survive this century can be formulated. A database can be maintain by a national organization and this would allow those who need various parts for restorable locomotives to find those parts from locomotives deemed surplus. With this we can preserve the overwhelming majority of the extant locomotives and keep more than 250 locomotives operational well into the future if the desire is there.

I would argue that we haven't preserved too much, we simply haven't provided for the ongoing preservation of what we have. Without locomotive to preserve, there remains not battery of candidate for future restoration. In the infamous case of Jensen's 5629, the judge ruled the locomotive was not "unique" and therefore could be sacrificed. Yet how many of her sisters remain in preservation? I would extend the same to any of the GG1's that have survived to this date. I could not, in good conscience, advocate cutting up any of them. Relocation and re-distribution of locomotives might be a better tact. Should more locomotives be added to the "preserved" lists? Future preservation will have to be eyed with how many units of similar design remain operable and protected already. I can't see a point in stocking up with too many RS3's or GP9's, but then, I'm a steam guy at heart. It would pain me to see another FA torched.

We've been scrapping them all along by not preserving them. D-Day is actually D-Decades. It's not approaching, its been here and will stay here as long as the stuff stays out in the rain, being essentially neglected.

The challenge isn't how to preserve it, it's to triage what is to be preserved and determine how to pay for it.

A lot of what has been preserved has been actually substantially replicated, or significantly altered, so there's a bit of traditional leeway with terminology involved. We need to be careful to be clear about what we are discussing.

BTW, what's ironic about coincidence?

dave

Indeed. Due to our storage situation changing, Old Pueblo Trolley has made the decision that our SF Muni PCC will be cut up and scrapped, once all usable/salable parts have been recovered. We also have two Los Angeles Street Railway Huntington car bodies. The one that is the parts car will be knocked down and possibly burned once all parts are reclaimed. For those of us making the decisions, the fact that we have finite resources is a harsh reality.

I think it all depends on what one would call a restoration. One that comes to mind for me is the DL&W E-8's. Are they restored? None of them survived the torch but yet the CNY NRHS has replicated two of them. Are they DL&W or PRR? On the same token how many PRR E-8's are out there? I think I saw a list showing more than any other road other than CB&Q E-9's. Does that mean we can start cutting the PRR and CB&Q units? Now if you look at how many of those are restored to PRR and CB&Q paint you will find only one CB&Q E-9 in MIAMI and other than the Levin E-8's I don't recall any others from PRR. Another diesel odd ball is the NYC RS-3 fleet. How did so many units get away? Heck how did all the NYC steam engines get away? Did the preservationist of the 50's and 60's just not care? If so why have we not learned our lesson? Other than the GP-30 in the PA museum how many CR cars and locomotives have been restored? This can keep going as far as LV, EL, D&H and so many more. As a equipment owner myself I can say that storage, cost to move and make these relics movable and the lack of interest in restoring cars and locomotives is at an all time low. Ya we all talk about it but how many would rather get dirty and see that restored car sit in our local museum? Or would one rather go out and run a diesel or steam locomotive? In CNY most would rather drive to Utica or Old Forge, NY and run the Adirondack trains. Then once they have the right to run that pair of F units up the hill they don't even want to be a conductor. Now that we can all have our own pet tourist railroad we can just hire people to do all that pesky repair and restoration work just like the Adirondack did. When I was in Miami I went to the GCRM because my wife worked there and I told them I would help restore stuff but all they wanted to do was talk about how they could get this grant or that grant and pay to have stuff restored while they watch from the GP-7 they could run. Yep they are all doing a great job! Now I am not tiring to say that museums are not interested in restoring stuff but they all want to be picky as to what should or should not be restored and when they decide what not to restore most will not offer the equipment to another museum that will restore it. The goal is not the museum with the most unrestored equipment wins. TVRM has tons of stuff sitting but the seem to be working on restoring it as fast as they can. NCTM seems to be doing the same. But when it comes to cutting stuff up most groups are so quick to call the man with the torch. Now the price of scrap has caused some groups to not have a choice. CNY NRHS is cutting up a NYC GP-7 because they can't get it moved again. It went from Chicago to Syracuse but it can't move another 10 miles thanks to the FRA. One of my cars was going to be donated to the CNY chapter but they said they could not pick up the tab to move it from FL to NY. There are many groups restoring equipment all the time and there are some groups just collecting stuff to say they have it. If one group finds a UP dome car in a junk yard in Sanford FL they will not call the museum in Portola to say this car is sitting do you want us to help you get it? No they go and get the car donated and drag it to the storage yard to sit until the vandals get it. (Note: There is no UP dome in Sanford that I know of) I feel the museum groups and tourist railroads need to work together more and more will get restored and less will just sit. I will stop now.

JJ-

Not to sidetrack this conversation, but NMOT in St. Louis also has a CB&Q-painted E9 (9939A), and there's one on display in Keller, Texas (9920) that's painted CB&Q with BNSF logos (!)

Throughout All of America, all volunteer groups are down volunteers, all travel is down due to gas prices, and almost all revenues/donations are down due to a downturn in the economy.

Unless we recruit more volunteers and receive more cash, every museum will be hurting. How do we get our children away from thinking only about themselves and think about the greater good. I have only questions - not answers here.

BTW - Yes. Most railroad museum eat WAY more equipment than they can digest. That fact doesn't help the problem.

And there is an ever widening chasm between the youngest generation of professional railroaders and my peers in the 60+ crowd of preservation and organized railfanning. The young people working for the railroads today are highly technical, computer savvy, and totally diesel oriented. They have a lot of difficulty seeing what is interesting about a bunch of old fossils who gather once a month to argue about where they shot slides they can no longer remember having taken. Yet this is the public image that a lot of organizations in the railfan and preservation areas project. Too bad because given the ever increasing security concerns these are folks whose trust and understanding is going to be central to the ability to operate fantrips and tour rare mileage in the future.

PC

I've been giving this some thought all day. Everyone is making great points. I feel the biggest is how do we get the younger people to see what we see. Not big chunks of metal they can climb on but the history the steam locomotives made.I know my two sons will always look at steam locomotives differently now that they helped with saving one, SR 385. (That a story I shared with you folks early this year) The look in thier eyes the day the saw her is one I will not forget! I really feel that we, the preservationists, need to somehow figure out how to reach these younger would-be train buffs! TV is the best, IMO, to get this out. I know it costs money but unless we spend money you can't make money. My example of this is Steamtown. If it wasn't for the fact that a simple dinner converstation with my sons didn't talk about steam trains and then the hunt for 385. I would have never found this site and the info it shared about Steamtown I would have never known about it. Yes, I go to Stratsburg every year but Steamtown is even closer.
Now I'm a young railroad preservationists, 38, but getting involved for me is limited. I can do some weekends but I can't give the time some of you do to the cause, not yet! There are some steamers in New Jersey. Black River is probably the closest with Whippany 2 hours away. Now I haven't contacted Black River but Whippany hasn't called me back. What gives? New Hope is close too but I don't know what there plan is for the 3 steamers they have stored there. We hear talk about steam locomotives that are "Planned for restoration" but they sit and rot on a siding for years. The older preservationists seem to keep the secrets close and if they past away those ideas or knowledge is gone forever. Someone talks about the younger generation is computer savy, Yes they are! So why not show what you have planned for restoration on the web. Yeah I know nobody wants to show their junk but somebody just might want to help or know somebody who can. This word of mouth for volunteers is not helping, you need to find new ways to get the word out for help.
Mistakes were made in the past but we can't fix them. So we have to go with what we have and modify other stuff to represent what was lost. But again its the money. What do you spend on...fixing a steamer to running condition? or make it look good to have a static? Yeah I know I'm going on but we need to start looking out of the box on this and get the word out about the history of steam locomotives.

Scrap or restore? >>No.<<

Railway museums need

a) a railroad they own (if they want to operate).
b) land they own.
c) carbarns.

Boom! The "scrap or restore" question goes away.

Museums are in this pickle now because we haven't been doing these things, we've been "dancing as fast as we can" or, well, restoring as fast as we can. Or acquiring as fast as we can :( It's not working. It won't work. STOP.

Refocus your organization on a sustainable path: Rail, land, carbarns. Now is a great time to be looking for land, because the market's in the toilet most places.

The shop and visitor's center? No. Get the rail, land and carbarns, and if practicable, fire protection in the barn that will become an ersatz shop. When everything is under cover, start building an endowment. The rest will follow.

Robert MacDowell says it well. Remember, railroad equipment and buidings (carbarns in this case) will both shed water and resist the elements. Only buildings are designed to both at minimum cost. Restoration and maintenance expense can be reduced. Get equipment sheltered to the extent you can.

Which brings up anther point: planning for the organizations demise. We all dream about what we will do when we are succesful, but how many of us have made plans for the responsible disposition of our collections when we are not? Bankruptcy brings additional challenges in terms of receivers auctioning off collections piecemeal, so other plans should be made (and executed) before the fact, once it is deterimed that it is approaching.

dave

Question for the money guys. Can you be a non-profit organization and still make money? What I mean is: If say Strasburg (not sure if Strasburg is a non-profit) gets asked if they can move cars loaded to a new say factory on or near their railroad or even better a company comes in to Lancaster and wants to start using rail service. Now Strasburg is getting paid to move cars to and from. Does that change their status with the non-profit? Or do they make a new company that will turn a profit and they still own both the tourist train and the working train? Here is a really crazy question, Say I as the owner of the new company ask Strasburg "If you get my business can you say on weekends only use your steamers to move the cars?"