Let's test this theory of "We have collected too much".

If that is true, we should have no trouble identifying large numbers of locomotives and cars which have been excessively collected and need to be culled from the national collection. So let's TRY IT OUT.

2000 units is 40 per state. That's not that many on average. There are probably that many actively neglected pieces just in city parks and backyards across the nation.

So let's have at. Here are the rules.

1. Pick ONE SINGLE state.

2. List 20 units in that one state that are "overcollected" and need to be culled (scrapped). If your state just doesn't have 20, do your honest best, but DON'T post less than 5. If your state is Pennsylvania, Indiana, New York, New Jersey, Illinois or California, you BETTER post 20. If you don't know your state's inventory well enough to come up with a decent number, then you probably shouldn't try. DON'T list less than 5. DON'T list one. No grudges or agendas.

3. Have a broad diversity of classes and types of equipment. This is not a place to grind your axe about "PCCs shouldn't be preserved" or whatever. I don't want to see Captain Steam list 20 diesels. However if you are a specialist, like an electric guy, I'm OK with focusing your list on your specialty, since you know it.

4. Have a broad diversity of institutions represented, otherwise it'll look like you're grinding your axe against one institution particularly, and that's a jerk thing to do. If more than 50% of your list is from one institution, your state better have one huge museum that has most of the total stock in that state.

5. Coaches, freight cars, steam derricks, plows, line cars and wreckers are all fair game. NOT speeders or MoW machines (too easy).

6. No captive-service stuff like mining railroads; unless it's standard gage. No chicago freight tunnel stuff, no trench railroads, no mine cars.

7. Everything on your list must already be "in preservation", i.e. is/was collected with the intention to preserve it, even if that has now gone awry.

8. Allow for transfers. Don't list items that are obviously desired in other states, but simply are misplaced in yours.

GO!

I don't think Delaware has more than 40 and we're keeping them all. We'll get around to em in good time.

Back in the 80's Wilmington and Western became choked with equipment. We had everything with a flange either owned or stored: a CPR Royal Hudson, GG-1, strings of MP-54 MU cars, and even a mammoth PRR long haul tender. We woke up one days and decided to focus on being an operating museum with only the stuff needed to sustain our operation and sold off or donated the rest. A few cars went to scrap but not many.

May private collections be included? If so, then I would nominate the 52 cars listed by Frank Hicks as being owned by the Vintage Electric Streetcar Co. of Windber, PA. These are sitting outdoors, unprotected and are owned by someone who has delusions of making a lot of money by selling them.

From the viewpoint of traction preservation, PCC's are a very easy target as there are over 350 of them on Frank Hicks's list. I suspect that no more than 150 have any chance of long term survival, about equally divided between museums and heritage streetcar operators. Other easy targets are Chicago El cars, both the 4000 series from the 1920's and the 6000 series from the 1950's. There are over 30 of each series on Frank's list.

For the museum that I am most active in, the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum, I would list 5 cars including a Pittsburgh and a Philadelphia PCC, a Red Arrow 1949 St Louis car, a 1911 Pittsburgh car and a wood caboose that has been converted to 5'2.5" gauge. Four of these are duplicates and the caboose is irrelvant to our collection. This is my personal opinion only. Ony the Pittsburgh PCC and the caboose are currently being considered for disposition by the museum.

Finally, here are the indications that an organization has over-collected:
"We need to keep two of XX to display in different paint schemes"
"We have to keep YY because ol'Joe gave it to us"
"We have to keep a set of ZZ so that we have a matched train"

Private collections are in-bounds, sure-- but like I say, don't focus on one thing.

[Updated with Corrections]

For the record, I object to the arbitrary selection of "2000 = 40 per state" as a base number. Can somebody tally up just how many cars, locos, etc. there are in rail preservation? (Heck, no--and that's part of our problem.) I don't know whether 2,000 units represents five percent or fifty percent of our rolling stock!

And I will echo the sentiments of "wm303" below in telling others what to do with their private property. We're assuming with this exercise that supposedly benevolent dictators have us at gunpoint, forcing us on this austerity program.

However, since you asked:

Maryland:
There are a couple cars at the B&O Museum that were acquired strictly as parts donors. I could easily find 3-4 supposedly surplus pieces out of their "back lot" even after their recent culls. PRR GG1 4876 is a sitting duck for this treatment.

Hagerstown Roundhouse Museum: has possibly 1-2 too many cabooses, and HAD two too many MRS-1's. They have a recently arrived GE side-rod 45-tonner that may be better somewhere else in operation or scrapped--the Walkersville Southern nearby collects and operates critters like that. I'm not sure how the 45-tonner fits their mission. There were other odd pieces that have gone elsewhere, such as NYC 0-6-0 6894 (which was nearby, but never as far as I know HRM property).

Western Md. Scenic RR: I'm not sure exactly which pieces are "preservation" and which are photo props, but they have an entire short freight train that was acquired at scrap value years ago for photo charters. I'm not sure if they got any more commuter cars (at one point, there were C&NW bilevels being redone for MARC or VRE back in their shops).

Walkersville Southern--has, as I recall, a "spares" LIRR "ping-pong" in a back lot. One car (I think this one in question) was recently painted as a "billboard" and shoved to end-of-track adjacent to a new bypass, which may have worked until the weeds got aggressive.

Baltimore Streetcar Museum has one parts donor awaiting scrap, ex-SEPTA PCC 2647 (I think), and one well-buried carcass of a former Newport News, Va. semi-convertible that will most likely never be rebuilt as a "Baltimore car" absent a huge windfall of cash or an "angel". And if you're pointing a gun at us, I could find another long-neglected "project" or two buried deep in the back of the car barn to offer in sacrifice, possibly the horse-car body so badly deteriorated it may only serve as a pattern for reproduction. And there's a former Philly PCC that was converted to an overhead wire maintenance car that can be regarded as both a red billboard and a source of spares, if the going gets tough..... Some of the other "surplus" is currently being stored on behalf of other groups to give them a chance to get their acts together; this includes two NJ Transit cars. And one ex-St. Louis Car Co. PCC, former San Diego/El Paso, is there as a potential conversion to a handicapped-accessible and "expendable" people-carrier to reduce wear on the authentic Baltimore artifacts--the latter role is now being largely filled by the ex-Philly PCC of the Friends of the Philadelphia Trolley.

That's ten or so. There just isn't much else IN Maryland. Ditto Delaware.

I dont understand the premise..who ever said we have collected too much?

If you are referring to collections that are left to rust and rot, thats not a "too much" issue..thats an individual society issue..good example: the very rare Electrics in Albany NY..left to rot by a inept NRHS chapter for 30 years, but yet are *one of a kind* specimens! certainty not a "too much* issue there..these locomotives are just now beginning the process of being saved and moved..

So I dont understand what this thread is about..can someone explain?

Scot

Perhaps more to the point... 2000 cars will die if "we" don't get better at raising funds to house our major artifacts.

And, in truth, many more than that, because many groups will be in no position to take on additional equipment as it is retired in the future.

Of course, there are some institutions that really do have their house in order. The rest of us need to learn from them.

Steve Hunter

I wonder if we should have some sort of pass for the cars at places like Bay Area Electric at Rio Vista, the Nevada State Railroad Museum, Orange Empire or IRM which while they have no chance at near term (next 50 years) but are inside, and no longer fast deteriorating...

This is the responsible side of (over) collecting... Identify a significant car, bring it in from the wild, place it in a safe dry place... you may even slowly collect appropriate parts to support a future restoration. 100 years from now it could be restored.

Alternately, those of us here and within the industry/craft/practice/profession/avocation of Railway Preservation need to learn than it isn't preserved until under cover... and blue tarps don't count.

The 50 PCC cars mentioned above are not preserved... they are a mix of a compost project and personal hording... kind of like your local crazy cat lady... (by the way, San Francisco Municipal Railway has a large collection of rotting PCC's many of which won't see further service, but do occasionally provide cores for Brookville rebuilds for the F street line... Frank Hicks might list 25 cars... I don't think Muni officials would call their efforts preservation... just planning for future needs)

They can be an upside to this project... In California and the west we have way too many West Side Lumber flat cars... and log cars most in poor condition. At best there are 5 or 6 under cover. Maybe two have been restored (with a few more coming) but the failed cars can provide trucks, link and pin couplers and k brakes for other cars being restored.

The too many cabooses at many museums across the country look nice in adaptive reuse as chamber of commerce offices on the outskirts of town...

Scrapping a heavy weight Pullman, if done for preservation (one of Robert's 2000) yields trucks, draft gear, brakes, and interior fittings... if done as failed "preservation" out of desperation it is more likely to yield razor blades.

Extra iced refrigerator cars and SP bay window cabooses are in demand for restored depot projects in several places in the west... projects that came after SP and Santa Fe were giving away old steam engines, but still want a piece of static railroad equipment to give context to the project.

California can probably provide 40 cars from the mess of WSLC junk, extra freight cars, Los Angeles Railway B car bodies (not the three complete cars or maybe a couple of car bodies under cover at OERM) and SP (and ATSF) cabooses

Randy

This is what happens when grownup borderline foamers start pontificating about the private property of others. Who the hell is anyone on this forum to say what should be scrapped and eliminated from anyones collection, public or private?

The MRS1s at Hagerstown were scrapped over 2 years ago.

HRM does not have too many cabooses. What they do have is a lack of leadership. But ... if and when they decide to start culling their collection, they have a scrapper in their membership who is always more than happy to take things, like the MRS1s, off their hands and roster.

Someone should step up and save GG1 4876. Crashing into WUS may or may not be the most historically significant event in the history of GG1's but if others which have no particular stories associated with them are saved then surely there is a place in someone's collection who can care for it. If nothing else the story interests (amuses?) non fans and fans alike and that's the sort of thing that is good for business and thus good for preservation efforts generally.

Steve

Steve, that's a great idea, but I was just looking at the locomotive on Friday, and realized that it's probably a goner.

It's thoroughly rusted through. I don't think there's a piece of sheet metal on it that wouldn't need replacing.

It's HUGE, and it will NEVER travel by CSX to get out of there. Never. It'd take way too much work to reach whatever hurdle it'd have to reach to get moved, and that's even IF it was a hurdle instead of the current brick wall I'm sure it'd face.

Yes, it's a huge shame that it's probably going to die there, but in the practical real world in which we live, anyone other than the B&O doing something with it is a real long shot.

If you really want to see something good come of it, talk with the fine folks at the B&O. Work together to start a fundraising plan to pay for it. I know for a fact that it lives 100' from a shop that could do something wonderful with it, if only someone else supplied the money.

To clarify things on the Walkersville Southern, there are two 1950s ex-LIRR cars on site that were lent to the WSRR by owner Ken Bitten in return for track work on the Northern Central Railway, which went out of business over a decade ago. To leave the WSRR by rail, they would have to travel over the Maryland Midland to CSX which banned such cars on its lines quite some time ago. That means anyone interested in buying these cars from Ken would have to truck them out, which is unlikely. The WSRR uses one for occasional overflow operations (such as this month's Santa trains) and the other just for storage. One has been painted tuscan red for passenger rides, the other not. These do not belong to the WSRR, so their fate is not completely up to the WSRR. They don't blend in well with the other passenger cars (MP-54s) and they take up a lot of track space but it doesn't appear that they're going anywhere in the near future. Who knows? Perhaps Ken will find a buyer someday who will be interested in trucking out one or both. Any use of one of these cars for billboard purposes was always intended to be temporary without consideration for weed growth. The WSRR's excellent track crews are quite handy at dealing with brush growth.

There are many other cars on the WSRR that are privately owned. For example, all four cabooses are owned by others. The RF&P and Wabash cabooses are owned by the Chesapeake Railway Association (CRA). The Nickel Plate bay window caboose is owned by Rick Sherbert, and John Meise owns the 1920s-era Pennsy cabin car.

One of the MP-54 cars is owned by the CRA. It came from the West Virginia Northern after the end of operations on that line and was donated to the CRA. Another, rebuilt into a parlor car for use on dinner trains, is owned by WSRR president Ronnie Baird. A third, in skeletal form, is being rebuilt by owner Paul Kovalcik. The CRA also owns the Meadow Lark, a 1930s Pullman parlor car.

The GE 45-ton siderod, used on Santa trains this weekend, is owned by Al Leyh. The newly-arrived ex-PRR GE 44-ton is owned by Jamie Haislip.

So, if an excursion operation or museum asks itself what must go, it must also ask who owns which pieces of equipment. By no means is the host organization always the owner of everything on location.

One can make a case that IRM has already done this, of course they may need to do more.

IRM Deaccession List

http://hickscarworks.blogspot.com/2010/ ... -list.html

I always laugh and cry a bit when I read the above list.

-Hudson

Hmm. An unusual approach to the issue and one that is likely to generate many emotional responses, as we have already seen. I'm not going to say that organization x or individual y has a,b, & c and needs to get rid of c. I don't think anyone else on this board was suggesting that either, and it isn't really the point anyways.

I suggested in the related topic "Being choosy in what we save" that a good place to start is with a scope of collection, which is responsive to the mission. If an institution does not have a scope of collection, it is a pretty good warning sign that there has been overcollecting. Another warning sign: if the objects are stored outside with no active plans and the necessary resources to conserve them (such as putting up a building to house them in.)

The topic of "over collecting" should not be emotional, but it is for many who have any kind of passion for rail history. Moreover, it is strictly about sustainability and serving your mission. And ensuring the organization survives (outlives) you and your fellow preservationists!

So if the resources needed to sustainably keep 30 large objects such as coaches and locomotives (a pretty big undertaking in its own right) were instead distributed to care for 80, 90 or even more objects, a pretty likely outcome is the loss of the entire collection in a lifetime because it just can't be sustained.

Maybe this doesn't apply to you. Perhaps your organization has collected just the right things and the collection is just the right size with all the resources needed to care for it. If that is the case, congratulations are definitely in order! You may one of just a handful of such collecting organizations in the world. In other words, the problem is widespread throughout the art and history world. But for institutions with objects that are 80 feet long and can weigh 180 tons, the problem is chronic and obvious.

--Richard

I think you are missing the point... We had a previous thread on collecting too much... the question is not what we would scrap... but instead, IF we have collected too much, what examples are there...

I would also suggest that most of the folks replying are not "boarderline formers" but instead are people who spend time at their local museum doing preservation's good work.

The "Someone must save...." are not the helpful answers... the issue is how do we preserve the somewhat overwelming amount of stuff... How do we decide what to do next... everything from more buildings, more tarps, sending stuff elsewhere where it has a better chance to get rid of the junk which is clogging the works.

None of us can tell another organization or individual what to do... but we can learn from what we collectively done, good and bad, and learn.

The sad fact is, if we don't actively scrap a number of cars, mother nature, water, rust, and eventually local zoning ordinances and or City councils will find a way of scrapping them for us.

Randy