There are other topics about this (and its one of those where you can find it when you dont mean too, but when your looking franticly, you just cant seem to find it) but I just seen it first hand. This locomotive, Virginia-Carolina #50, was built in 1922 by ALCO. It was donated to Lakeland, FL in 1961. It looks like noone has given it any TLC...and now there are homeless people sleeping in the boiler! I wont be able to post pictures 'till Thursday. Why cant cities have a small group of people paint it and build at least a 6' fence? Its not too much to ask, is it?

Even a fence couldn't keep bums from living in the cab and tender of 6167, we know that bums were living in there, because the guy died in the tender.

And even during all the restoration work, its possible that people were sneaking into the tents at night.

I think it comes down to finding individuals interested in restoring and/or maintaining the display. Many towns don't have money in thier budgets or will allocate money to be used for displays. Comes down to finding individuals, companies, ect. to donate funds, materials, equipment and people to do this. If there's enough people and they're interested in forming a group then they may look into turning the group into a 501(c)3 status.

The main one that comes to mind when thinking of this is the Maywood Station Historical Committee (MSHC) in Maywood, NJ. They recieve no support from the town of Maywood but relied on donations and volunteers to restore the old NYS&W station. They also have the only surviving NYS&W S2 #206 on display there too alongside a bay window caboose. All of this stuff relies on donations and volunteers to keep after it.

(I've been by the Maywood station many times but not within the last several years. I have yet to see it fixed up fully or the addition of the Alco on display there)

I agree that this engine has been treated very poorly.
having been there to see it ( I live in Orlando), you would think that the city would have given it away by now..... while there, did you notice that all the tenders journal brasses and wedges are gone? The drivers have been damaged as well, looked like they slid it into place,etc....
Its located in a bad part of town, with a 3ft fence- but at least they've occasionally painted it......of course, probably most park engines in Florida are in similar shape...
I think they have a problem that many towns do: their prize is falling apart, but "Everybody likes it where its at"......The saddest part is, when they finally do decide to part with it, it will probably be quietly sold to some flunky, red neck, scrapper type....so they can make way for some new development, like low income apartments....

As promised, I was going to add some pictures...but they wont seem to add.

Aaron,

I would assume that the images you are trying to post are larger than our limit of 350kb per image.

I would recommend that you use http://webresizer.com/resizer/ to resize your images, with a suggested maximum width of 650px.

You will need to upload your image to that website, then download the resulting image. After that you should be able to upload that image here with no issues.

David

Due to surgery last week, I was not able to upload the pictures. So now, as promised, here are pictures of the sad looking Virginia-Carolina #50.

More pictures...

That's sad. She seems to be the perfect size for a shortline/tourist railroad.