The Lackawanna did indeed have both freight and passenger F3s.

Joshua

A paint job is NOTHING! It's easily reversable and has its own built in limited life span. There's no ethical issue in replicating something provided no claim is made of originality.

Beautifully, professionally restored, blue carded, running and operable F units, Vs. 100+ year old junk, with little to no hope. Yeah, big difference.

My point is about authenticity, not beauty.

Noted. But if I walk up and touch them I am not touching something that my grandfather saw when he was growing up along the Lackawanna, or that went over the New Jersey cutoff, etc.

The Lackawanna Fs have never been passed off as authentic Lackawanna engines. As a big fan of the DL&W, I am incredibly appreciative to both groups' effort to make the appearance of what once was possible today, and this is coming from someone who was born three years after Conrail was formed. From what I understand, this group has also set a very good example of an outside organization working with STEA and the NPS as a whole. I doubt this would have world if they had been restored as authentic BAR. The groups have also been helping with other pieces at STEA.

Authentic Lackawanna can be found in other STEA pieces and on the D-L. Can not wait to see the Fs with the EMC switcher and the GP7.

Regards,

Joshua

The party that had enough cause to preserve and restore the F3s in question did so to replicate "coal region" locos. If not for them, these locos probably wouldn't exist now.

This is all part of the great balancing act of compromise that rail preservation has largely been forced to deal with for years.

We have an East Broad Top. It's shut down now, and parts of it are still in a struggle with nature. But it COULD have all disappeared in 1960.

The Tweetsie survives as a theme park/tourist trap. We could have just lost it all.

We have highly bureaucratic state railroad museums in Sacramento, Spencer, and Strasburg. They all could have had "better" locations. Or, we could have watched the Penn Central scrap all those steam locomotives, watched the SR bulldoze the Spencer Shops, etc.

Cartoonist Dick Hafer did a cartoon compilation of model railroading cartoons for Kalmbach titled Sometimes You Gotta Compromise. Its cover cartoon featured a bearded, hickory-striped-cap-wearing model railroader (male, naturally) in the middle of his basement layout, gripping the corded controller and rolling his eyes upward as his wife lounged in the hot tub right in the middle of the whole shebang.

In other observations, I would like to point out that, quite honestly, there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that ANY museum, organization, or historical group can POSSIBLY hope to publicly advertise the availability of assets to be deaccessioned AND be assured that it reaches EVERY potential preservationist. There is not, and never has been, one common resource where every group or outfit is bound to see it.

Not Trains Magazine. Not Sterling Rail. Not the ATTRM newsletter. Not the NRHS. Not Railway Age. Not Facebook. Not legal ads in the newspapers. Not the R&LHS.Not eBay. Not Amazon. Not RyPN. Not Craigslist. Not railwaypreservation.com. Not Preservation Directory. Not railroad.net. Not [insertyourowndamnonlineresource].com. Not Twitter.

My long-running joke with my preferred beer sellers is that they can offer 2,783 different beers, and people will inevitably come in asking for beers 2,849, 2,978, and 3,084. There's nothing you can do about that.

Similarly, there's only so much we can expect even the most astute curators and museum directors to do with regards to "finding new homes," and sometimes the "educated," "correct" thing to do is NOT to give someone else what will ultimately be an albatross. I know of derelict cars that were acquired specifically to provide spares for other projects, and the same day/hour the first backhoe bite happened, people came out of the woodwork screaming "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" In that specific case, they were able to point down the track and say "You want one? Buy that one, in much better shape, for $500, and we'll park it where your trucker can get at it! And if you need us to leave on the parts we need, then that's another $10,000!" That tended to shut them up REALLY fast.

If you want to save something badly enough, the only thing to do is approach the current owner with either a coherent plan and the wherewithal to make it happen, or cold hard cash. The George's Creek Railway, colloquially/jokingly known as the "locomotive collecting wing of the Western Md. Railway Historical Society," has successfully tracked down and "repatriated" several former WM diesel locomotives for private use. Agents of the Walkersville Southern, similarly, tracked down and rescued two ex-PRR 44-tonners, which just happened to be a model used by the PRR on the line the WS now calls home. And I'm quietly, discretely stalking a few pieces for others. (Anyone that wants to buy a nice railroad station on the Delmarva Peninsula, get a hold of me.)

One other thing: Parties that do responsible preservation tend to be loath to "pursue" parts on cars that are still intact, even if only by the termites holding hands, lest they appear vulture-ish. Now that it is utterly confirmed that there is no great saviour riding in on his white stallion to save the day, heck, yeah, they're going to ask for the trucks or whatever else.

A while back, I managed to "rescue" a pair of hard-to-replace trucks for a project far away from me. I negotiated as the middleman literally while the car was being cut up, and managed to get two six-wheel trucks sent several states away. My client paid well into five figures, dollar-wise, for the trucks. If he had been in a position to know, he would have done better to buy the car and re-sell it to another scrapper with orders to send him the trucks.

I think from reading the responses here, that we can surmise.

1. It's a travesty that Steamtown would scrap anything
2. These pieces were available for a time before scrapping
3. Its horrible to allow rolling stock from other railroads to be represented as any other besides the original railroad.
4. Some items only exist because they are "close" in form to other represented objects.

Please stop griping because your ideas of preservation do not match up 100% with others. The goal of preservation is of course to keep everything that can be kept, and have it as original as possible, but there's a good and bad to that.

Just because it survived to now, doesn't mean it has to survive, or can survive past now. It's the conundrum of whether it is better to restore something that may already be too far gone, as compared to using it to upkeep existing pieces in better condition. The sad truth, as always is not everything can be saved. You have to pick and choose your battles, or in this case, what and what can't be saved.

Likewise, If it works for a mission of a museum/group, why complain if its used? It's better than being gone. So what if a certain pair of F3's never belonged to the CNJ/DL&W? So what if that caboose never belonged to this railroad or that? It may not be correct, but at least they are still around not awaiting a cruel fate of scrap.

I've been on this board long enough to see arguments over what qualifies as preservation; which only delineate themselves with small differences such as being under cover or outside, belonging to a 501(c) or individual(s), etc. People who see another Dick Jensen in every private owner, or see every small museum/group as a failure in the making for not comparing to the State-run museums elsewhere.

I think its long past time we start arguing over what preservation is, and instead focus on what it needs to thrive. If the scrapping of equipment concerns you, be angry! You can feel over the loss of a material object. At the same time, we need to find ways to keep what we currently have out there, and make it last into the future.

Just my two cents based on my experiences.

If the scrapping of equipment concerns you, less talk and more acquisition - get money and make it happen yourself. If you must talk, talk about getting the money with others who might contribute.

So we don't have an "official" marketplace for threatened equipment? Fine - let's create one. This site has a classifieds section, ATRRM has a parts section that does pretty much nothing. Sandy's list might be a good place to start sending multiple notices out.

I've targeted and inquired about many pieces for different entities - gotten about as many (mostly polite) refusals as invitations to talk seriously. Don't start a conversation unless you are equipped to carry out any potential agreement - that's bitten me a few times.

I'd like to put the idea of some sort of stigma attached to both adaptive reuse or replication of lost items to rest - Very responsible and professional people do both as necessary for good reasons with no intentional misleading involved. With diesels especially - a '57 Chevy is a '57 Chevy after all, and whether it is painted green or black doesn't alter its reality as a '57 Chevy. No magical significance accrues based on which miles of rust it commonly traversed during the course of its career.

Honestly, until we deal with these romantic delusions among ourselves it's difficult to get taken seriously and gain the respect and support of institutional supporters.

But, with respect, we can also extend the analogy to ask "if, then, a '53 Cadillac is a '53 Cadillac, I can just take one, paint it blue, and open up an Elvis motel."

There are other Narratives in the classic-car restoration industry that I've never quite understood, either, one of them being the "right" in an otherwise 100-point concours restoration to paint the thing in any color combination the client wants. (And there are some pretty awful ones out there!) To me, part of the historic integrity of an automobile, even one that was originally built as a chassis to receive bespoke bodywork, is to put it back to some configuration it 'had in life'. But evidently the great majority of people who do classic cars for a living disagree with that.

Meanwhile, I guess I know how PMC feels about Doyle's PA. And I can't really say I disagree with him -- from a standpoint of moral preservation. But only slightly extending the argument: if we were to 'restore' a Lackawanna F3 (postulating that one had survived) with Imron paint for durability, or use cable or transformers with modern materials or modern lubricants to improve running reliability, have we not compromised PMC's version of historicity just as much?


Meanwhile, I keep returning to one question here, which is 'how much notice is functionally given before deaccession or scrapping commences'. The idea of reviving the ATRRM 'classifieds' to be a clearinghouse for the sort of thing Steamtown had jumped out at me as a comparatively simple thing, run and monitored by a comparatively neutral entity, that could be used to provide one-stop notice to any preservation group from any other. At the very least this would eliminate any knothead question about 'nobody said they wanted it' or 'it couldn't possibly be advertised to everybody'.

With respect, Sandy, some of your points are not really valid in this context. I am still a bit confused when Bruce Mowbray says -- NOT that I am questioning or second-guessing him -- "I'd like to have those seats, but I couldn't get in the end door -- just not safe" but then doesn't bother to get the seats or hardware out after the grab pulls the whole top off the car.

(I will only peripherally note that there are well-established 'kinder, gentler' ways to scrap wooden structures on the architecture side of historic preservation, and some of those structures make the ones scrapped at Steamtown look robust by comparison.)

Guys, the only way something gets preserved is if one or more of us with an intense interest steps forward and with a plan and the funding to either 1) restore it gratis for the current owner; or 2) purchase it and assume responsibility for the artifacts preservation as much as can be promised!

We've seen some horror show wooden cars wither restored or reverse engineered into viable copies/replicas on this board. Sometimes that is the only way it happens. Someone ponied up.

If you're unhappy with the manner in which Steamtown restores equipment, start writing Congress today, and don't stop until every Congress man and Senator are ankle deep in letter. In my personal opinion, Steamtown has great capability, but needs about 50 more skilled shop people to undertake tear downs and restorations. It is always easier to complain and crank, than to take action and get your sorry butt out of a chair and do something useful!

Well said Rich!

That's very true -- but not at all germane to this particular subject. The issue under discussion is that the scrapping took place WITHOUT giving someone 'with an intense interest' sufficient warning or time to step forward with any kind of plan. That's not an excuse for a blame-Steamtown fiesta, just a note that, once again, the word doesn't seem to have gotten out before the wreckers got a-chewin'.

It's a different story when the items are deaccessioned and announced, and after all sorts of tries they might be saved only at the last minute (I think the Lion Gardiner is in this category) or find themselves being scrapped (a couple of FL9s come to mind). That's an appropriate circumstance to bemoan or bewail the absence of doers and poniers-up to actually achieve preservation (or at least continued existence) of the artifacts concerned. The argument here is that the scrapping seems to have come as a surprise to waaaay too many people who might have been in a position to take action if they had known.

I like the hot tub inside the model railroad layout. That is a great idea. Does anyone make a waterproof throttle?

In my work with the the US Army, I have to watch something called FedBizOps (FBO for short)like a hawk as this is where nearly all DoD contract opportunities are announced.

A quick look at the National Park Service home page, and a page on doing business with the NPS, shows that they also use the FBO. I gave the FBO a quick search using "steamtown" and came up with 9 contract opportunities, one of which had been awarded for boiler work on the B&M 3713.

With this in mind, any demolition work had to go through an extension acquisition process to include an announcement via the FBO. By the looks of it this is the announcement and the details:

https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode ... e&_cview=0

Other opportunities include:

https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=agency&mode ... 4f8fd57a41

And another list:

https://www.fbo.gov/?s=agency&mode=form ... rchresults

So, based on tonight's search we have hints on some boiler work, roundhouse work, purchasing of injectors (I wonder who could bid on that??), track work, and passenger coach restoration.

in short, I'd suggest people keep a close eye on the FBO if you want to know what is going on at Steamtown. Its very easy to use and if you like automatic updates can be provided.

J.R.