[quote="Erik Ledbetter ....But when the idea is a museum should save something, then in my opinion that's putting the question backwards. Too many railroad museums have already been built around the impulse "sombody oughta save X" -- and X1, and X2, and so on -- without ever figuring out what story they want to tell and who they are telling it to and what artifacts they need to tell it and how many artifacts they can maintain in perpetuity under their business model. Only after you know the answers to these can you worry about the fate of poor old X....[/quote]

Eric:

Your posts are always inciteful and thought-provoking. The thoughts I'm having at the moment can be summarized as: "Yes, but...."

Actully I think all, or almost all, railway museums have been built around the impulse to save railroad rolling stock. And its a good thing they did it without a viable business model, or probably 90% of the equipment collected today (I won't say preserved, since much of it is not) would have long since been scrapped and irretrievably lost. Sure, a lot of it will rot away untouched outdoors, but at least there is a chance a significant fraction will be truly preserved somehow, someday. The only option was to let it go to scrap immediately, reducing the odds of preservation to zero.

A few museums (CSRM, RRMPA. MOT) are in a sense second generation, but I woud guess in every case were established to save existing collections in duress. I suspect their formal business plans followed after that impluse to save.

Given the realities, I think its great that organizations collected on a wing and a prayer instead of a careful analysis to insure that they have the funds to maintain it in perpetuity. If they hadn't taken the chance a lot of wonderful equipment would be gone forever.

While the "wing and a prayer" days are over for many of the more established museums, I suspect they are still out there, and railway preservation will benefit in the long run.

Peter, I have to say that I agree with you 100%. Once it is gone, the only option is to build a replica, which generally takes a very big checkbook. If you save something now, even without a long term plan for its conservation or interpretation, you are at least keeeping those options open. It might eventually be scrapped, but at least you have bought time. In the long term, in many cases simple survival is best the route to historical significance. One of my other interests is classic sports cars. I have seen many a car that 20 years ago would have been considered only valuable for parts, become a show winner or first class "driver". Perhaps, rather than being polarized over what is the best method, we should recognize that one form of preservation is short term, and work towards eventually moving those artifacts into a long term preservation situation. I think that future generations will be richer if we go the extra mile beyond being "practical".

Western Maryland kept their 4-8-4s in storage until their equipment trusts ran out. I seem to remember other roads doing the same. I suspect it would have taken a special agreement between the lender and the railroad to allow the scrapping of any peice of equipment on which money was still owed. Without such an agreement or the PRR paying off the debt I suspect the T-1s would have been around until their trusts were paid in full. Of course they could have scrapped the engines without regard to the debt but I doubt the lender would have been very happy about that.

John Bohon

Okay, I know this is a newer C40-9W, but it DOES illustrate the kind of shenanigans that Eric Levin talks about when he declares something "junk". And this train is allegedly standing still! The railfans that insist that "C32-8's are the coolest; they look like Alcos!" either never see stuff like this or, at best, foam at the mouth at the opportunity to photograph it (ditto the eruptions of flames common out of some hard-accellerating GEs). They aren't the ones that have to contend with six towns sending citations to NS, the crew that simply gives up and shuts down and walks away from it demanding replacement, the main line and six late trains as a result of this foul-up, finding whatever the problem is on this loco and seeing if it's somehow under warranty, or dealing with the terminal that was counting on that 4000 hp in tonight's train lineup.

A former Conrail shop employee friend of mine who saw this said, "Wotthehell?!?!? What'd she do? Have an injector or two stick all the way open, or maybe somehow lube oil is being sucked into the cylinders?? The guys in the shop are going to have fun with this one. I wonder if GE was ever able to fix the problems they were having fifteen years ago with cracking of the blocks in the vicinity of the power-assemblies?"

PRR was a highly profitable road at the time, and might have been willing to absorb that debt, using scrap value as a portionof the payback. They were under pressure from Stuart Saunders to Dieselize and had loads of revenue as well as other steam locos to help surrender out of pocket costs. However, you are correct about the practice of maintaining line of dead locomotives until they were paid off.
Pennsy Power 1 has a picture of line of Q2's and T1's sitting dead and looking quite sad, waiting for the date of condemnation to roll around.

There is no doubt the railroad would be anxious to absorb the debt. The only value the T-1s represented to them at that time was by the pound. However, the lender would see them as collateral. The T-1s likely cost in excess of $200,000.00 to build. Should something happen and the railroad default on the debt the only way the lender would have to get any of its money back would be to take possession of the locomotives. The $5000.00 scrap value would not be much but it would be better than nothing and the lender could always look for someone to lease or buy the engines, unlikely as that would be. There are ways of restructuring the loan or possibly the railroad kept the engines until they were paid off. Perhaps that is why the T-1s and Q-2s were sitting in the line you mention.

As for the idea that scrapping steam engines helped pay for the new diesels I think that was better press than financial reality. It probably would have taken 30 or more scrapped steam engines to buy one diesel. In the case of modern steam that cost say $200,000.00 each and may have recently recieved $25,000.00 or so worth of repairs it really does not make a lot of financial sense to only get a $5000.00 return. That would be scrapping a $6,000,000.00 plus investment to buy a $150,000.00 investment. Obviously the scrap value of the steam engines was a small portion of the big picture.

John Bohon

Hold it right there. Put your hands up.

You are under arrest for practicing financial analysis without a license.

Point 1: it doesn't matter how many millions you spent yesterday. No, really, it doesn't matter. The only dollars that matter are the ones you haven't spent yet, and it's important that every dollar be spent so as to maximize return.

"It's not that old" and "it's freshly overhauled" are "sunk cost" fallacies. If a diesel costs less per mile to operate (and it does), then drop the fire today. End of discussion.

Point 2: labor. Labor in the roundhouses and the backshops to maintain three steam locomotives that can be replaced with one diesel. Labor in the Water Service Department, labor to fill and maintain coaling towers.

It made PERFECT sense to scrap steam locomotives to buy diesels. Not because the scrap price paid for the diesels, but because the freed-up cash flow from the labor savings did.

Steam locomotives are wonderful things, but they are fiscal train wrecks (no pun intended).

JAC

There are any number of first person recall references in print (Borntragers' NYC book among them) that mention the use of retired steam locomotives as partial payment for diesel locomotive purchases.
One might even surmise that one of the builders in question was NOT EMD-given parent GM's access to capital.

How could the residual value of any steam locomotive be more than scrap post WW-II ? As for the T-1's, it isn't hard to imagine that upper PRR management did their best to make them disaapear-quietly. Junk.

In the early diesel population, there were a number of instances where relatively new units were retired from service 'prematurely.' Southern's small fleet of Alco PA's and FM TrainMasters come to mind. NYC appears to have set their fleet of PA's aside by the early 60's. MoPac retired all their 244-engined Alco's in one fell swoop. The point ? The railroads apparently decided the EMD would be the standard-based upon almost twenty years of field experience. Striegel and firms did a nice business rendering these obsolete locomotives for RTO parts.

Yet another issue was the confiscatory tax policy on railroad property in certain states-with New York coming to mind. Not hard to understand the impetus to retire steam locomotives and eliminate the need for the West Albany Shops, along with numerous roundhoues, water towers, etc.

DPK

You nailed that one DPK. Exactly the reason all the EMD "show card" sales presentations from the 1930s through the early 1950s talk about all the structures the railroad will get to tear down as soon as they retire ALL their steam locomotives. This was also mentioned very prominently in their sales promotion films, starting as early as "Diesel's working on the Railroad" (1936).