Found the following link, and have to wonder, who is this person in Buckeye Lake, Ohio who owns all these trolleys and is just letting them rot and/or rust away? Anyone know? Hopefully they plan on doing something with these cars SOON! It would be such a shame to loose so many cars.
The page also contains some photos from museums, and the state of these cars isn't very impressive either.

Allan

Trolleys Rotting/Rusting Away
ddg14@attbi.com

The answer is YES we know who owns them and NO nothing is being done with them. Having personally struggled with a similar basket case for longer than the original railroad that owned it did, I can only hope that they hang on long enough for some real monied interest to take control. The obvious solution is to open your checkbook and adopt one. Once folks see some interest generated they might step up and join you. Our traction heritage is rapidly slipping away, or I might say dying due to lack of interest, and I have no idea how to regenerate it.


lamontdc@adelphia.net

Lest anyone think that I'm singling out the trolley community, witness the misguided restoration of Louisiana Cypress Lumber Company engine #2 at the Mid-Continent Railway Museum. It's unfortunately an all too common sight at many railroad related museums.

Allan


ddg14@attbi.com

> Hopefully they plan on doing something
> with these cars SOON!

Unfortunately, I don't think the owner plans to do anything with the cars. He has put a lot of work into acquiring a collection of 20-30 electric cars (plus some other miscellaneous junk), however he has never done much in the way of actual restoration work. He just doesn't have the resources. More of a problem is that the few cars in the collection that really are historically valuable appear to have little chance of going to a museum - the owner has been offered money for a few of these cars, but has never expressed a willingness to sell them to an organization that could conceivably restore them.

Frank Hicks

fullparallel@wideopenwest.com

Allan-

Not to be rude, but this site has been brought up numerous times, and although I feel as sad as you do about this, this collection is, IMHO a lost cause. I went past this place all the time as an undergrad; the guy who owns these is a JERK. If you ever go there, don't even get out of your car, as he assumes everyone coming to see him will rip him off, as he sends out his dog, (a rather large pit bull if memory serves) after you.

As much as I hate to see those cars rot, the gentleman who owns them is a perfect example of what is wrong with many of those who have these large, well, glorified junk yards; they brought them together with no rhyme or reason of how they should be preserved, and seem to think they have a multi-million dollar collection that everyone will pay that much for. Ludicrous. Simply Ludicrous. This guy may very well be the Dick Jensen of the traction world.

On a more postive note, to my knowledge, the only surviving Columbus, Newark and Zanesville carbody is used as a house along Buckeye Lake, just past this spot. To make it more interesting, she's wood. To me, this would and should be the much more likely cnadidate for preservation.

TJG
> Found the following link, and have to
> wonder, who is this person in Buckeye Lake,
> Ohio who owns all these trolleys and is just
> letting them rot and/or rust away? Anyone
> know? Hopefully they plan on doing something
> with these cars SOON! It would be such a
> shame to loose so many cars.
> The page also contains some photos from
> museums, and the state of these cars isn't
> very impressive either.

> Allan


Port Huron Museum

tjgaffney@phmuseum.org

Well, others seem to have broken through to the "owner", so maybe I should back off a bit, but then again you don't tend to forget a slobering pit bull doing a b-line for your body. Maybe he assumed I was another kid there to rob him, I don't know. All I know is that to date, I have yet to here of a single car there being maintained in an sort of fashion.

TJ

> Allan-

> Not to be rude, but this site has been
> brought up numerous times, and although I
> feel as sad as you do about this, this
> collection is, IMHO a lost cause. I went
> past this place all the time as an
> undergrad; the guy who owns these is a JERK.
> If you ever go there, don't even get out of
> your car, as he assumes everyone coming to
> see him will rip him off, as he sends out
> his dog, (a rather large pit bull if memory
> serves) after you.

> As much as I hate to see those cars rot, the
> gentleman who owns them is a perfect example
> of what is wrong with many of those who have
> these large, well, glorified junk yards;
> they brought them together with no rhyme or
> reason of how they should be preserved, and
> seem to think they have a multi-million
> dollar collection that everyone will pay
> that much for. Ludicrous. Simply Ludicrous.
> This guy may very well be the Dick Jensen of
> the traction world.

> On a more postive note, to my knowledge, the
> only surviving Columbus, Newark and
> Zanesville carbody is used as a house along
> Buckeye Lake, just past this spot. To make
> it more interesting, she's wood. To me, this
> would and should be the much more likely
> cnadidate for preservation.

> TJG


Port Huron Museum

tjgaffney@phmuseum.org

I've heard varying stories of the owner's friendliness, which range from "sic 'em, boy" to being fairly genial. I've been there twice and found the property deserted both times, although there's always evidence of work getting done. Note: "work" means the lawn is getting mowed, no work is being done on the equipment.

My personal preference would be for most of these cars to go to museums, however there are a few cases in which private ownership can be a good thing. I recently met a man in Pennsylvania who owns several old streetcars; all are either tarped or stored in a barn he's built in his back yard, and he's built an entire shop facility and is working on a full restoration of one car. Another man from Pennsylvania is known for owning a field full of junk PCC's but has also managed to really preserve two or three historic cars, cars that the museum community wasn't interested in at the time they became available. As long as these private owners are able to limit the size of their collection, maintain what they have, and assure that the cars will eventually go to a museum, they have done the preservation community a great service. Unfortunately, too often this is not the case.

Frank Hicks

fullparallel@wideopenwest.com

> ...As long as these
> private owners are able to limit the size of
> their collection, maintain what they have,
> and assure that the cars will eventually go
> to a museum, they have done the preservation
> community a great service. Unfortunately,
> too often this is not the case.

> Frank Hicks

This issue of private vs public ownership, or whether equipment in private hands is really "preserved" came up on the Narrow Gauge discussion forum recently.

My arguement was that anything is "preserved" if it is well taken care of, regardless of whether it is in public or private hands. Your above comments are good, but they can be applied to museums just as well as individuals.

Museums, like for-profit companies, are not immune to closures; and we can all think of instances where a museum closed, and the collection was scattered, scrapped, or both. My family was looking for a tent revival about seven years ago when we drove into the parking lot of a logging museum about 30 minutes up the road from my house. There was a big cypress log, a very derelict boiler, though not from a steam locomotive, and other equipment outside a metal building. I made a mental note of it, and we drove on.

I decided to re-visit it this past weekend, and try to identify the boiler. After driving back and forth several times without seeing it, I finally stopped to ask. Turns out the museum was closed; and building razed, and most of the exhibits sent to a forestry school in a nearby town. Once I drove to where it used to be, I found the boiler and other outdoor stuff moved and sitting on the foundation of the old museum, I assume facing an uncertain future.

The point is, unless you become a federal entity like Steamtown, you need to have solid financial backing and some sort of equipment trust to protect it from scrapping if you want to preserve it indefinitely. Otherwise, it may still subject to neglect, decay, and possible future scrapping regardless of whether it is in public or private hands.

Of course, the other thing to do is to raise up a another generation with the same appreciation of your "stuff" as you have. The individual we were talking about had done just that in form of his son; I think the whole "Thomas" phenomena is the best tool we have to do this as a group. Without it, you have created a perpetial care cemetary, and not a museum. :)

-James Hefner
Hebrews 10:20a

james1@pernet.net