Exactly. It’s not like people tried to discuss his poor practices in places like here, only to get shut down by friendly moderators. I understand randy hees ran interference for John and his antics here, even deleting whole topics that did not portray John in a positive light. Will there be an apology or a reckoning by those who aided and abetted him!

I assume RailMerch3 is Steve Lee’s new alias

Wrong again. Keep guessing.

In this litigation-crazed world, moderators have a thankless job. IIRC, the moderators here faced the threat of a lawsuit in the past. They do this with no compensation, on top of posters here who dislike what the moderators do.

There is much to be learned from this topic. Better to keep this as a learning experience.

Let's hope that the silver lining of this sad saga is that future restoration outfits will do a thorough job checking out prospective contractors to avoid any further K&T type stories.

As Kelly Anderson's post mentions Wasatch/Rimmasch was not the only one out there fond of " cutting corners". Let's hope they take his conviction and 30 months in the slammer as sufficient warning to cease and desist doing ANY WORK not up to code.

I also think it behooves the industry to alert the FRA if they have solid knowledge of substandard work being done. No one wants to be labeled a snitch or rat but with life itself at issue silence is not an option.

IMHO-Ross Rowland

So the egotist who actually tried to sue the BOD has to reply?

(That's the reason his posts are blocked on my feed...... )

Uhhhh… If you want to know why posts or topics get deleted, I suggest you read the guidelines as well as the Rant in the Announcements section. When the “discussion” goes off the rails that’s when it gets moderated. No favoritism involved. This ain’t Facebook or Twitter.

Does it really matter who RailMech3 is? I don’t know, don’t care much. If you want to know, just directly ask politely. Though with the barbs thrown, I wouldn’t be surprised if he/she refuses.

That said, let’s keep it civil here and learn from the discussion or this topic will get deleted, too.

I had completely forgotten about the K&T 14 issues, but I saw where they had to pay them somewhere around $720,000. I wonder if there’s any chance of that restoration restarting? Kentucky sorely lacks in operational steam from what it used to have. L&N 152 and C&O 2716 are both a few years out from running, with the R.J. Corman QJ 2008 even further out from having its overhaul, so a little 0-6-0 would be nice to have to fill the gap for now.

.

From what I have heard, and I admit I have never met the man and only know of him from what I've been told and have read, that many of the "negative outcomes" that came out of this entire saga were driven by his pugilistic responses to criticism.

It's part of a trend that I see so commonly on display in the rail enthusiast space: poor interpersonal skills.

It seems like time and time again rail organizations suffer because of "prickly" personalities who don't do a good job of "going with the flow".

If there is one takeaway from all this it should be to do your due diligence on your contractors.

If there's a second, it should be that you need to be easy to get along with. Don't turn every conversation into a conflict. Don't pick fights. Don't be an asshole. You'll be amazed how much easier it makes life.

And don't forget that the first place that C&O #2716 is going to operate at is the Railroad Museum of New England for a while. So, as I understand it, once the #2716 is up and running, it's headed off to New England.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that as well. Really we'll only have L&N 152 in that case until KY Steam overhauls the QJ (unless those plans have changed), so my fingers are crossed even tighter for that K&T #14. In reality, I'm surprised they haven't started taking donations or doing some type of fundraiser to attempt to get the rest of the money. Kentucky lacks overall financially as well in terms of donors and I believe that contributes a lot to the lack of running steam there.

From the facts at issue here there's no chance that the K&T folks are going to end up getting any funds towards the $ 700K + judgement they won against Rimmasch/Wasatch as the whole enterprise has imploded with zero net assets.

From my read of the publicly available numbers I don't see how the lawyers are going to get paid never mind the creditors like the K&T folks.

My guess is that the K&T folks may well have had enough and won't want another round of fund raising to fix the huge issues still needing fixing from the non compliant work done by Rimmasch/Wasatch.

Sad saga all around.

Ross Rowland

While his "problems" likely started well before getting involved with the K&T engine....
It was a job that I would not have gotten involved in.....
The whole thing is a literal can of worms....
As I recall, this engine has been worked on by several other groups....
Which means, you are stuck dealing with all the previous work...good or bad....
You're stuck dealing with owners that, likely had little experience, etc working on such,
Stuck dealing with the expectations they have for said work, etc....

He might still be free and in business had he stayed out of this job....

I forget my timeline of events here, but I know Wasatch had some involvement in the ATSF 3415 restoration years ago. I don't know how much work they did, but there are all kinds of rumors about it's condition and it's an accident waiting to happen. It was stated to pass its inspection this year though, so maybe that restoration happened before things went downhill for them.

You know, since those dark days to which you refer, I've gotten to know Ross quite a bit better than I did back then, and I want to say that I find his contributions to RyPN to be useful and insiteful. Ross has been kind to me over the last decade and gone the extra mile to answer questions. His input and suggestions have made steamlocomotive.info a better place than it would have been.