Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o4xSDInPhk

Two wooden outside-braced boxcars are moved out of the way of a construction project at the old LaFarge cement plant in Duluth, Minnesota.

Does anyone know for certain if these cars are being preserved? There has to be a reason someone took the trouble to move them, as opposed to torch them and scrap the remains......

I would guess they are headed to the Lake Superior Railway Museum given the LSRX reporting mark spray painted on the side,


Edit: lookie there. Googling a bit confirmed that. http://www.fox21online.com/news/video/h ... ved-pier-b

Here's more on what will take place on the cement plant site:

http://www.aggregateresearch.com/articl ... perty.aspx

http://www.sctimes.com/story/news/local ... -/6896039/

I'm not sure about the locomotive but it could be this one with a more recent paint job:

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... id=1218820

Well-shot video of Museum activities with a slight news angle
+
Contacting the local news media
+
A slow news day (or "lazy" news producers)
=
Free publicity for your railroad museum!

There's a lesson here, folks.......

Nah, the story line is redevelopment of an old industrial site and an investment of 30 million (or more), which in a town like Duluth is a big deal.

I saw nothing that would want me to visit the museum up there and it's a world class one.

Bob H

They look like 1918 USRA single-sheathed cars. The cast lettering on one truck shows "DM&N". The steel doors are certainly a later modification. Nice save of two good vintage freight cars!

Howard P.

That "story line," if it's really significant and the news media are doing their jobs, is being covered repeatedly over time, and this is but one tiny part of the picture. In fact, this has nothing really to do with that story, yet the TV station chose to air this as a news story. Why? Most likely, because they made well-produced video available to the station(s) so they could fill air time at basically no cost. This is no different from a newspaper taking a press release and editing it to fill their space/time.

The railroad car story 1) shows that some token progress is supposedly occurring at the site, and 2) trots the Museum's existence out in front of the public once again, as an organization involved in local history preservation.

Too often in this field, a project like the one depicted in this video only garners media attention when lawsuits are initiated to "rid the community of those eyesores" or "quit operating a junkyard." This is in part because rail museums and excursion lines too often don't actually address "public relations," or think it only involves printing brochures and/or buying advertising. Can we acknowledge that, at least for a while, this is a positive presentation on what otherwise could be a situation going bad?

Not all public relations is issuing flashy, highly-produced advertising or weaseling a non-negative spin out of a negative situation. Often it just has to do with keeping your name in the public eye and conscience in a positive light. This is what competent marketing/PR people do, and the reason they're paid to do it. Politicians are absolute masters of this, constantly trotting in front of cameras and issuing press releases to demonstrate that they are "doing things" and "taking a stand" whether or not what they are (supposedly) doing is actually in any way productive or relevant to the situation in question. This is part of why incumbency rates are so alarmingly high in elections in spite of the alleged "unpopularity" of Congress, state legislatures, etc.--people vote for the name they've heard repeatedly, whether or not it's in positive terms or followed by "shown here in custody".

I repeat: "There's a lesson here, folks."
And the fact that the guy who nay-says this fact represents the NRHS also says a lot about their present scenario.

Bob,

Unless you are being sarcastic, I think you are missing a very important point that way too many preservation/museum folks miss...

Local free media coverage like this is golden. It reminds the local community that there is an active rail preservation group and gives exposure to an audience they rarely get otherwise.

This isn't about making you, me or people like us want to visit a musuem. We are the last people museums should be targeting: we are already in.

The hockey mom with her Thomas lovin' boys who saw this over her morning coffee is the person to impress. She doesn't even need to understand the whole thing, just seeing "train" "museum" "nearby" is enough.

Our "movement" would be much stronger if we had more media-savvy folks doing things just like this.

Rob

Just for the record, they aren't USRA cars. All the boxcars built for the USRA used three piece ends, and all the composite cars used pressed hat section posts and braces. There were, however, many, many railroads that bought cars built to the same basic design that substituted stock mill shapes for the custom pressings, and the two piece ends date them to the period after the railroads were returned to their owners in 1920.

They are very nice cars, though, and would look nice right behind the engine in a photo freight. I seem to recall that LSRM had another car of this type stored in the BN yard at Rice's Point.

Rob -

Yes, this was great news coverage for the museum. Only thing that could have made it better is if LSRM would have been able to furnish a photo of one of the cars in one of its in-service paint schemes to show how the museum eventually intended to restore the cars.

Les

One thing that really made a difference for TVRM is that one of our members-John A. Coniglio-was (and may still be) involved with the local press. John is a bonafide rail photographer and historian and when I first met him, he was a staff photographer for the Chattanooga News Free Press (later the Chattanooga Times-Free Press). He was able to work with his editors and the writers to get coverage for TVRM's events that really kept us in the public eye. Even when there wasn't a story to be published, he'd run photographs taken at TVRM whenever possible with the trains as the theme of the photo essay.

A couple clarifications:

-The boxcars do belong to the Lake Superior Railroad Museum, and have since the mid 1970s, being used for storing a variety of parts and equipment. The boxcars were placed out on the pier almost a decade ago at the request of the current owners to complement a festival being held there. With redevelopment plans now calling for major earth moving and BNSF planning to pull up a major road crossing needed to access the cars, we retrieved them.

-Both boxcars are former DM&IR (ex DM&N) and date from the early 1920s. The museum at one point had 6, 3 of which were converted to open air cars for use at a small operation at what was once known as Ironworld (now the Minnesota Discovery Center) up in Chisholm, MN. After Ironworld elected to operate their trolley exclusively, one of the cars came back to the LSRM.

-The GE 45ton was built for Minnesota Power's Hoyt Lakes facility and was donated to the museum many years ago. Normally the shop switcher, it was the only operable locomotive small enough to traverse the curve onto the pier.

Some more pictures from the day:

Are there any plans to paint one (or both) of the cars into their DM&IR paint schemes in the near future? That would sure be nice!

Les