Chances are that a home couldn't be found for them, like with the two Sierra S-12s a few years ago.

Disgusting!

Now you know how I felt many years ago watching Frisco steam being cut up.
Disgusting!

Because nobody wanted them more than the scrappers enough to actually create a workable plan for recycling them as intact locomotives instead. You want to be disgusted, start with ourselves.

dave

Donations to non-profit preservation groups have pretty much evaporated in the current economic climate. The fund raising effort by Tri-State Chapter NRHS and the Anthracite Railroads Historical Society (ARHS) to get their F-units extensively cleaned up, preserved, and repainted was a major achievement considering how difficult it is to get financial support for any preservation project nowadays.

Get used to seeing equipment being scrapped. There will be much more to come, unless somebody discovers a much more effective way to raise money for preservation projects.

PC

That seems about right. If someone could have saved them, then why didn't they???

With diesel over $4 a gallon I wonder if they lost money picking them apart with those two monster machines.

Gas (oil) isn't the only commodity that's up in price - steel and copper are up as well. Considering a heavyweight baggage car is worth about $15-18K net, I'm sure they did fine with these.

I noted the road name on the locomotive that was the immediate victim and, based on what I could gather, the locomotives appeared to be previously used on the "Big Easy Steam Train" operation that used the SP 1744 (now at Ed Ellis' SL&RG). The current owners also own the Idaho Northern and Pacific Railway (INPR) which operates the "Thunder Mountain Line" tourist trains that looks to be a relatively nice operation, so I am curious about the scrapping of what appears to be perfectly good cores for F-units, though there are probably more issues here than we can know without knowledge of someone close the situation. Perhaps there were structural issues, or the two big western roads would not move non-alignment controlled coupler locos (the rear couplers might be, but what about the front ones?). Their innards could have been used to refurbish others and breath new life into them. So, hopefully someone who knows could at least pass along the whole story.

For once, Al Phillips has porn worthy of his diesel scrapping fantasies...

Best,
Mike

Below is a comment, a response to an editorial in California in regard to that state's proposed high-speed rail system, that could have ties into what we are seeing:

Lelliot4 at 8:30 AM May 17, 2011

"At the heart of the controversy is money. There is far more money to be made to have a million people riding in a lot of $20,000 automobiles than to have a million people riding in a few million dollar trains. The conservative arguement is to do nothing and let the market sort it out. As students of California history know, California in the 1920's had the most extensive interurban rail system in the world. The market decided cars were better and by the early fifties the rail system had pretty much disappeared.

"The market decides things based on the profit motive. Quality of life and regard for the environment are issues the market doen't normally concern itself with. So Southern California with its matrix of jammed multi laned freeways, its iffy air quality, its expensive hours long commutes are what you get when you let the market decide.
Had southern California elected to expand the existing light rail system of the 20's with the same enthusiasum they later devoted to the freeway system, Los Angeles would now be a jewel of a city.

"So many of the problems the country now faces are the result of putting the making of money ahead of all else. So southern California like the rest of the country has to decide, do we want to continue putting money ahead of quality of life or would we like to try another option."

This is one of the difficult things about market solutions; sometimes we lose when we deserve to win, or alternately, the market doesn't always price things correctly, particularly if they are irreplaceable. Both the market and politicians (and most people) tend to be excessively shortsighted, in this case focusing on the money made today on copper and steel, and not on preserving what looks to have been a well-maintained EMD F unit.

Some readers here will think I'm talking radical nonsense, but before they shoot off something, I would ask that they look in the mirror, and ask themselves, "Why am I in railway preservation in any form?" It's not like any of us would make a fortune in this field (we are lucky to make anything at all), so obviously we consider some things in this world to be more important than money.

This failure to consider things properly is not new. I seem to recall Ron Ziel once wrote about an attempt to save Central of New Jersey's No. 774, a Camelback 4-6-0 that had been among the last of these engines to run in regular service, and was becoming a bit of a celebrity by pulling a number of "Farewell to Steam" excursions. If I remember this correctly, Ziel was trying to raise money, or have the engine donated, but the management said it could not afford to do so, largely because the CNJ was in receivership at the time. Ziel tried to argue that the engine was worth preserving anyway; if they scrapped it, the money would just disappear, and there would be no locomotive either.

We know what eventually happened to the CNJ.

I'm afraid I don't have much of a solution. As "Lelliot" noted above, this is a problem we will have as long as we have people.

There is a reason there is a line in the good book that states "The love of money is the root of all evil."

(And yes, note that many have misquoted this as, "Money is the root of all evil." Those first three words change the meaning a bit, and put the blame on us where it belongs, not on what is another tool for us to use--or abuse.)

Further thoughts--these units could have been something to consider for the Greenbrier Express, and indeed for other trains. How did these actually get away?

Looks like these are IN&P F10's 1108 and 1112, ex-MBTA commuter locos, nee GM&O. Really a shame since they started life as GM&O F3's and have been extensively rebuilt at least once. Still I would imagine that MBTA ran the wheels off them before retiring them.

Are you sure they aren't these? (from the F unit survivor list)

NOGC FP10 New Orleans & Belle Chasse, LA Active 3589 12/46
1105 (F3A) Gulf Coast ex MBTA 1105, nee GM&O 801B
remanufactured ICG, date unknown

NOGC FP10 New Orleans & Belle Chasse, LA 3592 12/46
1106 (F3A) Gulf Coast ex MBTA 1106, nee GM&O 803A
remanufactured ICG, date unknown

Much great equipment has been lost during the preservation era. There is a lot of great stuff in danger and there is newer stuff getting old and coming off-line that people want to preserve. There is just not enough money and manpower to go around. I am going to guess that there is not one organization out there with more money and manpower than equipment and dreams. We have to do the best we can, learn, and organize. When Cuba opens up how poised is anyone to purchase some fantastic American built equipment there? How organized is any organization to purchase or even move and restore the next old locomotive, crane, caboose, or passenger car that becomes available?

Perhaps is was this one?

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 22&nseq=10