Dear Moderators.

What is the reasoning in moving a discussion about the development of early supper power somewhere but not a thread about suing Amtrak. To me the thread on early superpower leads more to an understanding of what one may try to preserve where the AMTK thread is frustration being expressed over current events and the ability to chase trains.
Just Curious
Robby Peartree

I'm not a moderator, but:

Discussing the merits of attempting to change/stop proposed Amtrak policy changes that would dramatically impact the viability of the private varnish "industry," the public's ability to ride excursions,, etc. directly involves current and future rail preservation, no matter how misguided the specific proposal in question.

Discussing the development of early "super power"? Not so much.

Removed.

Preservation is not and industry it is an undertaking. AMTK is a form of a business as are many tourist railroads.

Understanding historical developments of our past is important to understanding how and why things evolved. 100 year old Private cars with 480 electrical, roller bearings, modern tightlock couplers, etc. etc. etc. leaves what to be preserved? Because we can put our butt in a seat on a train does not mean that its preservation. Because the technical is not understood does not make its impact any less important.
The attempt to understand today, what they understood in the past at the time of the design, how they applied their knowledge, and what lessons were learned to improve the next attempt at their goals is a difficult process only taken on by a few. Riding behind an Amtrak train may be fun and entertaining and does not take much thought.
Today, some on this board take pride of sending a regional AMTK out of its territory to be preserved in an area that did not run anywhere near where it is presently preserved. Have we not learned anything about preservations past?

Robby Peartree

Robby - I'm the first to pound the idea of context mattering, but in reality it is dependent on what you want to interpret. An AMTRAK museum, an American Passenger Train museum, a rail technology museum - hell, a Nixon presidency museum - could all make good and valid interpretive use of AMTRAK artifacts, regardless of their physical location. Mission then becomes the basis for contextual relevancy.

As I am still learning the ropes of this new "job", I find that a lot of this comes down to making judgement calls. While a discussion of the design differences of super power locomotives is certainly worthy, I did not feel that it fell under the realm of preservation. Preservation deals with those extant superpower locomotives; finding uses for them, providing shelter or exhibiting them and less about why designers made certain design decisions.

The Amtrak thread is preservation related as it deals with the ability or inability to operate historic passenger cars on the general passenger rail system as well as operating trains made up of historic equipment over the general system. One way of preserving this equipment is to operate it in it's native environment over mainline trackage.

As RYPN is a community and not a dictatorship, if something happens that you think we did wrong or there is something that should be brought to our attention, click on the red exclamation point at the bottom of every post and let us know. I know I read those reports as soon as I notice them.

So let me get this straight. Discussing the technology revolution that lead to the rebuild of Santa Fe 3751 into a high speed 4-8-4 is not worthy of the Railway Preservation News Interchange because we do not need to discuss the changes that occurred to such a locomotive because of technological development. What is important is we get to ride behind it in a car with maybe 10% of its original mechanical systems left due to the modernization it had to go thru to meet AMTK specs. This gets back to what is "preservation"! So what are we promoting and do we understand why other "preservation professionals" have heart burn over how we treat our "artifacts".

Or am I missing something?

Robby Peartree

Just Rick's entire point, that's all.

“Interchange Guidelines

Mission Statement

Focus: The INTERCHANGE is a moderated discussion board for exchanging relevant, fact-based, information about railroad history,…”

Rick,

While the forum includes the mission that you mention above, I do not understand it be limited to that subject matter. The Mission Statement that I cited above seems to confirm my understanding.

I have always understood the forum to include the preservation of railroad history as well as physical artifacts. Even the construction of a new locomotive might fit into the purview of the forum if the project followed, and thus preserved past practices of specific locomotives or even just the principles of steam motive power.

Certainly there has been a lot of discussion about historical engineering and design practices, and some of this has been based only on historical research and photos with no extant examples. Just historical research alone preserves railroad history.

I'm willing to wager that said mission statement was composed about four generations of "owners"/administrators/moderators ago.......

Now that Rick explained his thinking and Mr. Travis posted that excerpt from the Mission Statement, my understanding is that Rick's position is that the the key phrase is, "relevant, fact-based, information about railroad history,…”. While the thread was certainly a fact-based discussion of railroad history, Rick's position appears to be that the discussion was not relevant to a current preservation effort and so that is why he moved it. So the guidelines are not out of date, but they are subject to interpretation, as any good set of guidelines should be.

Well if discussion has to be relevant to a current preservation effort, then that precludes both the guideline I cited and everything I said about preserving railroad history independent of restoring any particular physical artifact. So which way is it?

If the published guidelines have become obsolete, what exactly are the guidelines?

Some interpretation is fine, but the guidelines also do say some specific things that require no interpretation.

Since the early super power thread has had zero replies with over 400 views, vs. 36 replies on the Amtrak thread makes it look to me like there isn't too much interest in the number of stacks that long scrapped engines had.

Kelly
Since when has true preservation been based on popularity and not on historical fact. Maybe that shows how few have actually looked at the development of locomotive technology.
Robby Peartree

Why not pen a response to the original superpower question, make it interesting and engaging and create a conversation regarding that topic? We have invested more time and effort discussing the location of the thread itself than discussing the content of the thread.

I believe the original guidelines for the Interchange were created before the decision was made to separate the preservation threads and the general railfan discussion threads into two forums. Yes some of that could use updating. I am sure that will happen as time goes on.