< - we are not interested in raising money by scrapping a rare artifact. >

... and apparently, from the qualifying statement in your post, won't consider letting one of us commoners have it either.

This is my biggest rub with 501(c)3 organizations. They get artifacts given to them, they let them sit until even they don't want them, and then when they want to get rid of it, they are willing to give it away, but only to "one of us".

If you were true preservationists, you would be happy to let any one with the means to assure its preservation have it.

I don't think I restricted this to non-profits, and if that was the impression it is incorrect.



Removing this crane is a big job and we want to be sure that whoever undertakes the project is serious and has the resources to do it.

I congratulate WRM for a very well thought out approach to a very difficult problem for any museum organization; how to dispose of a surplus piece of equipment that has historic value. I hope that some group has the desire and resources to acquire it.

As was said, the cost of scrappiing such an immovable object is likely to be close to, if not more than the scrap value. (see recent thread on NWP passenger cars)

If all else fails, I suggest putting it on Ebay and seeing what happens. The Minnesota Streetcar Museum has a Birney car body that they found on Ebay. You never know until you try!


"I've got a little list, they never will be missed" W. S. Gilbert.

Non-profit custodians of historical artifacts have three obligations: to the artifacts, to themselves (to maintain their existence and mission), and to the public which entrusts them with the guardianship and/or special status.

Even IF the WP crane had been conferred to this group free of charge and shipping (not a sure thing at all), its existence today involved maintenance and real estate occupied for years. Furthermore, the IRS and other regulators tends to take a VERY dim view of assets being transferred from non-profits to private individuals at low cost or for free; similar situations in the past that aroused controversy and investigations are the reasons why certain state-run museums will have an incredibly difficult time deaccessioning any artifacts whatsoever.

A museum also has another obligation: Not to let their surplus "albatross" become somebody else's problem. This is probably the primary reason some artifacts (such as the completely derelict Philly snowsweeper the Baltimore Streetcar Museum just scrapped/parted out) never even get offered out in the first place. Does giving this crane to Bubba Cleetus who shows up to drag it down the road behind Mater the Tow Truck really do this crane any good? No, it only puts off the inevitable. Does selling it to a Hollywood mogul who wants to wreck it in "Unstoppable: The Feather River Canyon Sequel" perpetuate the historic mission? How about someone who wants to hang it from the ceiling of a Las Vegas casino?

Let's reiterate: The estimated cost to move this (be it across the street or across the nation, probably won't be that much of a difference) is well in the five figures, dollar-wise. If Jay Leno wants to add this to his garage, we can assume his check won't bounce and he'll fix it up nicely. If some live-steam museum or other railroad museum wants to take on this challenge, they can present a sincere motion for delay and a plan for a fund-raising campaign and removal/restoration.

But trust us when we say that if you call up and say "I don't have any money but I have a friend who's in the construction business with a crane and a trailer....", you're going to hear a "click" and a dial tone. And with good reason.

Firstoff, don't get me wrong. I feel you. OH MAN, how I feel you. I've watched nonprofits do things I really wish they would not. I've worried that if I bring a piece to a nonprofit they might lapse their own mission and mishandle or scrap the piece.

But you know... your disdain is still misguided. The for-profit sector is NOT better at preservation. It's not designed for preservation. For-profit companies face market forces which absolutely require profit and solvency, at the expense of their preservation "mission" if need be. Rather similar to how the commercial demands of the TV business require they slaughter good shows like Firefly in favor of cheap ones like Real Housewives and Divorce Court.

You see that same pattern in commercial tourist railways. The Canyon and the Cog chucked steam for business reasons. The EBT handed operations over to a nonprofit and it's not the only one to try. If an outfit can't get parts for that 244, they get an EMD. When the commercial business doesn't fly, they have very little recourse - you can't do a fund drive or apply for grants. You wind up having to cannibalize your collection to keep your business alive. Can't justify to a creditor why you're keeping that history. You can't give it to a museum at that point, has to be sold to the highest bidder. When a tourist line goes out of business, the less commercial "preservation" stuff almost always gets scrapped.

And don't even start me on the Dick Jensen wanna-be's, who believe a unit is only saved if they have the bill of sale... but what they DON'T have is a stable storage place, and you know how that ends. Or they die, and their estate doesn't share their mission statement and calls the junk man. Private industry DOES NOT scrap things according to ARM best practices. They DON'T give a year's notice.

If they did, GTW 5629 would still be steaming.

And that segways into government. At least profiteers are predictable. Sometimes government gets it right (giving away GG1s, South Shore cars and Metra coaches) and sometimes they bungle it unbelievably (CSRM and the Santa Fe collection, Cleveland and the Trolleyville collection, and by the way, why didn't Amtrak place a solitary SDP40F orP30CH in a museum?) Then there's the erratic finances of Virginia and Pennsylvania state museums, and how many government vs. museum tussles have we heard about? Pity any museum beholden to a government organ. The bottom line is that the needs of the museum/mission can get shouted down by the general citizenry, aka "We the People".

Of all the combination that I have seen, the alchemy that works the best is the interested private party supporting a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with clear mission and good governance. It presents the best combination of the various systems. It creates a quasiprivate ownership which protects you from "We the People". It allows the MISSION to be job 1. And it has the most agility in terms of fundraising and financial stability. Macroeconomically, it is very Hayek-based; giving great discretion to people with money to guide the sector's priorities; but without contaminating it with Adam Smith's ruthless and overriding profit motive.

If you have either money or time, and you want to cause preservation and lay an effect on the world -- there is simply no better way for you to have a lasting impact than a nonprofit.

Maybe you should learn some more about it, so you can wield power here.


One could say that if YOU were a true preservationist, you would incorporate a 501(c)(3) -- so your money goes 50-80% farther. Or really, you don't even need to do that; there's a wonderful thing called a Donor Advised Fund.

One of my greatest inspirations is a man named Loring Jensen. I never even met him. Had only been to the Western Railway Museum once, but I got the Review. One day it showed up with a breathless message from president Bill Kluver. Mr. Jensen had passed away, and had considered WRM very generously in his wil. He had already convinced WRM to create an endowment, and this funded it to the point of real usefulness. $600k was earmarked for a carbarn. They had built a truly world-class museum.

But it made me sad. It was a great contribution but Loring Jensen didn't live to see it.

So I decided to do something about that. I don't have Loring's kind of money, but I have what I have . So I started thinking about where it could have the most postive impact for preservation. Step 1 was studying what was working (and not working) at as many places as possible. It was kinda weird, because I was studying stuff that many organizations considered their "dirty laundry". Like the eastern museum that didn't do good bookkeeping and woke up one day to find they had spent their restricted funds. The one that got addicted to government operating subsidy, built up a paid staff and fired those annoying volunteers, only to have the government cut them off entirely and have to decide between paying staff or utilities.

There are a lot of ways to do it wrong. But when its' right, it's SO right. I suggest you check it out. You have real power, just learn to wield it.

Could we possibly get some more information on the crane itself?

Which company built it and when?

> ... your disdain is still misguided


My disdain is well founded and based upon personal experiences with non-profits.



> One could say that if YOU were a true preservationist, you would incorporate a 501(c)(3) -- so your money goes 50-80% farther.


I don't need a 501(c)3 to do my work for me. I do O.K. on my own. There are no boards-of-directors to lobby, there are no committees to contend with, and I get more out of a dollar than you will ever know. If there are those who would say I am not a true preservationist, then so be it; I wouldn't change a thing I've done, or the way I do things in the future.

And I do have experience with steam cranes. There is at least one that got its life span extended through the efforts of this non-preservationist.

> But trust us when we say that if you call up and say "I don't have any money but I
> have a friend who's in the construction business with a crane and a trailer....",
> you're going to hear a "click" and a dial tone. And with good reason

There you go again, Alexander. Pontificating again. FYI - that is exactly the scenario I used to preserve the steam crane from the South Branch Valley back in 2001. But I didn't call a 501(c)3. I called a steam collector with the financial wherewithal to remove it from Moorefield and then worked it out so that he could acquire it.

The rest, as they say, is history. The crane is now securely resting in Mt.Savage, Maryland out of harms way, and it will eventually be under steam. The remarkable aspect of that is that this particular crane has never had a fire in its boiler; ever.

But what do I know about preservation?

Is the South Branch Valley a non-profit? There's a difference, you know. My books show it as owned and operated by the West Virginia State Rail Authority. Was the crane owned by the railroad or a private owner? Heck, if it was a state agency, was it ever put out for surplus bid?

Ditto a collector "with the financial wherewithal." That's an entirely different proposition. If Jerry Jacobson, Jay Leno, Bennett Levin, the Grand Canyon Railway, or the Reading & Northern, all operations/individuals with demonstrable track records and apparently decent amounts of money in the bank in spite of their hobbies, came forward and said, "tell you what--if you'll let us take that crane, we'll fix it up and put it in our roundhouse/give it to another museum, but it's going to cost me 75 grand to move it and fix it up, so can you let us have it for free?", they're going to get an entirely different reception than "I'd like to take this thing and put it in my backyard" from Sanford and Son down the street. (Having said that, of course these individuals would think nothing of at least giving the Western Railway Museum a ten-grand check for their troubles as well..........)

If this same collector were to pursue the SP crane, he or she would fall under the previously mentioned criteria "some individual or group [that] can develop a plan for its removal and demonstrate the financial resources to carry it out," and thus they "will certainly consider it." At the same time, they would probably reject a proposal from a group several states away that wants to put it next to the station for which they have been trying to raise money to buy from the railroad for a decade of bake sales......

It was built by Industrial Works in Bay City, Michigan.

No information on the build date, attached photo is of the only remaining plate.

We are not sure about this crane's original Southern Pacific number, there are rumors that it was renumbered at some point. It may have been assigned to Bakersfield, or possibly Klamath Falls.

For what it's worth, the crane was first offered to other museums at the 1983 ARM Convention at Seashore Trolley Museum.

A few more photos here:

http://s69.photobucket.com/albums/i67/allan_family/derrick/

I believe it is the oldest of the six or so SP derricks in preservation. Unfortunately just about every museum (including WPRM Portola) has at least one or more of these beasts.

I seem to remember that this machine was built around 1910, but that is approximate. The listing I saw had it originally as a Central Pacific derrick, at least on paper.

It was run back in the '70s, albeit briefly. Not sure if it ever did any real work at RVJ.

The photographs are a good match for the "Type T" crane illustrated in Industrial Works's 1923 commerative catalogue. By that date the boom hoist arrangement had been altered but the photos of the type at work show the arrangement visible on 7100 (i.e. long links on either side of the boom).

A lot of the details are very reminiscent of our group's 1919 Industrial Works crane. The builder's plate in similar but on ours the upper and lower text is curved (as on the builders' plates visible in the 1923 publication). The straight style presumably belongs to an earlier period.

With the boom and the builder's plares both suggesting pre-1923, I'd say that 1910 sounds pretty reasonable.

Nineteen eighty-three (1983), eh? Wow! I was a youngster then! You reckon maybe some of the ARM people who heard the pitch then might have forgotten about it? Hell, they're probably in the old folks home by now.

I still think it's worth try on the ARM parts group. It doesn't cost you anything to send it out.

Thanks!

I seem to remember that this machine was built around 1910, but that is approximate. The listing I saw had it originally as a Central Pacific derrick, at least on paper.

Southern Pacific maintained the corporate shells for many years of the railroads that had been merged into Southern Pacific Lines. For financial reasons new assets were assigned to the different corporate shells for many years after the merger. For example, the SP red electric cars that operated in the San Francisco Bay area were owned by three different corporations. The reportying marks were the only indication which corporation owned a given car.

SPMW 7100 derrick was built by Industrial Works of Bay City, Michigan on June 23, 1910 for a cost of $13,70.43. This cost probably includes A and B up to retirement. The serial number is 2248.

The derrick was built as SPMW 695 for Klamath Falls, Oregon. It was renumbered 680 in 1929, 7005 in 1932, and 7015 in 1958. In April 1969 the derrick was moved to Dunsmuir, California and renumbered to SPMW 7030. It was donated to the Western Railway Museum in March 1976 and arrived numbered SPMW 7100.

The derrick's operating weight is 220,000 pounds. The body is 26 feet long and 9' 6" wide. The journals are 6 1/2 X 11 plain bearings. The capacity with out riggers is 120 tons at 17 feet and 80 tons at 20 feet. I believe this is what is known as a square derrick, in that the rated capacity is in any direction.

It is hard to believe that it is 101 years old. I hope a new home can be found.

It's been more than two months since this crane was offered to any qualified takers!

So far, nobody has expressed any serious interest.

What's wrong with people out there?

(Don't answer that -- I know the answer! In light of recent discussions like the Lisbon car I just couldn't resist borrowing that line...) (and it brings this thread to the top again)