The outlook continues to be fairly good. Construction on the project was started today, as planned, but the car has about 3 weeks or so to get moved. The owner was on site today, doing some prep work for the move. He gave me a tour of the car, and I was impressed. It has some significant water damage, but the interior is amazing and enough remains that the restoration work will have plenty of solid historical evidence to work from.

He has, amazingly, been offered permanent indoor storage for the car at the LeMay collection at Marymount (that's the original facility, not the shiny new museum at the Tacoma Dome). The main obstacle, no surprise here, is the cost of the move and cranes etc.

Should that fail, he also has a viable backup plan in consideration, though there would, as always be lots of details to be worked out before it's a go. It's a good option too.

Hopefully things will continue in a positive direction.

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2014/02/2 ... story.html

Glad to hear that the #1663 will be moved to a new, secure home!

[Probably will. It's not a done deal yet. But there is a real groundswell of community support, so it looks good.

Here's a shot of it in it's current location (still awaiting relocation)

Ok, the owner is now officially asking for help in relocating the car.

He's launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise the costs for cranes and trucking.

Full story here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/63 ... g?ref=live

Bob,

About how much time does he have left?

His current deadline is April 1st. That's about a month past the original deadline. We're trying to work with him, and so is Tacoma Rail, but there's only so much time available for the contract work to be done.

We've started work on other parts of the project and are saving his part for last, but it's still not going to be long before it impacts his work. I hope he can keep moving on this one. Hopefully the Kickstarter goes quickly, $15K isn't a lot if a lot of folks get behind him.

It's not a large amount as preservation projects go, and it will get the car into permanent covered storage and display. It doesn't get much better than that. Of course the $15K only covers moving expenses, not restoration costs, but it's a good start...

A private car owner requesting donations. The problem with this scenario is glaringly obvious. If he is unable to self fund, the owner needs to cut his losses and put the object into the public trust ASAP if he wants the car to survive. There must be a west coast museum that would accept the object as a donation.

Funny, I have bene thinking this exact same thing since this thread started... I'm not so sure there is one, around this area. One museum near Seattle has more dead and rusting steam than is easy to imagine, another museum near Mt Rainier has a charter mostly covering logging stuff (and it's way up in the wilderness if you wanna truck it in) and another South of Olympia is mostly a tourist line and not really best suited for a car like this as they're not a 'museum' as such...

Lee, Northwest Railway Museum does have a large collection of rusty and moss covered equipment. They also have a relatively new restoration facility that would be prefect for this project. It would also seem to fit in well with their mission. Are they interested and can a deal be made? I don't know the answer to that.

Somebody needs to ask the Museum.

Even if officers and directors of the Museum read this forum (at least one has been known to post here in the past), they may be waiting for the right approach to be made to their Museum.

If ya check the first page of this thread, you'll notice that I already did that. The word I got was that the museum knows about the car and that no further comment can be made at this time.

So, I guess we'll just wait and see? Unless someone here has a better plan? I sure don't.

--Drew Black

If the owner fails to move it off the property then I think the law will say the object belongs to the land owner. If that happens I think the land owner will give it away to anyone who can remove it immediately, or else destroy it on site. If a museum is watching this situation develop, they might be wise to have a crane and truck ready to make an immediate rescue. Now is the time for the car's owner to relinquish the car to a museum rather than play roulette with this valuable artifact.

He has a plan in place. He also has a backup plan in place. I do not have his permission to be any more specific than that, so I won't. I'm pretty sure it will survive just fine.

Careful reading of the entire kick starter page will reveal the following near the bottom of the page:



The land owner is Tacoma Rail and they are working with him to make try and make this happen. Nobody wants to see it get demolished.

I see that someone has set up a Kickstarter page for the car...
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/63253740/save-tacomas-1910-northern-pacific-railroad-dining

While I can understand to some degree the how ludicrous it seems for a private car owner to be given money there is a big difference between what is going on here and what some private car owners are able to do. There are people with the money to invest in creating rolling palaces on which they ride the rails and brag about their smokes and liquor... and there are others who try to save a piece of history despite not having the means do really accomplish it, out of the hope that someone will come along to help them in their endevour. This is a case of the latter and not the former.

Its no different than what others have tried to do to preserve other railroad artifacts, some successfully while others were not, and if I had the income to help I would do so graciously in this case. He's not looking to create a mansion... he's trying to keep a rare piece of history from being lost forever, and, the last time I looked around, its not like there are a lot of cars like this that are still around. I really do hope that he succeeds because once its gone its pretty much gone (though the Alexander Chapter of the NRHS would greatly disagree... LOL... with the West Virginia Central car being a great example of what can be done if money and man power can be put towards such efforts).