They didnt do their homework cutting them up, not that I really like the idea they decided to cut the cars up, but thats the reality of it.

They should have posted their ordeal here first.

At least these cars were already doomed, so it's not as tragic as the loss of a prized museum artifact.

On the positive side, perhaps this incident will alert the community to a potential supply of spare parts that may be available... if they act fast they might be able to acquire good parts that would otherwise be melted down.

Steve Hunter

Does anyone happen to know what happened, or is planned, for the ex-Milwaukee FP7 they have/had?

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/locoPi ... x?id=13200

Before we get completely on their case, it appears the same outfit (or the Sequatchie Valley Ry., which appears to have acquired the loco in 2004) donated an SW9 to a Bridgeport, Alabama museum:

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... id=2773732
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... id=2772493

Excursions apparently died when the railroad got turned into a storage track for covered hoppers and intermodal cars. Online reports indicate a new customer finally located on the line, enough for them to grab a used GP38 to replace the now-folorn(?) NW2 and FP7.

Now, only 1998 car need to go!

The FP7 is still there and the railroad has no intention of disposing of it.

As for the coaches, they experienced some pretty aggressive vandalism despite the railroad's attempts to secure them. I understand the cars were almost sold to an excursion operator a while back but repairs needed to make them acceptable for interchange were deemed excessive.

Alan Maples

I find it always sad to loose coaches. There have been no coaches built in a long time that fit with what most excursion operators want to do. There are no fleets being retired to pull from for future operations. All that is in the pipeline to be retired are silver tubes. Holding on to even a carcass of one of these coaches might be looked back on as a smart move one day in the future. I might be wrong but I just don't ever see anyone using Silverliner or Amfleet cars with a switcher trundling along a branch line as a historic railroad.

I believe these are ex Milwaukee Road 484 and 485, purchased from either the MILW or Amtrak in the 1970s by the Kentucky Railway Museum. 484 was vandalized when it was in New Haven, but 485 was in pretty good shape and used on occasion by the museum.

I always liked these cars, especially their interiors, with the wood and the Hiawatha emblem.

Sad to see them go.

This is a recurrence of two themes.
#1. One man's scrapper is another man's easy fixer. One guy goes "Because of A B C it's a scrapper" while person B goes "I saw A B C and feel I can fix that easily, I'm more interested in D E F which are great." Those people do not communicate. It's even worse when person A goes "I see an external barrier that I don't believe any person B can ever conquer" when there are folks who conquer that before breakfast.

#2. Railway "preservation" is not collectivist socialist. These decisions get made in isolation. We eat in company and poop in private, we announce our acquisitions and scrap in secret.

I'm starting to think there needs to be an "endangered equipment network" here.

The two cars in question were the following:

484 -> Amtrak 5295 in 1974 -> KY Railway Museum -> Walking Horse and Eastern # 3200 (Notched sills right side of photos of cars burning).

485 -> Leg Rest 606 -> Amtrak 4004 in 1974 -> KY Railway Museum -> Walking Horse and Eastern # 2324 (Straight sills left side of photos of cars burning).

Interestingly, MILW used to torch their passenger cars BEFORE scrapping them to eliminate all combustibles. Famously, a pic of one of their Skytop Lounge cars having been intentionally torched at Milwaukee before scrapping made the pages of TRAINS magazine in 1970, arousing the ire of many a railfan.

http://trainweb.org/DOMEmain/picMILW189.jpg

There are numerous photos of old trolley cars being torched to "liberate" the metal in wooden cars and remove combustibles from steel cars. For Pacific Electric fans, pictures of the 1200 class interurbans being torched at the Kaiser Steel mill in 1951 are probably the ultimate in sorry sights.

In my personal experience, however, the parties declaring the former are either professional railroad employees with experience in car inspection or people who have been doing this kind of thing for decades, while the "person B" folks declaring the latter are often idealistic "noobs" that think that a Harbor Freight Tools catalog is all they need to take care of that "little dent" in the frame or crack in the drawbar.



That may be fine and good. You immediately run into two problems, however:

1) Who maintains and administrates it? The Tourist Railway Assn./ARM? The NRHS? Railroad.net? TrainOrders.com? Kalmbach or Carstens? The Department of the Interior, through Steamtown? RyPN, which has no real BoD or oversight itself and is run ad hoc? eBay? Craigslist? Freecycle?

2) How do you ascertain that 1) every last thing that may be "historic" in a railroad context is "registered" and thus listed on such a network, and 2) that the owners of said artifact(s) actually follow through and make them available via said "network"? Who's going to tell the LK&M Railroad that they're running the last locomotive from the Punkskyltawney and Dagascohounda and that it MUST be preserved, or that the little craossing shanty at Bentlow Street in Springfield is the last such crossing shanty watchman's left in the state, never mind that it fell down four years ago?

If I own an antique automobile, I am under no obligation to list it in Hemming's Motor News or Vintage [Brand of Car] Magazine or the local newspaper classifieds if I want to sell it. If you have coveted that car for so long, YOU come to ME, you get to know me and the car, stop drooling on the hood please, and you make me WANT to contact you if and when I want to sell it. And even then, you're counting on my having told my heirs that you want the damn car if I should croak first, or not having put it in my will to the dog or the county historical society or the mistress. (One guy I know personally had a deal with a guy of "a steak dinner at the high-end steakhouse once a year" in exchange for right of first refusal on his car--and he eventually got it when the owner moved to an assisted-living facility.)

This is the job of "salesmanship" and outreach that is part of what is supposed to make us a railroad "preservation movement." As a rule, we haven;'t done it too well, or as well as we should have and can--which leads some to argue we don't actually HAVE a "rail preservation movement" yet.