Welp it's official the Wilmington and Western is for sale ...

https://www.facebook.com/share/1X5yN2TXNH/

"Slightly Used Railroad
$50
Listed 3 hours ago in Hockessin, DE
Details

Condition
Used - Fair

Slightly used railroad. Barely functional. Comes with two bathrooms and a museum that hasn’t been updated since 1983. Staff is 10-12 strong and are paid in alcohol and will make it clear their opinion is far more valued than yours."

I don't see how that sort of snark will get the railroad operating again, but it sure will burn all bridges between the current volunteers and management.

I think the crazier part is the line right below the above quote:

"However, an estimated yearlong timeline of repairs has Martin "fully confident" the railroad will be operational once again."

A full year? So instead of focusing on maybe a diesel and a couple of coaches, or repairs to the Paul Revere, and then running some trips or private charters with those, in order to at least try to earn some money - they're shutting things down for whole year? Where's the income going to come from here?

This appears to be a parody sale.

Click through seller.

A full year without INCOME? That will surely get the maintenance caught up. [/sarcasm]

Thoughts and prayers.

That is satirical. Bravo to whoever did that, I got quite the chuckle from it!

The plot thickens--or more bovine excrement hits an even bigger fan.

According to several reports on Facebook, including one by one of the affected individuals, the Historic Red Clay Valley/W&W Board of Directors undertook to dismiss all paid employees this morning, save for one general service mechanic. As in, call them in, meet them at the door, clear out your belongings, etc.

I'm out for a popcorn run. Anyone else that needs some you have my number.......

Kettle korn please

for the sake of openness and reference,you can research the directors at the organization website.
https://www.wwrr.com/about/hrcv/board.aspx

Perhaps a notification of their upcoming plans will be released on that same platform. Something must be in the works. Perhaps surprising, but not sinister?

I have no dog in this fight, but I’ll take the bait and play devil’s advocate. If the equipment was in deplorable condition and the paperwork and maintenance was being pencil whipped, why were volunteers willfully operating it? Seems like they should’ve been running from this place and not operating holiday trains, as YouTube would suggest.

I can all but guarantee you that not every person in operations on every operational museum/tourist railroad is as cognizant of the physical equipment, legalities, etc. of their operation as you may hope. We would certainly LIKE them to be, but............

Let me turn this about. Do YOU know the exact conditions of your automobile/truck's engine? How about its transmission, its CV joints, its alignment, etc.? No??? But you DRIVE the thing! How can you take your life in your hands every day without personally inspecting the bearings, the fuel lines, the tire pressure, the oil filter, etc.?

Most of us trust, to some degree, that if the guys whose mission it is to maintain these relics (paid or volunteer) SAY it's ready to run, you can take it out for the public. Most places I have worked with have some degree of hierarchy, with some person ultimately declaring a piece of equipment ready to go or off-limits. Even as a trained crew member, are you REALLY in a position to criticize the performance of that streetcar throttle or brake, or how much slack is in the couplers?

The other aspect to consider is that if everything in the screed above is as alleged (and I have confirmation of some of it from other sources I trust), the railroad has experience a VAST turnover (some might say "churn") of volunteers and operating staff. Places that go through a lot of staff in this fashion (and they're not the only one in rail preservation) end up with NO institutional memory and experience from which to draw, and are at grave danger from crews being bamboozled into unsafe operation or unfit equipment:

"Did this car always rock this much? Was this loco always so hard to start/stop???"
"Yeah, that's the way they were in days of old!"

This, of course, is hardly unique to rail preservation. Most of us have probably been in a store or dining establishment where the manager of the moment is a "battlefield promotion" totally unsuited for even customer service, let alone management. But we are in an era when even senior citizens barely even remember passenger railroading pre-Amtrak, let alone steam or streetcars. The learning curve is MUCH steeper even for admitted rail buffs.

I'm started to be reminded of the infamous Monty Python's Flying Circus "Dead Parrot Sketch," which students of Monty Python history will tell you was inspired by a real-life incident where John Cleese and Graham Chapman rented an absolute lemon of a car from a local garage (common British practice in the 1960s), and then listed off all the faults in the abominable British car (typical of the era) upon return, and were met with repeated denial and dismissal. They undertook to start exaggerating the faults to see how long it would take for the garage owner to accept responsibility:

"The passenger door literally FELL OFF the car at speed on the motorway!!"
'............... Well, they do that now and again, don't you know??"

Even nationalised British Leyland wasn't THAT bad.

Updates:

There was a protest, with about 15-20 people with signs, staged along Delaware Route 41 beside the W&W Greenbank Station this afternoon. I got a lousy cell phone photo as proof.

I've been informed that an organized group of W&W volunteers is acting to take the board of directors to court in Delaware as "stockholders" in the operation--something that supposedly is permitted under Delaware law. I'm not sure if they would be able to be able to depose the current BOD in a "shareholder takeover" or not.

Time for yet another popcorn run....................

UPDATE: News media coverage:

https://www.wdel.com/news/wilmington-we ... b6e7c.html

Plot deepens:

This morning, the following was posted on the official W&W Facebook page:

.....................
................ well, there WAS a post describing how they valued the railroad's volunteers and needed to make repairs to Trestle 9C (which I think is the "S" trestle approaching Yorklyn after the Barley Mill Road tangent) and the wheels and axles of 8408.


In the two hours since that was posted, with some negative comments posted, the entire official W&W Railroad Facebook page has apparently been deleted as I was going back to copy and paste the text. (I just checked by looking under another account they couldn't have blocked, and having others check as well).

There's a "Friends of" page hosting discussion of the current scenario, and a "public group" that has apparently only had twelve posts in the past fifteen years, three spammers............

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews ... n-western/
I am curious about the "Board of Directors" referenced here and elsewhere- who elects them? The BoD model has worked for other organizations, preventing (to extents) established cliques of "good ol' boys" from running the entity in their own interests. Is that not working here? If they were fairly elected, is this just sour grapes? (I honestly do not know, I am simply curious).