I would speculate that nobody but a scrapper could meet those terms. And there are only six days left to meet the terms. This strikes me as being an extrmemely bad faith offer on the part of the city of Orlando.

I would say that it is not only a bad faith move but but that the Public Notice was written to have a predetermined outcome. If no acceptable bids are received then under the Court Order the City of Orlando still has to remove it. at that point a scrapper will come in and make a bid on how much the city will need to pay to scrap it. Remember the cars may very well contain "Haz-Mat" that will need to be cleaned up. So now someone else has a chance at earning more money. Florida does have what is known as the Sunshine Law but it is looking kinda cloudy in Orlando these days.

Guys, they HAVE been trying to sell it through a broker for a long time now.......perhaps their expectations were unreasonable and they priced themselves out of the market, perhaps they has no idea of what information they needed to provide to justiify whatever their price was, or perhaps the broker led them astray with unrealistic expectations.........

I'd not in any way assume, based on what I've read about what happend when and how, that bad faith was involved - perhaps ignorance and bureaucratic limitations, perhaps just the process the situation is stuck in, but certainly nothing like a conspiracy.

Did anybody actually make them a reasonable offer during the time the stuff was for sale?

dave

The way I read it, the scrappers are invited to submit their offers right now along with other potential takers. This is not a case of offering it to a good home first for a period of time, but if no takers come forward, scrapping might be considered.

And with the ready value of scrap, the tranportation will be covered by default. And furthermore, the scrappers will be the most likely candidates to be able to jump through all of the hoops set up by the city and the FDOT.

I suspect a primary reason for the equipment still sitting there is that it is adjacent to a very busy CSX line. Anyone moving or scrapping the equipment will have to deal with CSX, too. Not an impossibility, but it certainly won't make it easy to get it out. I recall us discussing the scrapping of a diner in Marietta, GA that was adjacent to the CSX Atlanta to Chattanooga racetrack.

it is made very clear in the points outlined in the notice and requirements that the active tracks are an issue. That same issue of being able to work around the busy tracks has been an issue for getting the equipment out. It is kinda like one neighbor turning another for not keeping his house painted but won't let him put a ladder up to paint because it would have to be on his property. then code enforcement shows up and condemns the house because it is not painted and orders it torn down.

I am not suggesting there is a conspiracy in any way however I do have enough years of dealing officially with government agencies and have done more than casual digging into this to know that it is being made much harder that it is to get this equipment out of where it is at. It also appears that it may still be private property. This is not the first time when someone has invested in rail equipment and thing change around them and they are left with impossible options to deal with and end up loosing their investment.

Well.....I live in the area........and its a loooong and lets just say... interesting story....
With stuff like...ne'r do well's, business tycoons, embezzling boy band promoters, companys with no vision, cities with no planning....It's a real soap opera.
Anyway,
The trainset has been for sale for about 4 years or so, maybe more.
Sunrail will be using that station, so they want the train set gone.
CSX made it very difficult to move anything, though it could be done reasonably easily.
The trainset is in very poor condition:
loco has been a bit beat up, it arrived here in sections- boiler, frame, etc. it's had some interesting modifications done to it...
The dome is heavily rotted, but has nice trucks and some other parts...
The heavy weight diner is stripped and very rotten- but it might be either a southern or seaboard...
The lounge/obs, section-something is pretty rotten and all have been host to crack heads and bums living aboard them.
There's probably a fair amount of asbestos in the heavyweights, not so much in the loco...
There are some interested parties, but local politics will probably determine who gets it..... scrappers most likely, as the city has no sense of history.......unless it can be easily packed away or sold if it gets in the way of new development.
I told them 4 years ago that I'd take them, if they gave them to me and paid to move them......just not worth it any other way.
I suppose you could salvage some parts.....brake valves, trucks, a few fittings, etc...

There have been sectioned locomotives around for a long time. The one I remember is the C&EI Baldwin 4-4-2 in Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. The engine was a display at the 1948 Chicago Railroad Fair, in complete condition, presented by the C&EI as the oldest locomotive they still owned. Now all that is left is one side of the running gear, motorized to highlight the working of pistons and valve motion. And the 0-6-0 at Steamtown is another example. At one time the California State Railroad Museum claimed it intended to display 'sectioned steam and diesel locomotives'. But Europe seems to hold the most of these exhibits. I have not kept any kind of list for the same reason I don't photograph antique autos that have been 'rodded'. It is repugnant to me. I realize that some of these sectionings were perpetrated years ago, when there were large numbers of steamers around, and I can understand this. But to do this now, to a 100 year old artifact, is a perversity.

Regarding working around a busy mainline: Every railroad has procedures in place for contracting work that needs to be done to say highways, utility lines, or structures close to their RoW. Just about always those procedures emphasize minimizing disruption to train operations - doing all the prep work possible without interfering with traffic, then getting as short a window of time as needed to actually foul the track and stop traffic is always the preferred way to go. Usually, the shut-down window is planned for the most off-peak time possible, and all equipment is pre-staged and ready to go at the appointed hour.

The cooperation of a carrier with any given project is probably going to at least partly depend on whether they feel that the proposed disruption is important or necessary, or if they consider it to be a waste of time, and something that they can just stonewall until the situation resolves itself another way. In other words, if a state DOT says an overpass needs to be replaced NOW, or it's going to possibly come down on one of your trains, the carrier is going to be very cooperative. If, on the other hand, an individual, or small group of preservationists without the backing of any local governmental body wants to stop their trains to remove "some old piece of junk", well, their phone messages will probably just "not be received".

Pardon my cynicism, but I watched as a group looking to possibly acquire a couple of small diesels that had sat for years on an unused spur inquired about them to the railroad on whose property they sat, and said locomotives were quickly cut up and hauled away within two weeks of the initial inquiry.

Is the Orlando Church Steet Station train standing on CSX property? I have not seen any information so far that clarifies the relationship between CSX and the old equipment, other than the obvious fact that the equipment is near the CSX mainline.

In any case, with the hurdles that have been placed in front of any would-be taker of the equipment, I doubt those hurdles can be overcome without the clout of the city helping.

The track that the train set is on was the original station track, so CSX/ FDOT probably owns it....they probably made a deal for the use of the track/property when the set was placed there in the early 80's.
As to actual ownership of the train set, there were at least three "owners", including the church street operation. The other two, I believe, were the band promoter and finally a local developer. The city has probably claimed the set as a step toward disposal.

A little history:
The dinner I believe is former Seaboard. The Obs car is former Central of Georgia "Progress". Both were sold to a private owner for a restaurant by the Atlanta Chapter of the NRHS many years ago.

What would that locomotive and three cars be worth as scrap if delivered to the nearest scrap yard as intact, whole items?

well, I'd estimate the cars at about maybe 80 tons each?, the loco is probably about 70-75 tons (counting tender).
I'm not positive what current scrap rates are, but its probably about 10 cents/lb for unprepped steel....that should be about $200/ton?
So maybe $14K-15K for the loco and $16K or so for each of the cars.......maybe $65K all together?
most local scrappers would never realize that stuff, like the loco's air pump, is probably worth $10K by itself.
Then the cost of moving each is probably between $10-15K each.....thats just for crane and truck.....not counting costs for access to the site,etc....

But a lot of that tonnage--maybe as much as 15 or 20 tons?--is a concrete floor.........

You never calculate scrap value based on anywhere near what those figures say. One museum recently had a wheel lathe cut up (yes, the one I hawked on here for a while), and we estimated that by the time the scrapper factored in the massive amounts of acetylene consumed in cutting up the metal, he probably lost money on the deal. Or, if you get one of those pincher-equipped backhoes, you factor in all the hydraulic lines, oil, and engine parts you're bound to blow through--I've never witnessed one of those scrapping operations at anywhere other than the scrapyard itself that didn't do at least some collateral damage to the rigs involved.