Here is very interesting article and following comments on the ATSF locomotive project.

http://cjonline.com/news/2012-05-22/his ... ck-new-use


In the comments, there are questions about the terms of the agreement between the Great Overland Station and the CSR group. It would be interesting to see the actual agreement whereby the locomotive was transferred from ATSF ownership to the city of Topeka in 1956. Were these display locomotives just given away by the railroads on a handshake?

In reading about this engine, I get the general impression that a lot of people believe the locomotive was disintegrating beyond saving when the only real issue was failed paint and the development of surface rust.

Also interesting in the above article is the stated cost of $3-million for the modernization of the locomotive, and the stated potential sources of funding, which include public funding in the form of government grants.

Despite the elaborate plans for this locomotive, including the claim that the work will be reversible to the original configuration, nobody really knows what will actually transpire. I wonder if the title transfer agreement by the Great Overland Station stipulates any conditions regarding what can and cannot be done with this 200-ton iron artifact.

I don't have a real answer but know that the CNJ generator on the back decks of the Camelbacks was mostly used for lighting, although a few of the cars formerly used on the Blue Comet had air conditioning. Just a back-of-an-envelope calculation, but just how many 100 watt bulbs can you realistically put in a commuter coach? Ten? So figure a thousand watts per car, times ten or twelve cars, a good-sized commuter train. Fudge that number up a bit, and you have 15 or 20 kW.

I recall reading that some of the early Amtrak HEP sets put out 500 kW, which wasn't always enough for some of the long distance trains, so the later units went to 800 kW! Multiply that 800 by 1.34, and you have 1072 horsepower, which would be quite a parasitic load for that 4-6-4 to handle.

I never saw it run, was there on the wrong days, but I've seen the sternwheeler 'Belle of Louisville' several times, and talked to one of the engineers. From the pier, you can see a diesel genset through the engineroom windows. Asking why, I was told that the lighting, air conditioning, and sound system used a tremendous amount of steam to run a turbine generator. IIRC, something like 40 or 50 percent of the boiler capacity went into the generator. Going to a diesel just made more economic sense, also leaving that much more steam to turn the wheel.

I understand that it's already been determined that the outer firebox wrapper will require replacement. That indicates serious deterioration of the boiler shell and certainly more than "surface rust". Besides, isn't this group who painted it? If not for them it might have rusted into oblivion.

Of course somebody knows what will actually transpire, they just haven't publicized details yet.

I wonder if the tags have been removed from the fireman's and engineer's seat cushions? Perhaps we should call in the Mattress Police.

Sheez....

Well yes, but we are talking about an engine that is worthy of static display versus an engine that can set the world speed record while being carbon neutral. For which purpose do the firebox sheets require replacement?

My point about what will actually transpire with this locomotive has nothing to do with the published intent. I am referring to what will transpire regarding actual results after all the rigors of funding and experimentation. And in that regard, I am just wondering if the Great Overland Station placed any conditions on the giveaway of this iconic locomotive, or if they were just glad to see it go.

I've unlocked this thread per the request of members who want to continue discussing this locomotive within the guidelines. Please mind what you are posting.

Tom Gears
Moderator

This whole business -- involving first the transfer of ownership to an apparently completely oblivious nonprofit and from there to an outfit-without-resume shrouded in a fog of arcane technical jargon -- sounds a lot like a number of other schemes I've witnessed over the years. Each ended up a means of transfering formerly publicly-owned display locomotives into the hands of hidden commercial interests, who then handed them off to one big museum or another after significant amounts of money had eventually changed hands.

In one such case, a certain Rock Island Pacific-type was transferred by the state of Oklahoma to a Texas "nonprofit preservation group" for one dollar -- but straight away ended up, instead, in the yard of a commercial outfit in Ft. Worth which, as I recall, transplanted key components to another locomotive before shipping the balance of the hulk to a well-known museum in Illinois. And "not," reportedly, for "no profit."

Just because Topeka's name appears in the Johnny Mercer song glorifying the long-lost Santa Fe Railway Company, nobody should expect elected or appointed officials there to be any smarter, more engaged or more intuitive than anywhere else. And, clearly, comically, they're not. The "washing of the hands" by governments to quickly rid themselves of infelicitous people, things and situations has a long history.

It's immensely strange that a museum housed in a historic railway depot -- and looking to establish a "railroad park" -- would see no overriding value, not only in the last example of its own community's "home railroad's" fastest-ever class of steam power, but in the one steam locomotive reportedly chosen by the line for preservation because it WAS the "fastest ever."

Despite what I know of the characteristic tendencies of bureaucrats and nonprofit bosses, I'm still trying to get even the smallest part of this deal to make sense.

I don't see the US Navy, for instance, setting about to reinvent or similarly "update" the steam propulsion systems of the mythic Iowa-class Battleships -- roughly contemporary with ATSF's steam locomotives of the 3460-class -- although they were actually fairly-recently in service and their essential utility well-established in supporting modern amphibious military operations.

This scheme -- apparently involving, minimally, the deliberate mutilation of the only remaining example of the 3460s -- can't help but sound like hundreds of fingernails being drug across a blackboard.

You are making a Paper Tiger argument. Throughout the history of this board there have been some pretty wild ideas of what constitutes a museum-appropriate treatment for historic railroad equipment. I do not understand where these comparisons to fine art conservation keep coming from, except out of some need to say, "we are different," and "the rules don't apply to us."

Please re-read the definition of Preservation offered above. It is NOT the same as Conservation. Conservation is about retaining original fabric. This latter approach is appropriate for static displays in climate-controlled environments.

Preservation is a fairly liberal approach that is definitely appropriate for the treatment of operating railroad equipment, buildings, and other things that need to be out in the weather and functioning safely. You will find that Preservation very much allows for replacement and maintenance. It does not allow for major modifications, especially for experimental technologies. This is a very clear distinction and should be apparent to everyone that is interested in Preservation.

Yes, I have heard this argument than modernizing a locomotive is preservation because it is preserving the principle of continuous upgrading and rebuilding by the railroads that operated locomotives. But to me, this seems like a torturous word game. Preserving the principle of continuous upgrade is not the same as preserving a locomotive. Clearly, the two principles are mutually exclusive. Preservationists preserve and don’t modernize. Railroad operators of steam modernized and did not preserve.

In the architectural preservation world, activists frequently use the National Environmental Protection Act or its local equivalents (CEQA here) to save neglected and endangered properties. We in the railway preservation field seem largely oblivious or unwilling to use these laws to our advantage.

If public funds are involved in a project, the project's impact on cultural and historic resources must be evaluated. An adverse impact can be mitigated in a legally acceptable way, and the property may still be demolished or scrapped, but there is a process that is intended to prevent public funds from being used to destroy our history.

If 3463 was determined to be eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Properties, and public funds were to be used, then the project may have to be reconsidered if the law is followed.

Although the public agencies disbursing whatever funds might be granted to this project are supposedly responsible for determining their compliance with appropriate environmental regulation, many agencies undertake these reviews in a less than complete manner. Private preservation activists have frequently needed to intervene to ensure the law is being followed.

These laws could be used to force neglectful cities to take care of historic items they have failed to maintain. This would include things like park engines or even equipment owned by a state railroad museum. I can think of a number of historic pieces of city-owned railroad equipment that are currently being allowed to crumble to dust. This is literally against the law.

Unfortunately, governments are often not good at regulating themselves, and sometimes compliance can only be forced through the courts. These laws are essentially an "unfunded mandate," and it may be worth debating whether or not financially struggling cities should be forced to spend money on something as non-essential as Preservation, but that is what the law requires here in California. The reason this preservation does not happen is because no one is suing them.

–Another Randy.

Exactly.

We should be interested in preserving the equipment from the time when it was contributing in a significant manner to the broad patterns of our history. That would be while the equipment was still in commercial service working for a railroad. We can often narrow this down to a specific time period known by preservationists as the "Period of Significance." This period may last for the entire time the piece was in commercial service, or it may just be for a specific date, but it is a finite period of time when the equipment was doing something meaningful to our country and its economy. Hauling families on Sundays does not count.

With very few, rare exceptions, anything our equipment has been used for since entering a "preserved" state is de-facto non-historic. Using the Ferdinand Magellan for Ronald Reagan's whistle stop campaign in 1984 is a pretty solid example of one of these super rare exceptions, just as SP 4449's use on the American Freedom Train is probably another, whereas using a modified passenger car to film Hello Dolly is not.

I do not know how many times I have heard people talk about how something has been used for longer at a museum than when it was "in-service," as if that is supposed to say that the equipment's history in the museum was now more important than its history before. It does not work that way. I suppose this might lead us to some sort of meta-museum were we could preserve the history of railway preservation... The mind reels.

Let's look at something here.

Supposing that somebody in Topeka or the Santa Fe Society gets a bee in his bonnet and decides to pursue such legal action with regards to 3463, demanding that the city void its agreement and go back and restore her as a good-looking park loco.

Now, how's that going to look to "Ron Swanson" of Pawnee, Indiana Parks & Recreation (as in the NBC show) when someone later innocently suggests that they get the railroad to donate a caboose or the station to the town?

"Now let me get this straight--you want to saddle my department with one more thing that I have to paint and fix and keep up, that I can get sued for if I don't maintain it exactly the way SOMEONE ELSE, who isn't even paying taxes to us, tells us to..... Just what kind of gol-darnged fool do you think I am???"

And you'll never see anything "stuffed and mounted" again.

I know of a project/group that was/is intent on saving a historically significant rail structure. Negotiations and logistics for eventual preservation were/are going on behind the scenes. Then one member of the group started pursuing National Register application for the structure. Said member was discretely taken behind the engine shed and told to cease and desist immediately--National Register status on the structure at that stage of the game could have prolonged the already convoluted process of getting the property cleaned up, stabilized, and transferred by five to ten years.

The text-book scientific approach would be to conduct test burns of the new fuel on a modified 2719 and/or 261 (ala 614/ACE3000) instead of simultaneous full-scale firing and running gear modifications. Successful firing mods would guarantee funding for the running gear design and refit.

On another forum, a poster who sounds like he has worked on the locomotive when it was being considered for operation says that the 3463 is listed on the National Historic Register as the only surviving Super Hudson. If that is true, what does it mean to the current plans?

If a city wants to "stuff and mount" something they should be willing to care for it in perpetuity. That is what preservation entails. How do people feel about it if they let the local war memorial decay and get vandalized? They rightly feel outraged. Those war memorials are protected by the same environmental quality laws that were established in response to the destruction of New York's Penn Station.

In your example, I'd like to point out that a recently retired piece of equipment would most likely not qualify for the National Register and would not reach the threshold necessary to be considered a historic resource until additional decades have passed.

As entertaining a character as he is, I for one do not want to base much of anything on what Ron Swanson thinks. That said, I would suspect that he would understand the responsibility that one takes on by choosing to preserve something. Ron is not someone to enter into a commitment lightly and appreciates that a certain amount of honor is at stake when one makes a promise to take care of something. That is, unless that commitment involves marrying a crazy person.