Would any of the contributors be willing to inform us of what kinds of displays or training aids their museums (those without active rail operations) use to educate and inform their visitors about Steam and Diesel locomotive servicing facilities? Do you have a model diorama of a Steam or Diesel servicing facility, do you have a photo display (wall mounted or free standing), or perhaps do you use facility layout charts as a means of explaining the layout and functioning of locomotive servicing and shops?

Of course if you have an operating railroad and have servicing facilities to show and demonstrate directly this question is not relevant.

PC

The Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum has the parts to do a partial interpretation of a diesel era or even a steam era servicing facility with a saved turntable and sand tower from the B&O (nee-BR&P) Lincoln Park engine house in Rochester, NY and a saved wooden water tower from a local company. The museum, however, is currently undergoing a review of some its collections for possible deaccession. The water tower, turntable and sand tower were all up for consideration for disposition as well based on a list I saw in a forwarded email sent only to the museum's Board of which I am not a member. I am not sure a decision has been made on any of them yet although I believe the museum would like to hang on to them. If anyone else is interested, I would suggest contacting the museum via their website, http://www.rgvrrm.org.

Regards,
Chris

Well, like a few similar museums in this part of Ontario, we are housed in an actual service facility. We share similarities with the Toronto roundhouse, in the former CPR John St. roundhouse, and the Elgin County Railway Museum in the 1913 Michigan Central shop. However, our facility is a diesel era facility from 1951, and is the 3 track diesel shop, complete with the sand towers and fuel racks outside. The boilerhouse from the roundhouse still stands, but the roundhouse was torn down after a fire, and the turntable was disposed of as well. The potential to rebuild the roundhouse is there, but quite a ways off in the future. 2 of the tracks inside our shop are elevated on pedestals to allow access underneath and to the sides. Our visitors will be able to get a first hand view of the wheels and underside of equipment. We also have a 90ton Whiting drop table and 25ton overhead crane. When operating, we will be able to demonstrate a truck changout on a locomotive. Info on our shop can be found on our website at http://www.nfrm.ca or visit our open house on September 11/12, 2010 9am-4pm.

Chris,

What is your organization thinking? I did not see any solicitation on the Internet to sell any of that equipment, and certainly it was not offered here on RYPN. While old, some of that equipment may still be useful. We used our Insley K12 crawler crane from 1950 to put up our building last year, so these old machines still can do real work.

I once admired your organization. I can no longer say that I hold any respect for it. Thats too bad.

I don't want to take Preston's thread off on a tangent so I have removed my initial posting information to deal with only the pieces germane to locomotive servicing. If anyone has any other questions, please feel free to PM me.

Thanks!

Regards,
Chris

Can you tell us anything more about this turntable, like its length, when it was "collected," and if it has a builder's plate on it when it was built and by who?

Ron,

The turntable was built in 1904 by American Bridge for the BR&P and was in their Lincoln Park roundhouse in Rochester. It was donated ~1985 when that facility was taken over by a scrap dealer. The turntable was at the museum when I joined in 1989. I actually chipped rust off of it during my first ever volunteer session. We have the table, the center bearing, and the motor. We had the ring rail as well, but it has been lost to the sands of time and scrap drives. I have a picture somewhere of the inside of the center bearing. We opened it during my third ever volunteer session in 1989. Everything has been stored outdoors across the street from the museum. The table is on cribbing. The bearing is sealed, but the table and motor/gear have been at the mercy of the elements. ~2 years ago, one of our volunteers repainted one side of it to help preserve it. I added a replica builder's plate I made with our museum's vinyl cutter based on plates I found on the internet. I believe it is 75' long. It would certainly need a healthy dose of iron work to return it to its former glory, but overall it is complete and pretty solid.

I have photos somewhere or will get some during my next visit to the museum. I hope that helps.

Regards,
Chris

Photos of the BR&P turntable would be appreciated, along with taking a measuring tape along on your next visit and confirmation of its length.

Even if it isn't used as intended a turntable can be an effective exhibit. At the Museum of Transportation near St Louis we have two. One, the sole surviving Sellers cast iron one in the country and 60 feet long, is next to the parking area with a sign explaining what it is and how it was used. The second, a 100 foot one from the nearby Frisco Lindenwood yard, is used as a bridge on the miniature train route and crossed by every train.

Chris, thanks for your comments about the topic postings and thanks to the members of RYPN for providing their observations. I go around asking similar questions in the groups where I am a member, as I see a combination of factors coming up that are likely to have profound consequences for railroad preservation.

In addition to the commonly discussed aging membership, and the problems trying to capture the interest of younger people, we are also faced with declining volunteerism and declining contributions. It is a difficult situation for preservation, in an industry that has a far less than impressive record with public outreach and publicity.

In the midst of this I do not see the groups coming together to share information on what works and what does not work. Good ideas are worth sharing and borrowing, so I keep asking questions trying to encourage everyone to tell us about their exhibits, displays, and experiences and share their knowledge. RYPN provides an ideal forum for this.

While every situation is different, I have noticed one area that often could benefit from some attention. There seems to be a shortage of focus industry wide on very fundamental information-type displays on certain topics that help to convey knowledge and turn a museum visit into an educational experience. These can be relatively inexpensive to produce and I hope to pursue this area with several museums where I am a member. The servicing of locomotives is an example of one of these topics that is an essential operation in the railroad industry but sometimes does not get much mention in museums. The discussions on RYPN are very helpful in identifying areas that need attention and benefitting from the lessons learned by others.

PC

Ron,

I was able to grab some shots of the preserved turntable at the Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum last evening during our work session. I left my 100' tape at home so I will have to get the exact measurements if I get the chance on Sat.

I have posted the images to the R&GVRRM's Flickr Site here. I do plan to add a new sign to the deck explaining its history soon. I did the repro builder's plate ~2 years ago. I found some plates on the internet and made the repro based on those. I'd be happy to share the artwork with anyone that might have a use.

I welcome other questions.

Thanks!

Regards,
Chris

I found I had a book on the BR&P which did list this turntable as being 75 feet long, so it should measure that way. I'm working on an article for Ry Museum Quarterly/Trainline on turntables and would like to offer these photos to the editor to consider. Can you send copies by a PM as they can't be copied off the web? I can send you a photo of the sign we used for a turntable on exhibit in a similar manner at the Museum of Transportation near St. Louis.

Hi all,

I am Luther Brefo, an active member and board member at the Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum. Yes we’ve officially changed our name from National Railway Historical Society, Rochester Chapter to the more suitable Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum ( a name we’ve used for years anyways.) We are still very much part of the NRHS as well. While the following statements are not exactly prose, I do hope those of you who choose to read it understand what I am trying to explain here. As I prepare to submit this statement, I see now that Chris has removed his caustic posts. Onto the present situation at hand.

It is amazing to me that so much of what Chris has posted here is skewed, incorrect, and not totally representative of the situation the RGVRRM has been facing for the last few years.

The Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum is caught between a rock and a hard place. We've expended numerous dollars and countless hours on trying to catch up to a problem that was created in an era where it was difficult to refuse any and all donations with or without a plan to preserve, restore, and operate said equipment. There was once a point in time where the RAILROAD museum had more in the way of construction equipment than restored, displayed or running railroad equipment. Numerous projects had been started and left incomplete to the point where the progress on the railroad equipment was delayed due to construction obstructions.

Yes, the board did elect to remove all non-essential and irrelevant construction equipment. With time we’ve acquired better machines, more maintainable machines, machines that get the job done more effectively. I will discuss some of the reasons below.
In any museum there is a utility collection and a historic/preservation collection. A construction company's backhoe is a utility piece. A locomotive from a railroad with a presence within the scope of your charter and mission is and should be part of the historic collection. When a utility piece sits neglected due in part to a larger quantity of equipment than able and willing volunteers have time and money to spend on these machines, there exists a point where we must realize that we do need to get to a point where the collection is manageable and relevant.

The land at and around the museum is at a premium. For the past three years, we've expended a large sum of money and an even larger amount of combined man-hours trying to build a siding alongside our friendly common carrier in an attempt to run excursions in the "fall." I place the "fall" in quotes because even with the best intentions, we've been met with many challenges, often times unserviceable non-railroad equipment in the way of progress of the dirt work and ultimately track work necessary to extend the siding to sufficient length so that the host railroad will even consider excursions. The “fall” has been pushed back for two years now.

In this same block of time we've attempted to secure more land from the state, land that was then conveyed to the town. Prior to the town agreeing to provide land to the museum, after we worked with the state to deed the land to the town, the town requested that their new property be expeditiously cleaned up before they would ever consider donating land to our cause. We’ve squatted on this land for several years now; land we have not owned in that time; land we do not own today. They were concerned with the numerous out of service equipment that sat on the same strip of land we've been trying to build the siding and return to the business of running fall foliage excursions on a line that has had no regular excursions since the early to mid 1970s. So yes the situation is very complicated.

It's bothers me that Chris failed to mention the amount of work these same board members you disparage have put into this and various other projects on the property. Our board is an active board. When I say this I mean that these people are also many of the people coming out several times a week and working to get the job done. One of our board members is also our Motive Power Superintendent. He makes the 110 mile round trip journeys from his home to the Museum to lead our various motive power projects, several times a week (often Tuesdays [after work till about 11PM], some Thursdays [hours vary], Saturdays [all day] and Sundays [about noon till 10PM].) That’s 440 extra miles a week he puts on his own vehicle, not to mention fuel, and additional wear and tear. You forgot about the board members along with other members who removed and replace all of the necessary windows in the excursion set so that someday when we finally get to the point where we are able to run excursions again our patrons can see outside of the train.

How about those on the board who lead the building (both in design and implementation) of the track and followed up with tamping the manual tamping/leveling, air hammer tamping, and use of our Jackson tamper to continue the progress on the siding (we thank you and appreciate your work in fundraising the capital to purchase the additional ballast that our budget would initially allow.) That machine by the way is currently out of service pending rebuild of its motor with its failed crankshaft. The rebuild of that motor is being completed by one of our newest volunteers. The board elected to spend a large sum of money on the parts to rehabilitate the machine so it can get back to work on this priority project. Other members on the board bring expertise from their railroad backgrounds (I’m not talking about just me and you should know that Chris) and have been quite dutiful in securing valuable railroad related assets for the betterment of the organization as a whole.

We thank you for your work in securing us the backhoe, one of our board members was able to secure the critical railroad cribbing bucket that makes this machine more useful to the railroad that were are maintaining today. In other words it’s a team effort. One of our board members is also responsible for most of the electrical, signaling, and communications work on the museum property. There are many more examples I could cite here but this already long message would probably be twice if not thrice as long. This is why you cannot say in a volunteer organization that one person’s opinion should outweigh that of the next. We’re all in this together, and I think we’re all pulling for the same team. You forget to mention the obstacles we have come across, met and defeated, like being cut off from our water supply, having to plunk down several thousand dollars to have a new well system put in place etc.

Getting back to the issue of land, we’ve got more railroad equipment and rolling stock than we’ve got suitable track space for at this time. In the past five years, we’ve put in a more complete yard at our restoration building site, yet when the coaches arrived from their prior storage location (a location that was causing the museum five figures per year) we could not build track quickly enough due to the amount of stuff that was on the property to move the cars to the siding I mentioned above so that our four freight cars that are currently blocking a portion of our shared main track at the NYMT(who have been very patient with us and we thank them for that as well) could move and allow the NYMT to install more overhead wire to increase their length of run towards our depot at the south end of the museum. This new wire run will reduce the over length of the feed such that it can run longer where it counts.

This same construction equipment that was in the way was not in the shape Chris has described above. Yes, a lot of that equipment could be made to run with lots of man-hours and money. Two things that are always in short supply. The truth is as we’ve discovered, after years of being told these machines will run no problem, it was not true. Many of the pieces that we have sold were half functioning at best; on some them the chains that drove the tracks were seized to the point where the machines had to have their chains removed before they could be rolled onto low-boy trailers. On that note, most of the equipment was actually sold to people who would reuse its parts, or rebuild them whole. Other pieces were also returned to their places of origin, like the road paver that was part of the collection before being returned to the town where the machine was built. Let’s not forget also that there were also motors that were known to be bad, that the board decided to trade for a working motor for a locomotive (a 1950 vintage GE 45 tonner of local significance.) Yes there were some pieces that were such basket cases we elected to scrap them.

At the beginning of this process, we were approached by a subset of the membership that expressed an interest in restoring many of the construction pieces Chris has spoken about above. We offered to give these pieces to the new group they were attempting to form. However, they seemingly lost interest in the project. The champions of this new group told us that they too had come to terms with the reality of the situation and one of them even went as far as to sell his personal pieces to the same buyer that has been acquiring our construction equipment as a parts supply so that other collectors may have a chance at these parts. His operation is better equipped to handle that than the museum itself. These parts are not going to waste.

This cleanup was also at the urging of a vast majority of the membership who were becoming frustrated with the amount of effort being expended to move this equipment repeatedly, no easy task when the stuff does not run or even roll on its own wheels easily. The latest push to clean up the property was actually brought on by the town. Several members of the town council visited the property to do a walk through to see about the land situation and possibly help us out. Their immediate concern was about the appearance and environmental concerns about our operation. The whole museum complex is on land that is zoned Residential. The town zoning officer was none too pleased to experience what was on the other side of the tracks across from the depot running several hundred feet north. Mother nature had begun to reclaim portions of the extensive construction equipment collection. There is picture proof of this.

The most recent round of equipment disposition was to satisfy the town’s request so that we may continue to focus on our priorities. There are several pieces that have utility to the museum still and those pieces were not, have not, and will not be disposed of. Case in point was the 22B crane that Chris worked to reactivate. And yes, that crane has proven its value to us in a few small to medium-sized lifts earlier this year. At the urging of Chris we also held onto a collection of spare parts for this machine.

In the past several of our visitors have made comments such as, this place looks like a junkyard (and this was not relevant to the railroad collection) but rather the construction yard as it was known then. At one point in time there were over a dozen booms that could be seen coming down Route 251 about a mile away before the museum complex proper could be seen. At a glance, yes the museum, did look like a junkyard even to us diehards that love the place so much and would like to see it become a premier railroad museum.

We’re working towards that goal of preserving the Rochester area Railroad history.
I cannot say it was ever easy to hear a visitor, a young boy, not more than 8 years old, look to his mother and say bluntly, “mom, look at the junkyard over there.” This kid had been enamored with the locomotive he was riding in until we got closer to the depot and he saw the construction yard. He is not the only visitor that has made this or a similar comment in my presence about the construction collection.

Part of the cleanup has also extended to our restoration shop where the board has chosen after suggestions were made by the membership to upgrade our machine shop (in time) which currently roster some well aged equipment. This equipment is available for any group that is in need of it.

It must also be noted that no accessioned railroad equipment, locomotives, freight cars, passenger cars, cabooses, etc have been de-accessioned, sold, disposed of, etc in recent history. It is also this same board that elected to accession locomotives and rolling stock that the museum has had in its collection for years without prior formal accessioning.
As for the turntable, we’re trying to find a good home for it, be it here at the RGVRRM or elsewhere. We’ve spoken to a group that would like very much to return it to service at their location.

There is much more I could say but I will stop here for now. This is page number four after all. I must apologize to Mr. Cook for continuing this but I needed to make this right. In the future, we will be looking to men like you for advice about things like the 567B block in our LV 211 amongst other railroad questions that we do not yet have the answers for.

These are facts.

I welcome questions to my email or private messages here.

Luther Brefo
Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum
Member, Locomotive Foreman (USA 1843), and Trustee

Luther wrote:

“Part of the cleanup has also extended to our restoration shop where the board has chosen after suggestions were made by the membership to upgrade our machine shop (in time) which currently roster some well aged equipment. This equipment is available for any group that is in need of it.”

As the former NRHS Rochester Chapter machine shop superintendent (pre-2008) I find this interesting. Yes indeed the equipment is “well aged” but it did in fact help produce many useful pieces for the restoration of many pieces of equipment there. Including parts critical to the restoration of the 1920's era Plymouth BL-2 from a totally derelict state to a fully operational state.

Anyway, if someone thinks that just replacing those machines at the estimated cost of at least $10-20K (my experienced estimate) will somehow magically produce a treasure trove of replacement parts for anything you want to restore they are sadly mistaken.

For example to replicate the capabilities of the large lathe you will need to cough up at least $20K. Does anybody really want to place a $20K lathe in an unheated building with a dirt floor so you can produce one or two parts a year? I posit that you would be MUCH wiser to spend a few thousand dollars at a local machine shop.

I suggest that most of the collection you have is actually quite well suited to your unheated and dirty environment. Anybody that wants to put modern machine tools with ball bearings, gear drives, computer controls and optical readouts into a dusty unheated building thinking that they will get the improved accuracy these machines are capable is sadly mistaken.

Machines do not produce precision parts, skilled people do. Having checked your online progress reports I have seen ONE example of the existing machine shop being used to drill out a broken bolt. A good machinist can do that with a $50 electric hand drill and a few carefully selected sharp drill bits.

So having failed to make any useful parts with the existing equipment your only answer is to discard the equipment and (in time) replace it? Do you really think that new machines will read your sketches, purchase the right material and tooling (at prices a museum can afford), figure out the correct sequence of steps, determine the appropriate tolerances (since real engineering drawings seldom exist), implement the machining steps, fit the parts to the actual (usually well worn dimensions) and then just hand you a new replacement part? I only wish it was that simple.

For anybody thinking of donating tens of thousands of dollars for machine equipment I caution you that a wiser donation might be to setup an account at a local machine shop and drop 100 bucks into it each month. If a costly job comes up dump a grand into the account for that job. I predict the number of successful parts resulting will be higher.

If nothing else I suggest you UPGRADE FIRST THEN DISCARD THE “WELL WORN” EQUIPMENT. Discarding the old equipment before you have enhanced equipment in place AND WORKING will likely leave you WITH NO MACHINE SHOP AT ALL.

Anyway good luck with that……

Cheers, Kevin.

Oh, I also forgot to mention:

"A Poor Craftsman Blames His Tools"

Cheers, Kevin.

Luther wrote:

“Part of the cleanup has also extended to our restoration shop where the board has chosen after suggestions were made by the membership to upgrade our machine shop (in time) which currently roster some well aged equipment. This equipment is available for any group that is in need of it.”

Hey Luther, could you post a list please? Easier to find good homes for things people know are available. There seems to be a classified section on this site for just that purpose.

dave