City has received bids for moving it:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/loc ... 8624.story

Here is a newer article:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/loc ... 3588.story

The article makes it sound like, starting with the offering, Orlando agreed to pay for transportation in an agreement for someone to take the equipment free of charge. Is that true?

In all of the discussion here and with the city purchasing agent, and all of the previous news articles, I never heard that the city was willing to pay for transportation of the equipment. If anything, is seemed like the cost of transportation was being emphasized by the city in order to make sure prospective takers were aware of the fact that, even though the equipment was free, the transportation would need to be paid by the taker.

It sounds like they wanted to make sure the equipment got moved to the right takers who could take care of it, it did mention if no takers the city was prepared to move them -somewhere-.

Just -moving- them to some vacant lot uncared doesnt sound like a good deal, not for the equipment, not for the safety of the people meandering about them.

It does seem unusual. So many offers of free equipment get no takers because of moving costs. Orlando is in fact paying the moving costs. It's going to the Florida Railroad Museum near Bradenton. Orlando is paying the $160K costs. It was approved today (1/9/12).

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/loc ... 1847.story

What a different preservation environment if soon to be ex-owners paid for the relocation costs!

Steve

Yes it is an unusual outcome. They did announce that they had made this deal about mid-December.

What I thought was really strange was that when they offered the equipment free for the taking, they gave no indication that they would pay for the transportation to the taker's site. If anything, they seemed to go out of their way to suggest that, although the equipment was free, the recipeint would have to pay for moving it to their site.

They even announced that the transportation cost would be something around $350,000, making it sound as if they were warning interested parties to take that cost into account. Moreover, they were radically exaggerating the transportation cost as if they wanted to discourage interested parties.

This is typical of local politics..........the city wants it gone,so they can build their new station.......the musem gets cozy with certain politicians, even though they don't have the money to move it........and bam, the city can suddenly pay for moving it and at a lower rate.......
Orlando seems to do most things thru back door deals........most of which don't actually make sense.....much less working like the public is told they will.

Kudos to FGC railroad museum for doing as great job of building a plan with real numbers and logistics supported by facts and providing it to the city fathers as a better idea to help them solve their problems.

Sometimes all you can do is provide better ideas than the one that is being asked for, when what is being asked for is not sensible. Everybody wins....except for anybody else who was interested and didn't try to build a better plan with a good factual basis of their own, and that failure was of their own making.

Never think entirely inside the box.

dave

I don't know why the name Florida Gulf Coast RR Museum keeps coming up. The museum changed it's name to Florida Railroad Museum several years ago.

-JH

Well we really don’t know what happened to make this deal. It may very well be that other would-be applicants with a far better plan did not present their plan because they could not afford the transportation and did not know that the city of Orlando would pay it.

If they didn't even try, their plans were by definition flawed, and therefore not better.

The clues were there: 350K and having to move it if nobody esle shows up sounds like an open invitation for cheaper options to be presented by responsible and capable parties to me.

Jim. no offense meant - I'm generally behind the times about such things as name changes and other essentially meaningless cosmetic alterations. You guys had a great idea, and rocked it.

dave

Most government projects, particularly with transportation component need approved environmental documents...

This project needed the trains gone... The environmental impact would mention that, and the loss of possibly historic equipment. The easiest way to mitigate the possible impact of loss of historic resources would be to move them to a safe site for preservation. The closest qualified railroad museum makes sense. If that railroad museum wants them but doesn't have the resources... It is (from the City's perspective) probably cheaper to pay to have them moved there, and present a clean environmental document...

So, while the City would like to have sold them for preservation, in reality there was no one willing to buy and move them... So in the end the City placed them the railroad equipment equivalent of a foster home.

Randy

I know of at least two groups that tried to get the engine, both when it was for sale and the last time-one of which was a very serious and funded museum outfit in the Southwest. By funded I mean they had the money to move it from FL and restore it, but were working on the funding required to get it from its tight quarters. At no time were they informed that the city would contribute anything financially to the loading-relocation.

And I bet they didn't ask for it either. That's the point. Worst you get is a "NO."

dave

There is no question that $160,000 is cheaper than $350,000. But the latter figure was being publicized as the probable cost for anybody to move the equipment rather than just the city’s cost to move it.

However, when they made their original offer of the equipment about 12/1/11, the city did not say that they would pay the cost of transportation for the recipient. When they announced that they would pay for the transportation at the end, it was a profound change of the terms of the city’s original offer. Had they, at the outset, offered the equipment with the city agreeing to pay for transportation, they might have gotten offers that cost less than $160,000.

So, while I don’t see anything wrong with the outcome, I also don’t see any way to compare it to other potential outcomes. The outcome that occurred did so under an entirely different set of conditions than what was first stipulated when proposals were first invited.

I think that the city initially made sure it was understood that any taker of the free equipment would have to bear a formidable moving cost, not to mention the requirement the myriad of other technical hoops that the city required would be takers to jump through. Obviously all of this impediment was placed in order to separate the serious applicants from the frivolous.

Scrap is the ready market for this type of material, so obviously they got offers from scrappers. However, with the complications preventing breaking up the equipment on site for scrap, the city found that the cost of scrapping would cancel out the revenue from the metal. Also, in reaction to the publicity about the equipment possibly facing scrapping, the city was made aware of the sentimental value perceived by their constituency. So scrapping had the direct cost to the city, plus the cost of the bad press and bitter feelings that would result from scrapping.

So after the offers were submitted, the city had one that offered a home with good intentions for the equipment, but from an organization that could not afford the transportation cost. So, weighing the option to work with that offer of a good home versus the bitter medicine of scrapping, plus some actual cost associated with that medicine; the city decided to pay the transportation bill to the good home.

However, if the city had been forthcoming with their willingness to pay for the transportation in the first place, they would have gotten more offers, and some of them might have been to an even better home, and possibly one in such a closer proximity that the transportation cost would have been considerably less than $160,000.