That is a lot of $$$

An interesting document, but is it likely to happen?
They seem to be budgeting for a number of replica locomotives there, and I note that two of the illustrated locos in the text have only just been painted up for display in Sacramento in the last few months!

Quoting from the PDF, "As the main stage lights up again, Samuel begins to explain the physics of compound locomotives interlaced with historical touch points while interacting with 3D holographic images of some of the key locomotives from the early days of the Santa Fe."

They seem to be saying that an actor is going to interact with 3D holograms that are visible to everyone in the audience. Is this possible with today's technology? MIT only just announced a 3D system that doesn't use glasses, and it's still experimental.

If the explanation of compounding is going to go much beyond, "the steam is used twice in two different cylinders", then avoiding eyes glazing over is also going to be challenging.

-Mark

It would be nice if they just offered a couple pages of text explaining what this is about. I have made an effort to inquire as to just the fate of the 2-10-4. I have talked to a couple people at the City, and attempted to contact others. I have also attempted several times (without success) to register on their website and view the RFP on the locomotive.

Judging from the limited information that I have obtained, I conclude that the locomotive is NOT for sale, but I have learned nothing about what the City is asking for in their RFP regarding the locomotive. In my opinion, based on what I have learned, I conclude that the article that was cited as indicating that the locomotive was for sale was incorrect on that point.

If I am interpreting this latest news here, AT&SF locomotive #5000 will be part of the Queens Crossing development.

There is absolutely no way that this Queen's crossing comes to fruition. They want a 2900, 3751, 3450, 3460, and 5011? Good luck prying those engines from extant organizations. I think this was just a pie-in-the-sky vision of the organization that worked on 5000, not anything sanctioned by the city.

It is an enormous dream, but think how much more mature this proposal is than what was typical 40 years ago. Forty years ago, guys would just start collecting stuff and parking it out in the weeds (Rail City, Steamtown, Edaville, a certain guy in the Pacific Northwest). These guys then looked for a business plan. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it did not.

This group is at least starting with the plan first and planning the hardware later, and they have some evidence of accomplishment in actually getting work done on #5000.

For those that wish to read it:


REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL
City of Amarillo Train Santa Fe 5000
P15-16

The City of Amarillo is soliciting a Request for Proposal from an individual or group of individuals that are experienced in the maintenance, preservation and History of a 1930’s steam locomotive.

Brief History of the Santa Fe 5000 “Madam Queen”

A star of the age of steam transportation the Pride of Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway and served most of the Panhandle area. Manufactured at the cost of $133,902.80 by world-famed Baldwin Locomotive Works, according to designs made by Santa Fe Engineers. Santa Fe 5000 is a 2-10-4 steam locomotive and went into service in December 1930 and one of the first engineers to steer it over the rails affectionately called it “Madame Queen”. The “Madame Queen” ran for more than 1,750,000 miles. Retired from service, November 1953, the “Queen” was given to the City of Amarillo in April 1957 and was placed on outdoor static display at the Santa Fe Station. In August 2005 Santa Fe 5000 “Madame Queen” was relocated to its current static display. Santa Fe 5000 is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Brief History of the City of Amarillo 

The City of Amarillo is located in Potter and Randall Counties in the High Plains of the Texas Panhandle, and is the county seat of Potter County. The City is located at the crossroads of Interstate Highway 40 and Interstate Highway 27. Amarillo is approximately 120 miles north of Lubbock, 360 miles northwest of Dallas-Fort Worth, 285 miles east of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and 265 miles west of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway has major rail yards in the City. Geographically, Amarillo is located within the High Plains portion of the Great Plains. The regional trade and service area consists of 55 counties and parts of five states. 

Amarillo has a diversified economy. The economy includes businesses and industries ranging from energy research and development to beef processing, agriculture, copper refining, wholesale distribution, fiberglass production, defense contracting, aviation maintenance, metal machining and finishing, and oil and gas production. The economy consists of all the manufacturing and service activities necessary for the functioning of the City and the region.

The City of Amarillo has a Mayor and four Council members all elected at large. The Council appoints the City Manager, who is the administrative head of the municipal government. The City’s approximately 2,200 full-time employees and 400 part-time/seasonal employees provide an array of services including police and fire protection, court, libraries, water and sewer service, solid waste collection & landfill operations, street construction and maintenance, and parks and recreational activities. For more information about the City of Amarillo, visit www.amarillo.gov.


Approximate Timeline

Issuance of RFP July 8, 2016
1st Advertisement July 11, 2016
2nd Advertisement July 18, 2016
Deadline for RFP Questions July 22, 2016 
Deadline for Responses to RFP Questions July 28, 2016
Proposal Due Date August 4, 2016
City Council Approval August 23, 2016


Attachments
Attachment A No Award to Debarred or Suspended Vendors
Attachment B Insurance 2.04
Attachment C Cities Excluded Parties List
Attachment D Respondent Info


DUE DATE AND DELIVERY LOCATION

PROPOSAL DUE DATE AND DELIVERY LOCATION
5 copies (1) Original signed paper response of your RFP and (4) copies of your response containing all items and information required by this RFP must be submitted in a sealed envelope or box clearly marked with: RFP P15-16 City of Amarillo Train Santa Fe 5000 on the outside of the envelope or box and must be received in the Purchasing Department at the following address no later than Thursday, August 4, 2016 at 4:00 p.m. Central Standard Time to be considered:

City of Amarillo
Purchasing Department, Room 307
509 S.E. 7th Avenue
Amarillo, Texas 79101


GENERAL CONDITIONS

OWNERSHIP OF WORK PRODUCT 
Respondent acknowledges and agrees that all work produced pursuant to this RFP is work made for hire and accordingly, all data and reports are owned exclusively by the City. A complete copy of same shall be provided to the City and any further use of these work products shall be only with the express written consent of the City.


LEGAL ADDRESSES
All notices, letters, and other communications to the respondent will be mailed, faxed, emailed or delivered to the respondent's business address, fax number or email address listed in your response. The respondent may change the address or contact information at any time by notice in writing to the City.

INDEMNIFICATION
Respondent shall indemnify and hold harmless City and its officers, employees, agents, successors, and assigns from and against all claims, demands, suits, judgments, damages of every kind and type (bodily injury, death, property loss or destruction), attorney fees, costs, and interest that arise out of or relate to acts or omissions of respondent or respondent’s officers, agents, employees, or subcontractors in the course of performing the contract.

PROPOSALS BECOME PUBLIC RECORDS
During the evaluation process, the City treats all responses with the highest level of confidentiality. However, once the evaluation process has been completed and a contract is awarded, the entire procurement becomes public information. Any proprietary information revealed in the proposal should therefore be clearly identified as such.

CONFIDENTIAL OR PROPRIETARY INFORMATION
If you consider any portion of your response to be confidential and/or proprietary and that disclosure of its contents to competitors would cause you substantial competitive harm, you must clearly identify those portionsof your response by putting the term CONFIDENTIAL OR PROPRIETARY in bold letters on the applicable page(s).The City will attempt to protect the identified portions from disclosure to the extent possible under the law. You will be given notice of any request for disclosure of the identified information and given the opportunity to support your claim of confidentiality before the Texas Attorney General.

QUESTIONS, CLARIFICATIONS and CORRESPONDENCE
All questions and requests for clarification must be submitted to the Purchasing Agent in writing and will be answered by the Purchasing Agent in writing. No questions will be accepted or answered verbally. Except as provided in this section, upon issuance of this RFP, respondents are specifically directed not to contact other City personnel to include any Engineers, Consultants, or Architects and anyone other than Purchasing Department personnel for answers to questions, clarifications, meeting, conferences, or technical discussions or anything else related to this RFP. Failure to strictly abide by this policy may result in the immediate disqualification of the respondent from this and other bidding opportunities. 

If the answers do not change the information published in the original documents, they will be sent as aclarification only. Clarifications do not require acknowledgement. If the answers do change the information published in the original documents, they will be sent an addendum. Addendums require a signed acknowledgement of receipt of the addendum be submitted with the response to the RFP.

It is the responsibility of the respondent to verify if any addendum(s) or clarification(s) have been issued and to make sure the respondent has received all copies. Contact the Purchasing Department at 806-378-3028 to verify this information. Respondents may also go to www.amarillo.gov and look under Departments, Purchasing, and then Bid Opportunities to check and see if an addendum has been issued. Addendums and clarifications will be faxed and emailed to the contact information we have on file. If an addendum(s) or clarification(s) is not able to be faxed due to size or for any other reason, then it may be mailed or registered respondents may be called and asked if they would like to pick up a copy from the Purchasing Department.
All questions must be submitted at least ten (10) days prior to the proposal due date. All questions will be answered at least seven (7) days prior to the proposal due date. If the questions cannot be fully answered by that time, the opening date of the bid will be extended by addendum to allow sufficient time for all questions to be answered and those answers to be provided to all registered respondents.

Submit your questions to:
Trent Davis, Purchasing Agent
City of Amarillo
P.O. Box 1971
Amarillo, TX 79105

If you wish to e-mail questions, send them to purchasing2@amarillo.gov
If you wish to fax your questions, the Fax number is (806) 378-9494.

ACCEPTANCE OR REJECTION OF PROPOSALS
The City reserves the right to accept or reject any or all responses or parts of responses, to waive any formalities and technicalities, and to accept the best evaluated response.

CANCELLATION
The RFP may be cancelled (in part or in its entirety) at any time with written notice by the City.

REIMBURSEMENTS
There is no express or implied obligation for the City to reimburse respondents for any expenses incurred in preparing responses to this Request for Proposals. The City will not reimburse respondents for these expenses, nor will the City pay any subsequent costs associated with the provision of any additional information or presentation, or to procure a contract for these services.

DISPUTES
In case of any doubt or difference of opinion as to the services and deliverables herein, the decisions of the City shall be final and binding on both parties. The laws of the State of Texas will govern interpretation and performance of the obligations imposed on the parties pursuant to this order. Further, the successful respondent agrees that the courts of the State of Texas shall have jurisdiction over the successful respondent with respect to any action brought by the City relating to the performance of the respondent’s obligation hereunder. Venue and jurisdiction of any suit, right or cause of action arising under or in connection with these specifications, shall lie exclusively in Potter County, Texas. 


REQUEST FOR NON-CONSIDERATION
Request for non-consideration or withdrawal of a response must be made in writing to the Purchasing Agent and received by the City prior to the time set for opening.

DEFAULT
In case of default by the successful responder, the City of Amarillo may procure the services from other sources.

CONDITIONS FOR PROPOSAL SUBMITTAL

All responses to this RFP become the property of the City. The City will not return responses or other information supplied to the City.

All respondents shall comply with all conditions, requirements, and specifications contained herein. Any departure will constitute sufficient cause for rejection of the response.

Responses to this RFP are to be signed by an officer of the company authorized to bind the company in a contract submitted and to its provisions submitted in the RFP. Failure to manually sign the response will disqualify the respondent. Responses are to contain a statement indicating the period during which the response will remain valid. A period of not less than ninety (90) days is required.

FAMILIARITY WITH SCOPE OF WORK
This RFP is based on the Scope of Work and information included in this document. Prior to submission of any response, each respondent should be thoroughly familiar with the scope, information, and the general terms and conditions in this package. The failure or omission of any respondent to examine any form, instrument or document shall in no way relieve any respondent from any obligation in respect to his/her response. No allowance will be made because of lack of knowledge of this document. It is the responsibility of each respondent to ascertain the completeness of the information contained herein and thoroughly address those concerns in their response to this RFP. 

SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE
This RFP will require specific performance on all criteria as stated in your response. All specifications are as written unless specifically taken exception to by you. Any exception accepted by the City will be strictly adhered to. Responders must submit written requests for exceptions to any specifications/conditions with their response. Exceptions made without submission of a written request may result in disqualification.

RFP SCOPE OF WORK

The City of Amarillo is soliciting a Request for Proposal from an individual or group of individuals that are experienced in the maintenance and preservation of a 1930’s steam locomotive.



Scope of work shall include, but not limited to the following: 

1. Use of the train to preserve its history.
2. Demonstrate how you are able to financially maintain and preserve the “Madame Queen”
3. Demonstrate how you are going to move the train from its current static display to a new home and a timeline for moving the train. 
4. Demonstrate how you plan to educate the public on the history of the “Madame Queen”
5. Include any additional information about your team and or group.
6. Description of plans to keep the “Madame Queen” safe and maintain in as good or better condition as its current state of cosmetic repair and general appearance.
7. Description of plans to repair and restore the “Madame Queen”
8. Purchase price of the Train to be paid to the City.

EVALUATION OF PROPOSALS

After the responses are opened on the established date and time, they will be reviewed for responsiveness. In order for a response to be considered responsive, it must conform to all the substantial material terms and conditions required in the RFP. A response that does not conform to all the substantial material terms and conditions in the RFP will be declared non-responsive and will not be further evaluated.
Responses will undergo an evaluation process conducted by senior members of the City. The respondent selected for award will be chosen on the basis of the best evaluated response to the City. The committee will evaluate the responses based upon the following evaluation criteria and scoring matrix:

EVALUATION CRITERIA

It appears to me that the City has revised their RFP by adding item #8 to the scope of work section. Item #8 asks the respondent to offer a price for the purchase of the locomotive. So I assume that the RFP requires the respondent to purchase the locomotive.

However, items #1-7 also require the chosen respondent to move the locomotive, provide a new home for it, maintain its condition, improve its condition, protect it, and educate the public about it.

It seems to me that this list of conditions on the purchaser, and the cost of fulfilling those conditions after the sale would suggest a very low purchase price, such as one dollar.

We're missing some information here. Did the 'Queens Crossings' plans make them think they could find something similar? Is this tailor made for the 'Queens Crossings' group to purchase it? Is it tailor made for someone else to purchase it? Is pot legal in the Amarillo city council meetings?

I find it hard to believe that this RFP came 'out of the blue' and am more inclined to believe that something else is up.

There has to be something missing. Most municipal RFQs come in two or three parts: 1) boiler plate; 2) technical specs; 3) plans (optional). Otherwise, that's the most vague municipal RFQ I've ever seen and I've had the "pleasure" of having to go through a lot of them. Reading that RFQ, I can't say for certain exactly what it is they're trying to accomplish. If that's all there is, I doubt they'll get any valid responses. At least it seems they want to keep it preserved and on display... somehow, somewhere.

I agree with Jayrod, that is the most obscure RFP I've ever read--it reads more like a fishing trip (or maybe even Phishing) to see what someone might propose. Most of the text is boiler plate, as usual! But then when it comes to what they want, Uh, vagueness triumphs!
Methinks something is afoot here.

It is a little like a fishing trip, as I understand it.

The City told me that they have had inquiries about purchasing the locomotive. So, I guess, to assimilate that general interest and learn about the market, they put out the RFP. That was an earlier version of the current RFP. Someone did offer a proposal on the first RFP, and the City declined the offer. So now they’re repeating the RFP process and looking for new offers.

At some point in this RFP process, there was nothing included in the scope of the proposal that indicated that the respondent would purchase the locomotive as well as provide all the other items of the scope. I don’t know why those details of ownership were not spelled out in the earlier version of the RFP.

I gather that the RAPS group had made some proposals to the City in the past regarding the purchase and/or the use of the locomotive. They have said they cannot respond to the RFP because it does not allow them to purchase the locomotive as part of the proposal. Otherwise, it seems to me that the strong interest of RAPS would make them a very likely party to assume the role spelled out in the RFP. And now that the City is offering the locomotive for sale, perhaps RAPS will consider moving forward with an RFP. It seems to offer exactly what they have been seeking.

Ummmmm, moderators?

Good on merging the threads, not good on making the NS auction portion disappear from the title......

Steve Goen wrote a letter to the city of Amarillo asking for clarifications on the issue of selling the 5000.

Here is his letter with the answers from the city in red. You can judge for yourself whether he got real answers from the city representative.

I am writing to learn more about the decision to sell the Madam Queen Steam Locomotive. In particular I am trying to find out the following:

1. Where did the idea of selling her first originate? The newspaper makes it sound as if someone just approached the City out of the blue with the idea and everyone just went along with it after that. This issue has been under consideration by City officials for more than a year.


2. When did this take place? Over a year ago.

3. If someone approached the city about purchasing it, who was it? A representative from the Railroad Artifact Preservation Society.

4. Did the city council vote to sell the locomotive at a council meeting and if so, which meeting did this take place at? No.

5. If the council did not formally vote to sell the locomotive, did they instruct someone with the city staff to list it as being for sale? Yes

6. The newspaper says that there was an initial bid that took place earlier, and that t! his bid was rejected for unspecified reasons. Who was this initial bidder? The RFP has been cancelled and that information is not subject to an open records request.


7. Does the City of Amarillo or anyone connected with the Downtown Amarillo group have any plans for the use and development of the property that the Madam Queen sits on? Not at this time.

8. Since the Madam Queen is clearly up for sale, would it be safe to assume that there are no other plans to incorporate it in any other historic display, etc. in the city? Yes

9. Has the City of Amarillo verified that there are no reversionary clauses with the Santa Fe (or BNSF) that states that if the city decides to get rid of the locomotive, that it reverts back to their ownership? Yes, There is no reversionary or other special status.



Thanks in advance,

Steve Allen Goen

To be clear, the Railroad Artifact Preservation Society is the group with the somewhat over the top 'Queens Crossing' museum plan

Are there any updates on this locomotive? Latest info I could find, 2 bids were being evaluated for this locomotive... That was back in early August...