The Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society has discovered a truly remarkable collection of approximately 800 drawings that apply to S-2 and S-3 class Nickel Plate Road Berkshires. These are not blueprints - they are the ORIGINAL LINEN TRACINGS from which the blueprints were made. They are in extraordinary condition, like they were pulled out of a drawer yesterday!<p>These are not Lima factory as-built drawings that date back to 1944. This set of drawings has been updated into late 1957 with various improvements made by the NKP to their Berkshire fleet. It appears that we now have over 90% of the drawings that would be required to build a new locomotive. You can see the details by going to our web site at: www.765.org/. remarkable discovery means that we now have the appropriate drawings to guide our work on literally everything we must do do to make the 765 road worthy again. However, we still need your help. Visit our web site and consider making a donation to the 765 Overhaul Fund. The 765 WILL run again...it's only a matter of time.



NKP 765's Web Site

Any chance you'll have these images "scanned" into an optical imaging system, so they can be indexed and accessed readily? <p>It may difficult or inordinately costly, but if possible...in the long run.. what a priceless reservoir of info... <br>



cndrblw26@hotmail.com

Yes, we have definitely considered scanning the drawings and making them available on CD. However we will be doing the microfilming first, because that is still considered the safest, longest lasting and most widely usable form of archival<br>storage.<p>The problem with using the CD-ROM format as long term archival storage is the march of technical progress. Who knows if todays CD-ROM technology will still be in use 50 years from now. Technology moves so fast in the computer world that today's "standard" is tomorrows antique. (Anyone remember 8 inch floppy disks? Or how about Bernoulli Box 20 MB removable drives?)<p>Another problem is that with the quanitity of drawings, and the relatively high resolution at which they must be scanned to be usable, the resulting file sizes would mean that the entire 800 to 1,000 drawing set would have to be distributed on several CD's. I haven't done the math yet, but I would bet that they will not all fit on a 9 GIG DVD! Steamtown has expressed an interest in having a complete set of drawings on CD or DVD, and we may be able to do that, however cost may be a factor.<p>For non-mechanical interests, such as computer screen savers, pictures for framing, web backgrounds, etc., many of the drawings would be of no interest anyway. Do you really want to use a drawing of a pipe bracket as a screen saver or a<br>picture on your wall? However, many of the drawings of the larger parts actually do look sort of like a steam locomotive. And of course, the huge broadside erection drawing looks exactly like a steam locomotive! It is these larger drawings that we may make available on CD-ROM as an item available in our souvenir shop.<p>One thing that will help us determine whether we will do this or not is market demand. And here's where the web can be of tremendous help. If you will purchase a CD-ROM priced somewhere in the $12 to $15 range that contained a series of these drawings plus some actual photos of the 765 in action, click on the email link above and send us a message. It doesn't have to be a long message, in fact, if you will put "I'll buy a CD" in the subject line, that's all we really need. <p>Several of you have made donations to the 765 Overhaul Fund in recent days. We truly appreciate that and thank you very much. The fund now stands and almost $10,000, and more donations are always welcome. Remember, the 765 WILL run again...it's just a matter of time.<p>Rich Melvin,<br>Posted on behalf of the entire 765 Crew<br>



The 765 Overhaul Fund
cdrom@765.org