Sometimes being an archivist can be fun.

Recently, a railroad archive with which I occasionally work received a last few piles of paper from the estate of a deceased railfan. This gentleman was not a name whose name is well known like the likes of Don Ball, Nelson Blount, David P. Morgan, or Dick Jensen, but in going through the stuff piled in the folders (roughly two banker's boxes worth), I found that this guy was right there at the beginning of some of the first active preservation activities--Seashore Trolley Museum, Steamtown, Edaville, IRM, and others--either as a donor or a participant.

In flipping through the stuff, I found that he was on a committee of one organization that, at one point, took it upon itself to preserve, simply because there was no one else there to do it, two of what many rail enthusiasts would consider among the most iconic pieces of historic rolling stock in the nation. The pieces are not quite what would come to mind if I asked that standard of most railfans--not the SR Ps-4, SP 4449, UP 3985, or the like--but if you stated what they were, most "academic" rail historians would slowly nod their heads in agreement with the status of "most iconic."

Thus far I have found the copy of the original letter requesting the pieces from the original owner. There is some correspondence related to the matter of preservation of the pieces. Long story short: the group got the pieces, but had no place of their own to put them, and stored them on the railroad's property for a spell.

The initial offer was $50 apiece for each of the two pieces. The offer was "to in some way compensate the railroad for the loss it would suffer in not including these [items] in a consignment to be scrapped." I don't know yet if that's what they paid.

The concluding piece in this particular folder is a rough draft of a sale agreement for one of the two pieces to another preservation operation. The pertinent language:



I know the artifact in question. I have ridden on/behind/whatever it. It's at what I consider a good home, and there's no reason to believe that there is ANY prospect of this provision ever being enforced. Nonetheless, never say "never." (Did any of us ever think CB&Q 4960 would end up on the Grand Canyon RR, or that a N&W steamer would end up on the Strasburg, or that PRR 1361 would lie in pieces at Steamtown for years, or that Alco PAs would be a hard-fought prize from Mexico?)

But I would DEARLY love to go into the files of said place and see if that "sale agreement" still reads the same as this rough draft. Especially when both groups still exist, and $300 wouldn't buy you a journal, flue, or window today.

That document is what you call a "cloud on the title". You can ask nicely to have them quit (abandon) claim. Or state law may provide for automatic termination of such agreements. Or you go to court to "quiet title": you ask the judge to finally settle and resolve (quiet) ownership (title).

You have to properly serve all parties whose stake you want to erase. They get the one opportunity to say their piece. Then the judge decides what is most reasonably right based on the facts in front of him. This case would be a tough sell if the seller had a desire to assert his property rights in the unit. In that case your best defense is probably that you have the higher museum purpose, and you do it well, and the agreement suited to an age long gone, and he has no socially important purpose to justify his interest, and the $300 buyback is out of kilter with today's scrap prices.

Again, I assert: There is no reason for either party, AT THE PRESENT TIME, to muck with the status quo. It's at a very good home, as far as I'm concerned (and so is the other, unmentioned piece, which went elsewhere). The only reason I can possibly see that this issue would ever come to pass would be a major shake-up of the equivalent of, oh, let's see, Disney buying the Strasburg RR as the last part of a "campaign" to totally "touristfy" Lancaster County (will the last Amishman to leave please extinguish the kerosene lantern behind him?), and one of the locos or cars they want to replace with new 4-4-0's and/or bench-seat high-capacity cars was the item in question......

But IF such a situation were to occur, I'm sure the selling party would indeed assert its option to buy back the item in question for that price, and immediately transfer it to another worthy home (of which several exist in the general region in question).