And here, for the reading enjoyment of one and all is a quote from the Interchange Guidelines:

I call threads like this "cry in your beer time". I suspect that just about everyone who logs into RYPN has a lost engine or electric railway car that still causes pangs of regret. If I were a songwriter, I could probably compose a mock Country & Western song about the subject.
The postings on this subject seem to be mostly from the east side of the country, and so far, my homeland of Southern California has been missing. Here's my LaLa Land List:

Pacific Electric 999: this unique interurban car was a relic of the old Los Angeles Pacific predecessor company, and was due to be scrapped in 1950. A group of local traction fans tried to raise money to buy the car, but fell short, and it went to the boneyard.

PE 5000-5029: These were PE's only "modern" cars, the 1940 vintage PCC's that spent most of their service lives on the Glendale-Burbank lines. When that segment of PE was abandoned in 1955, the cars were stored in the Subway tunnel, and inn 1959 were sold to a railway in Argentina (which had nearly 70 ex-PE cars already). They didn't last long in the Buenos Aires operation, and have long since been scrapped. Some have wondered why Orange Empire, which had started its trolley museum in Perris by then, didn't try to buy one; I didn't join OERM until some years later and so missed out on any discussion--I still see a few of the founders from time to time and this might be an interesting question. During the 1950's San Francisco Muni was looking for PCC's but they were more interested in all-electrics, rather than prewar air-electrics like the PE group.

PE 1100s: These were sold to Argentina in 1951. This was during the Korean War, and even at scrap prices "cutting one out of the herd" for preservation was rather unlikely. And in 1951 the few trolley museums in existence were preserving older, lighter trolleys, not 50-ton steel suburban cars. Reports indicate that somewhere in Argentina or Paraguay the bodies of 2 or 3 1100's still exist as rusted hulks; it would probably be easier and cheaper to have replicas built from scratch in some foreign country where riveted steel construction can still be done.

PE 1200s (and combines 1370-1376): with one exception, these were all scrapped at Kaiser Steel in 1950-51. Here again, there was a war on, boosting scrap metal prices. One of my "let's smoke a pipeful of old journal packing" fantasies a.k.a "If I were a rich man..." would be to buy a North Shore interurban car (these survived well into the electric railway preservation era) and modify it with PE trolley bases, destination signs, etc. and number it PE 1270. (the surviving 1200 is 1299, the PE business car. But it's not a "native" Red Car--it came from the SP Portland electric suburban service, and was heavily modified at PE's Torrance Shops into what is now at Orange Empire.)

Chino Valley RR steam engine: This is an "oral tradition" among So. Cal. railfans; according to the story there was a 42" gauge short line that ran from Ontario to Chino (in the southwestern part of San Bernardino County). It was abandoned in the 1930's and the locomotive was stored in a barn or carhouse. Supposedly it was more or less forgotten until World War II, when, like so many other metallic relics, it fell victim to a scrap drive. Had it survived into the post war era, and been "adopted" by a reasonbly well-to-do steam fancier, it could have wound up at Orange Empire where (in our dreams) it could have run on the same tracks as the LA Railway streetcars.

I was never criticizing the moderators,
but calling their attention to posts that seemed to be steering the topic into yet another arguement,
such as has caused recent threads to be locked.

Forget it. Rant away.

No. Don't forget civility, and don't rant away, any of you.

I checked 'behind the scenes' and no insult was meant to RDG 179 by the mods.

On the other hand, the whole established theme of this board is supposed to be CIVIL discourse, even when radically different (and irreconciliable!) points of view are being discussed.

Personally, I have to agree that 'hijacking' posts on a particular topic, no matter how big one's perceived soapbox might be, or no matter how much of a priority one's self-appointed mission to eddicate the ignunt might be, is not a beneficial action. (Even here, in this post, lest anyone further digress by criticizing whether I should be saying this... ;-})

Mods on this board are already overworked without having to be the thread police. Please at least consider not complicating their jobs, or raising their blood pressure, by bringing sources of aggravation intentionally into threads on a different subject... other than threads that include aggravation AS their subject or purpose (and that civilized people can easily avoid...)

And -- for a take-home message -- at ANY TIME you have a complaint about how posts are developing or being handled, send it via civil PM to the moderator in question, and leave it at that. That, too, is in the "Interchange Guidelines" (and I think it may be the single most important thing to remember when arguments about posting start to brew...)

(Sorry in advance if the tone irritates anybody. If it does, PM a mod and have them contact me about it, according to procedure...)


RME