Had to give up on trying to chase Southern #630 this morning as she entered Lexington Kentucky (you couldn't keep up with her!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9krdfRHxCFw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WoKKLlPw5k

So we headed over to the horse farm country over in Woodford County to let the girl friend pet some ponies. As we passed Milner, KY I was surprised to find this:

http://boilerwash.deviantart.com/art/De ... -454746388

The drawing room coach "Kentucky River" being sliced up. This was a car that was jointly owned by the L&N and the Pennsylvania Railroad and used on passenger trains that interchanged between the two. The car was built to Pennsylvania specifications and painted in Tuscan Red when in service, however it was lettered for the L&N. After service on AMTRAK it ended up at BGRM where it rusted away on the siding in Milner for a couple decades.

Too much stuff, not enough resources.

Thanks, boilerwash, for posting the info!

No, not a coach. One of 49 10RM-6DB sleepers built in 1949 by P-S in Lot #6814 to Plan #4140, 44 of which had River-Series names. 46 of the 49 were ordered for service on Southern's Crescent and New Royal Palm with fluted sides. The remaining three sleepers, including the Kentucky River, were delivered to the L&N with smooth sides and painted in Tuscan Red for PRR pool service. L&N also owned two of the sleepers built for the SOU pool.

L&N #3411 Kentucky River to Amtrak #2813 (1973) retired and sold in 1976 to Bluegrass RR Museum.

Ownership of these 49 sleepers was as follows:

L&N: five (2 SOU, 3 PRR)

A&WP: one

WofA: one

FEC: five (these sleepers did not carry River-Series names, and followed FEC practice of naming 10-6 sleepers after South American countries)

PRR: eight

CNO&TP: five

SOU: 24

For more info on these 49 10-6 sleepers and the other cars from Lot #6814, see the "Surviving SOU Lightweight Cars" thread here: http://www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35551

Sources:

1. "Streamliner Cars Volume One: Pullman Standard" by W. David Randall (RPC Publications, 1981)

2. Tom Madden's Pullman Project CCR database: http://pullmanproject.com/Database.htm

That's a real shame. The car was one of several foreign road 10-6s that were painted to match PRR pass cars and used for interline service (the N&W and RF&P also had some). A shot of the car in 2008 was showing Pullman Standard lower side rot and another shot, in 2010, showed it getting really bad. Here are links to both shots...

http://rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1301408
http://rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1961180

I'm not sure right off hand if any of the other cars survive but sometimes it just can't be helped, no matter how much we might like to save everything we can.

Here's a hot of sister car Green River in better days... she was shipped down to Mexico and likely is now a part of a locomotive or car...

http://abpr.railfan.net/abprphoto.cgi?november98/11-09-98/ln-greenriver.jpg

BGRM?

BGRM - Blue Grass Railroad Museum, Versailles, KY

Last time I saw the car 10+ years ago she wasn't in horrible shape. Did they offer the car for transfer or donation? My guess is no.

The car was used on New York to Louisville and Nashville inter line service, being handed off to the L&N in Cincinnati. As such it was in tuscan red bit with L&N lettering. Later, the car wore the standard L&N blue and gray.

That is very sad to hear. This was a rare car and while rough, I've seen much worse and it was a far cry from unrestorable. But, the sad reality is that there are very, very few people anymore who are willing to step up to the plate and save these passenger cars when the clock is close to striking midnight. And in this case, no one outside of the BGRRM seemed to know that it's time was up.

Take a scroll through the rest of the Bluegrass Ry Museum collection. ("Offered without comment").
http://rrpicturearchives.net/archiveThu ... x?id=35650

IIRC, this group got into serious financial trouble several years ago; serious enough that they basically were facing bankruptcy and liquidation.

Also IIRC, they had a few members with good business backgrounds and sense who stepped in, spent a lot of their own money, pulled it back from the brink, and made a bunch of changes in budgeting, spending, etc.

As too often happens, the members who had let it go to heck were just waiting for these guys to get the organization back on track, and once that had been accomplished, they rose up and kicked the reformers out.

Last I heard they had made a little bit of progress in some areas, but were still on the brink. The "collection" shows it.

I remember that F-M switcher. For many years, it and a sister were assigned to Ft. Knox, KY and both were impeccably maintained, both mechanically and cosmetically and were kept inside when not in use. One of them was given to another museum, which promptly started using it for parts and ended up intending to scrap it. This one at BGRM looks like it isn't aging gracefully.

I could be wrong about all of this, but that's the way I remember it.

Those pictures are a few years old as well. Currently the Illinois Central coach was sold to the Midwest Preservation Group in Cleveland and moved. The red L&N coach was scrapped as well a couple of years ago but that was a mercy scrapping as the car was literally falling apart, the ALCO MRS-1 that was being used for spare parts was scrapped at that time as well.

The wooden L&N has since caved in on itself and the B&O wooden caboose is about to do the same.



I actually have video of this engines last day of life:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zq22n4OewA

The aux. generator had been replaced several days before and the wiring had been put back wrong causing the main generator to ground out and burn up.

[quote="Lincoln Penn"]

I remember that F-M switcher. For many years, it and a sister were assigned to Ft. Knox, KY and both were impeccably maintained, both mechanically and cosmetically and were kept inside when not in use. One of them was given to another museum, which promptly started using it for parts and ended up intending to scrap it. This one at BGRM looks like it isn't aging gracefully.[quote]

The other FM H-12-44 was number 1846 and it went to the Kentucky Railway Museum ("KRM") in New Haven, Kentucky about 1993 or so. KRM operated it for many years and it was a reliable locomotive. About 1996 or so, it suffered from a flat wheel. We jacked up the locomotive, pulled out the truck and sent the axle off to have new wheels pressed in. A friend and I needle-gunned the entire truck, pprimed and painted it and helped put it all back together. Around 2001 or so, another axle was scored from inadequate traction motor bearing lubrication (the bearing that allows the motor to ride on the axle). The truck was pulled, and nothing else was done. A shop truck went under it and it sat until KRM decided to scrap it a few years ago in their own financial peril.

But for the static museum in Bowling Green at the L&N depot, who has done some amazing work mand the work going on at Stearns, Kentucky is a wasteland of failed railway preservation.

To the best of our ability, without spending a load of cash advertising something that wasn't going to bring much in anyway, we did attempt to locate persons who had interest in if not the whole car, parts and pieces for use in other pieces. No one had interest in the whole care due to condition and cost of stabilizing/prepping/moving/restoring. (The interior was heavily vandalized and stripped of most pickup truck hauling sized pieces in 2010.) We did have interest from several who had interest in certain pieces, but all decided the available parts were too worn or to deteriorated to be worth the trouble of acquiring and repairing. With that the entire car was taken by the scrapper, along with the wooden L&N & B&O caboose that resided in Milner with the "River". Like many museums a lot was acquired in a fury to save pieces long ago, without means to repair/restore/display the pieces. The thought was save it now, and we'll get to it. BGRM made the recent scrapping decisions based on lack of viable (plenty of interest is out there, not many are really capable of stepping up to the plate though) interest to acquire the pieces, and the heavily deteriorated and vandalized state of the pieces. It's always a very hard decision, but when all things are considered like total restoration cost, upkeep after restoration, and legal issues of injury and lawsuits from such heavily deteriorated pieces it was felt having the pieces removed from the property was the best decision for the overall health and benefit of the museum. Sale of the pieces funded other restoration efforts, like repair of the roofs of both the L&N "Duncan Tavern" and the Seaboard Safety Car at BGRM. Thinning the herd so to speak allows for more focused efforts on what is left and within museum means to stabilize and repair.
The museum itself for the past several years is doing quite well. A breath of life in the form of new physically active members, good administrative leadership, a track rehab grant, and acquisition of two new climate controlled coaches have combined to get finances well into the black, thanks to yearly increases in ridership brought on by the new seats, repairs and repainting to the older operating consist cars, a larger advertising budget, and expanded static displays. The increase in income is supporting the ability to start work on non-revenue rolling stock along with the operating pieces. ICG 7738 GP-8 had her repainting finished up this year, and it's been a good draw for us from local railfans. We are offering new fresh events, like hosting "Leviathan" back in Sept. during our Civil War weekend, and working with agencies that parallel our tracks to offer joint events like pumpkin patch trains and more. BGRM is moving in the right direction. The biggest issue used to be funds, and mismanagement, now we have funds and good management, but not enough volunteer hands to apply the funds to equipment repairs. We realize that like most of our country, locally volunteerism is down, and we'll never have enough volunteer labor to fix our entire collection. We know much of the work needed will have to now come from paid contractors, and we are planning for that already. More special high draw events, more weekends of operation, and multiple trains on single dates of high traffic will allow for more work to be paid for than volunteers can ever complete. They trick will be finding the balance of maintaining volunteer based operations that those who volunteer can sustain and not become overwhelmed with, while operating enough to gain excess funds to put into non-revenue equipment repair by paid individuals. It's always a balancing act, but for the past several years the scales have been tipping more and more into BGRM's favor.
As a side note, donations to BGRM are appreciated and tax deductible. One might consider a donation to BGRM, or organization of your choice, to help stop loss of more equipment like the "River" in the future.

Could you possibly link the listing you had placed on RyPN Classifieds, as I am having some trouble finding it. Or a listing on Railswap. Or Ozark.

These things are free. In fact I don't know how it would be even possible to "spend a load of cash advertising" given the tight connection of this small fraternity of both museums and commercial/collectors.

Sorry, it rubs a nerve. I've lost good candidates when an institution whose last name is "Museum" scrapped them in secret. That's not supposed to happen.

I agree 100% with this. For reasons unknown, museums seem adverse to using free advertising, then it ends up scrapped 'without warning' (it might have been mentioned in a board meeting or newsletter) or the last-minute 'somebody save X, Y, and Z!'

CD