RMNE has this Brill Motor Truck available at Saybrook, CT. It has good wheels, AP Timken journal bearings, GE 292 A 51 motors. It was the motor truck from a full-sized, 70-foot Brill motor car. There are a few more photos available. If interested, contact me. Don't delay, this will be scrapped soon if there is no interest. No trades, no 3-way swap-a-thons, just bring a truck and cash (or good check).

Put some loco batteries in a tray on top of this, and you could make a "shop horse" for moving dead stuff around.

Howard P.

Where did RMNE get this? Last I checked, you guys never owned a Brill. Can I assume that the truck was in a spare parts bin?

Have you ever heard of Google??? A simple search for "railroad museum new england brill" leads one to http://www.trainweb.org/elso/SRSROST1.HTM It's Sperry #X-107.

Jim Tatum.

What is the journal size?

And ex-NYC X-8015; dig back far enough, and you'll find this:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17781

I'm sorry the "doodlebug" conversion didn't work out......... was the car just too badly deteriorated?

The car's roof was shot when we obtained the car in 1987. A series of tarps did not last, and the roof got worse. There were no resources to rebuild the roof or to get the car under a shed roof. The rest of the car was pretty nice, the interior was intact and nice, the engine (Cat D-398 ?) was good..... The car was available to a good home, but there were simply no takers. It was scrapped in 2005, along with a couple of other basket cases.

It was decided to save the power truck in hopes that some traction/electric railway group might want it. Looks like the truck will become rebar as well.

A sad tale, and one that will be repeated with increasing frequency all around the country in the next few years (except in places like Rio Vista and Union and Arden).

Howard P.

Union has scrapped its share of equipment... nothing recently, but only because they've gone green, and now allow things to become scrap organticly:

http://www.irm.org/cgi-bin/image.pl?conf=img800&img=/gallery/albums/CWI1185/aaa.sized.jpg

It's the same old story... too many pieces of equipment competing for too few dollars, and sumptin's gotta give at some point. The truth is not all old equipment is historically significant... Neat, yes. Significant, no. If no one could see a reason to invest $$$ in the piece when it was still intact, there is no reason to expect a savior to appear after it's mostly gone.

Ever hear of asking the source directly, instead of using results from a search engine that may or may no be accurate?

Yeah, I know, everyone's getting tired of the kid asking basic questions, many of which could indeed be answered by Google... But sometimes asking somebody who is directly involved with the operation / artifact / project / etc. really is the best approach. The problem with Google is that it only has very basic "vetting" of information, bases on site ranking etc.

That means you may get a result that's extremely accurate and detailed, or you may get a result along the lines of "I wasn't there, I swear I have an alibi. I heard it from a man who knows a fella who says it's true!"

For better or worse, IRM has actually been regularly deaccessing excess pieces of its collection even as recently as eight or ten months ago. There's a deaccession list at http://hickscarworks.blogspot.com/2010/01/irm-deaccession-list.html with more information.

I feel like an enabler. I have some crazy idiot interested.

What would be the scrap estimate they'd have to match?

Point of order, the list of equipment on the Hicks Car Works site isn't really a deaccession list, because the word specifically means removing from a museum's collection. Most of the equipment on the list was never in the collection per se; much of it was purchased or accepted specifically for the purpose of dismantling for spare parts, and many of those pieces never even came onto the museum property. A case in point would be the CA&E 318, damaged in transit while being moved to its new home at East Troy, the car was deemed a total loss due to both the damaged platform and a humped frame. Consideration was given to the fact that this car was NOT the last of its kind, and the parts salvaged could be put to use in restoring CA&E 321 which was already at Union. Many of the "L" cars were simply acquired to ensure a general pool of spare parts; some were dismantled off site where possible.

Following the links from the list, I was surprised to find a photo of a very young and skinny version of ME, posed in front of CNS&M 202 the day it arrived, between John Horachek (sp?) and someone I don't remember. The three guys in the dark work shirts are from Allen's Towing. They simply slid that wreck onto a flat dolly, picked the end up by the circle iron with a wrecker, and towed it down from North Chicago! It's a wonder it didn't turn into a pile of kindling somewhere on the highway.

Dennis -

When going through Frank Hick's blog of "not-at-Union" equipment, I was really surprised to see J. David Conrad's comments about Willis Short Line #200 once being earmarked for IRM by Herb Hansen. This old Ten-Wheeler got a measure of fame because it operated so late, well into the "diesel era". She was a real "basket case" from what I have since heard but it sure would have been nice if she had actually made it to Union (wonder what the story was there as to why she didn't?). She was a former Texas & Pacific engine and would have been one of only 3 T&P steamers to have survived.

Les

"It was decided to save the power truck in hopes that some traction/electric railway group might want it. Looks like the truck will become rebar as well." Hold on I know a group who most likely could really use these trucks.

Well, if it's free, I can see if I can get a trailer down and lug it home, at least give the truck a coat of paint to keep it from rotting. No promises. But another idea comes up; why not section the truck and display it in the waiting room at Thomaston depot? It might make a good display to show how a diesel electric (or any vehicle with electric transmission for that matter) moves.

Hey Dylan..read the initial post carefully:



Wesley