....why the Boone County Historical Society had this done to their display car at their Kate Shelly Museum in Moingona, IA?

This was in 2010. Car is ex Rock Island 319 NARCISSUS, a Budd built coach.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/39840390@N ... otostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/39840390@N ... otostream/

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Holy Christ. Scrapping what appeared to be a perfectly good pre-war Budd coach, without even offering it for sale.

"Hey, howza 'bout if you donate one of your passenger cars to a museum. That'll be a good home for it".

I can't really think of anything nice to say about that course of action................ Plenty of not so nice things come to mind though.

No. Idiots. Looking over the pictures that appears to have been a fairly nice pre-war Budd coach. At a minimum they appear to have done a half hearted to piss poor job of salvaging parts. We've certainly restored cars that were a hell of a lot worse when we started. Not to mention that at a glance CRI&P lightweight passenger equipment seems to be a less than prolific commodity.

Sad, on so many levels.

ETA
(Closet Rock Island fan)

Found this old message from the Rock Island Technical Historical society list:

http://www.rits.org/RITSLIST_OLD/ritsli ... 00515.html

As long ago as 2007 the organization that owned #319 and the adjacent museum had no funds to maintain or upgrade it and they had discontinued using it as a movie theater because they had no way to heat or cool it. It apparently had been subjected to minor vandalism as well. No word on whether they made any efforts to find a new home for it.

Sadly, it appears from Google maps that the car was only about 3 miles from live rail and 6 miles from the Boone & Scenic Valley Railroad Museum in Boone, IA.

This is what I found out from an article in the the Oct 1, 2010 Boone News-Republican:

The passenger train located on the site of the Kate Shelley Railroad Museum in Moingona will soon be dismantled and removed from the property, Boone County Historical Society Executive Director Charles Irwin said.Residents in the town reported that a large truck arrived at the scene on Wednesday night and began preliminary work in dismantling it. According to Irwin, the decision to remove the train was made by the Boone County Historical Society Board, as the train was an insurance risk and held no historical significance to the site.”We’re going to be removing the rail car down there,” Irwin said. “The board just decided it was time to move on. We tried to find a new home for it, to find somebody that would be willing to take it and couldn’t find a new home for it, so we decided it would be time to move on and get it out of there. It’s to the point where we’re afraid it’s really becoming a hazard. In this day and age with insurance companies and stuff, they’re concerned about it as well.”The board initially contacted railroads in the area to see if someone might be interested in the train, however the cost of transporting it alone was rather expensive.”So we tried to find somebody that’d be willing to take it, talked to some of the railroads around, and nobody could afford to move it out,” Irwin said. “It’s like $40,000-$50,000 to move it out, and nobody has those resources.”Irwin, who is an ardent supporter of preserving items with historical significance, said he’s sad to see it go, but not completely disheartened as the train, which arrived at the museum before he became executive director of the BCHS, has no historical significance to the area.”It really has no significance to the Kate Shelley story,” he said. “The rail car was from the 1950s. The rail line would have been gone by then, and the Rock Island Rocket never went on that line, as well. It really has no significance to the area, to the railroad line or to the Kate Shelley story. I’m not sure what the rationale was, because obviously I wasn’t involved. It might have been a good idea back in ’75, but what do you do with it now, 30, 40 years later when you don’t have the money to restore it, you don’t have the money to move it out? We talked about it for several years, and the board finally decided it’s time to make a change. And hopefully clean up the area a little bit around there.”The windows of the train had been broken out, and Irwin said during the last review with their insurance company, the train was noted as a potential hazard.”In this day and age, you’ve got to be careful about that stuff,” he said. “It becomes an attractive nuisance, or really in this case, an inconvenient nuisance. The board felt that we needed to act on that and do something about that.”

Axles to axles, rust to rust, another Budd coach lost and crushed.

I know of several private individuals and/or organizations that would LOVED to have had the opportunity to give this car a home, had it been offered.

Oh well, more razor blades. This is why we have models to enjoy.

Wondering exactly how they did that? Put a sign up on the bulletin board at the grocery store, next to the one saying "Free Kittens"?

It looks like the vestibule traps have been modified to be fixed in the 'open' position. I wonder if Rock Island did this, or if it was done after the car was retired.

Idiots indeed. “It’s like $40,000-$50,000 to move it out, and nobody has those resources"

Standard overblown cost estimate to move one of these things back to live rail.

$12,000.00, including cranes, would be more like it.

What a waste.

I'm not sure I'd call anyone an idiot in this case. Per the information provided it appears they knew enough to know that it didn't fit their mission and didn't have the resources to refurbish or maintain it. Moving it to live rail does not solve the problem as it may not be able to be moved by rail anyway, and even that is not free. Perhaps they could have gotten creative and stuck it on ebay, craigslist or railswap but chances are those efforts would have failed. Besides, they probably made a few bucks by having it cut up. Yes, its sad, but chances are they did what was right for their museum. So, yes there may have been a logical reason.

I'd still be curious to know if anyone at Boone & Scenic a few miles up the road knew it was being scrapped...

You are totally correct. They may well have made the right choice. But given the fact that they aren't making any more of these, it sure would have been nice to see that they tried. Of course we don't know whether they did or not. Maybe the Boone & Scenic looked at it already and said "Sorry, not interested".

It would probably have been good public relations to make the search for a new location publicly known.

I think it would be fair to ask if there's truly a "logical" reason for ANY of the stuff we do.

(Presuming, of course, that you're not drawing a paycheck at the Strasburg, Valley, Grand Canyon, Durango & Silverton, etc.)

contact all the museums out there about this board, if they have equipment they need to deal with get them to post up here.