The link to the story about the totalled L&HR caboose is in the Flimsies section:

http://www.rypn.org/flimsies/

We've said it a thousand and one times in this forum, but one has to ask, "Why do people do it?" Is it arson for the fires sake? Is it addicts trying to stay warm? There is no regard for history or other peoples property. Railroad preservation seems to be especially targeted. THis kind of wanton destruction is a blight on what we are trying to accomplish. So Sad.

This time of year, it's far too often homeless addicts trying to stay warm.

In a neighborhood I used to live in in Baltimore, just west of the B&O Museum, the same cluster of addicts managed to burn down THREE vacant rowhouses in the span of one month one winter, all within a block of one another. The worst part is, police and fire officials knew damn well who they were but were prevented by city-hall "policy" from doing anything about them. I understood that the neighbors personally undertook to "do something" about them; I didn't ask questions.

Hi,

There was a narrow gauge train set in Boulder CO. Loco a couple of cars a passenger car and caboose IIRC.

Someone used some dynamite to blow up an ex-D&RGW narrow gauge caboose. Sometime in the 1960's or 1970's maybe?

They got the caboose from South Park City Museum (I think) and a few decades later the same thing happened again. Both incidents had dynamite residue.

Except for the distroied caboose, the equipment was restored again and Boulder City own train is now kept at the Colorado RR Museum.

What is it with some people and wonten destruction?

A year or two after I graduated from high school, one senior (class dismantled a VW Bug and reassembled it on the roof of the school (one of the old flat top roofed ones popular in the 1960s). Another senior class at the time got a bucket lift and dropped old tires down the flagpole making a large stack of rubber tires.

About 2005, a class from the same school did $150,000 in destruction of the school. The school board canceled the graduation (off-campus) and used the money for repairs.

I do not know what happened in NJ. I hope that the culprits are found and if it was wonten destruction, the sentence is enough community work to rebuild the destroied caboose.

Sorry about getting on my soap box and sounding off but I just do not understand that type of person. Please feel free to delete this post is needed.

Doug vV

Doug, The Boulder caboose was RGS 0401. Blown up in 1958. The trucks are under 04990, and various metal parts went into 04990 and 0579.

Mike Stillwell
Buena Vista, VA.

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the correction.

Doug vV

I'm glad they want to rebuild the caboose, it was being parted for a sister caboose but they were going to restore it too, now it won't have original structure, but they have the other caboose to model from. Vandals can bash all the destruction but can't bash the human spirit.

Hope they find the critters.

The PRRH's page on 16 and 18 appears to be on the fritz, but if I recall correctly, this is the second time that this very car has been burned at Phillipsburg. The first time was several years ago, but the caboose escaped with much less damage following that encounter.

In front of the damaged caboose is a Public Service Rwys. snow sweeper that had been burnt by criminals while it was in the Newark City Subway.

Folks,
It is not just cars that are targets; buildings also. I read about the loss of the Western Pacific Railroad hospital at Portola, California. It had been donated to the Western Pacific Railroad Museum; which planned to use it for an archives center. It cost the museum something like $40,000 to clean up the mess. I am pleased to hear that the young arsonist was caught and sent to jail for the action.

The Colorado Railroad Museum is a better home for the locomotive and cars. Although the D&RGW #280 passenger car was not burned; the painted graffiti on it was extremely disgusting.

Ted Miles, Member CRRM

The Portola Hospital fire not only cost the area an important bit of their history, the museum $40K in clean-up costs, but it also set the development plans of the museum back probably 10 years. Not only was the hospital scheduled to be an archives, it was to be the visitors' center, and the museums NEW entrance and parking area. It would have been a grand thing.