For all those who say "if only someone had said something sooner, I would have saved it" here is your chance!

The Boulder Valley Railway Historical Society in Boulder Colorado is ending its run and seeking new homes for its equipment collection. The end of this year appears to be the deadline.

As a disclaimer, I am not associated with the group nor am I speaking officially for it, I just said I would help spread the word in the hopes that some or all of the collection will be saved.

Here is a list of what is there;

Great Western / Union Pacific 296, EMD GP9 locomotive. Complete, has not run since 2000.

Public Service Company of Colorado 14, GE 80 Ton centercab diesel. Complete and operational.

Colorado & Southern 543, 1906 Pullman coach. Wood body, steel underframe.

Burlington Northern 12300, wide vision caboose.

PUblic Service Co. of Colo. No.1, air dump car

Colorado & Southern 1771, 40' steel boxcar

Colorado & Southern wood boxcar, steel ends and center sill. Number unknown.

Union Pacific 908372, track panel car / drop bottom gondola

Denver & Rio Grande Western AX 3219, track panel flatcar.

Also two carbodies;

C&S 13121, wood boxcar

Union Pacific / OSL CA-1 caboose #317?

If you have any interest, contact me via PM, or post here. I will answer what questions I can and pass along contact info.

Jason Midyette

Some photos of the equipment in question. All photos are at least 3 years old!

Three more.......

a couple more...

How close is this to the Colorado RR museum? I assume they must know of this already?

I wonder if Strasburg would be interested in the GP9 as a partner to ex Great Western #90?

According to Don Strack's Utahrails website, locomotive #296 was one of five UP GP9's set up with a steam generator for passenger service (click here). Therefore, a museum could pull excursion trains with this locomotive and it would be 100% historically accurate. Indeed, I just found a photo of sister GP9, UP #295, heading a passenger train at Butte, MT.

Here's a nice, old photo of another UP GP9, with the original "Road of The Streamliners" under the cab window.
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=177638

Let's hope a western museum gets this locomotive -- and not a commercial rebuilder.

UP/GW 296 is a neat locomotive. With the exception of the steam generator being removed, it is still very original. It has its original control stand and the class lights in the nose still had a green lens as one of the choices (at least that was still the case the last time I was in the cab in 2011) I believe it is the only survivor of the 5 "passenger" GP9's that the UP had.

Its last use was serving as the switcher for the BNSF/GW interchange in Longmont Colorado. It was stored in Longmont and a GW crew drove down to it anytime there was work to do. Then its batteries died and the GW brought another locomotive down and 296 just sat.

I too hope it ends up somewhere good. It would be a bummer if all I did was delay its date with the cutting torch from 2002 to 2015!

Jason Midyette

Mr. Midyette, thanks for the heads up. This will certainly be something for me to keep an eye out for over the next year or so.

Obviously, this is not my place to question however it seems to me that the all the equipment listed above constitutes a very significant portion of the organization's entire collection. Based on my meager observations, this is a very large liquidation for a relatively small museum and collection.

On an entirely separate note, this other railway forum has some nice pictures of this museum's collection:
http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/sho ... Adventures)-Boulder-County-Railway/page3

-Andrew

What about their steam crane?

Industrial Works C/N 3983 Steam 1920
Public Service Co. of Colorado #1 Valmont, CO
http://www.flickr.com/photos/benison/16 ... otostream/
BCRHS 2000
(stored at Sloss, CO)

I would suppose that the crane would be in need of a new home as well. That said, I don't think that it is in any more danger than it has been for the past 30 years. A few years ago the crane was moved 30 o so feet to the north and is now entirely on land owned by the City of Boulder. The city cleaned up/scrapped a lot of stuff around the crane but did not touch it. (It has been a few months since I have been in Colorado, I am assuming nothing has changed)

Moving it would be a pain in the ass as a rather large power pole has been placed dead center of the track just south of the crane and the crane would need to move south in order to be loaded on a truck.

Jason Midyette

They have apparently stopped paying on their web domain name, boulderrail.org, because it now goes to generic health care services page.

Here is the specific web page with more information about UP wooden cabooses:

http://utahrails.net/caboose/caboose-wo ... 5801-25809

The museum site was badly vandalized in January:

http://www.dailycamera.com/news/boulder ... rains-hard

Don Strack

Does anyone know what ever became of City of Boulder Springs GE 70 tonner #9703?

/Andrew

I guess I have to ask this question again:
How close is this to the Colorado RR museum? Do they know of this already and if so, is there any interest in the equipment?

The City of Colorado Springs GE 70 tonner #9703 was scrapped in 2011. It was sold to a guy who gave a great song and dance about wanting to preserve it and then loaded it on a semi and took it straight to the steel mill in Pueblo Co. and sold it for scrap.

The CRRM, while relatively close, did not seem interested in the equipment 4 years ago, though something may have changed.

Also current website for the group is www.bvrhs.org Has not been updated for a while but is still there.

Jason Midyette