I'll start with a disclaimer, none of the equipment about to be mentioned is "lost", I simply didn't have a better way to describe it.

Perusing Daves Railpix, http://www.davesrailpix.com/, I am struck by how many truly important and classic pieces of interurban railroad history are sitting in various museum sites around the country without the money or support to "bring them back to life", or even to properly stabilize them for future restoration efforts. Look at his Traction Preservation page, with many photos by Frank Hicks who has taken the task to not only identify who has what, but also in what condition.

Without intending to single out any one organization, the Noblesville group in particular has several important cars in less than favorable conditions.
Amongst the notables :
IRR 186, a Peter Witt streetcar, the only remaining Indiana streetcar
UT 437, a classic Union Traction combine
Indianapolis & Cincinnati combine 606
1902 Jewett, THI&E #81
Even the burned out remains of the classic North Shore line car 606, now CTA S-606.

Other classics off the top of my head include the CD&M Redbird combine, the other Electroliner/Libertyliner, the CA&E 450's (although those at least are under cover and potentially about to receive imminent attention), & the Toldeo & Eastern Box Motor #40, in Ohio.

What we have here are several examples of where a solid case can/should be made for deaccessioning, to allow equipment to pass into the hands of a group or groups with more resources. The 1902 THI&E Jewett sums it all up perfectly, this car has managed to hang on for well over a hundred years, what's the point if the outside elements and a lack of time, money, etc, allow it to go the way of it's brethern equipment ?
At that point, a case can be made that whatever initial investments in getting a car, transport, storage, etc,, has been wasted, more resources
taken from a bucket which already has a big enough hole in it to start with !

Again, this isn't meant to point fingers at anyone, but to open up a discussion about what (if anything) can be done.

Let fly gentlemen and ladies......

If one considers suburban cars, WRM has Indiana Railroad 202 (later Portland Traction 4001). However, I think the restoration plan will be to restore it as Portland Traction 4001.

As I've opined before, the ruling factor is creating a new home for the artifact that is considerably better than the old one; i.e. better storage, a restoration plan and funding. If you can create that for a piece, you are likely to be able to talk a museum out of a piece which is otherwise derelict.

But of course, that is the rare commodity in this business.

For a streetcar—or for that matter, any piece of railroad rolling stock—to come back to life requires project management. Someone within the museum organization must devote all his/her time to safeguarding and restoring the "rescued" equipment. The process when done during weekends and vacation time can take years–or decades as Bob Kutella, Sand Springs savior, from IRM can attest. If one is lucky enough to win a lottery, then the restoration time span can shorten.

Either part-time or full-time, project management at a rail museum is indeed a major endeavor. It consists of five integrated jobs.
1. Cost estimating and budget monitoring
2. Grant writing and fund raising. This includes follow-up with those donors who said "maybe" when responding to an appeal.
3. Researching the item to assure historical accuracy on planned restoration including paint schemes.
4. Doing the work and/or supervising volunteers (members and non-members). Also, it is highly likely that the project manager will work closely with specialized vendors such as freight forwarders(necessary for importing spare parts from overseas), machine shops, electrical shops, lumber yards, foundries, and glazers.
5. Reporting regularly on progress to museum leadership

It is sad that historically significant railroad equipment can languish on museum property, wilting away; but the demands of project management are daunting for most volunteers who can only give spare time and not a career to their beloved rail preservation cause. Hopefully, the pool of government and private grant money will increase to allow the pace of restoration to increase through hiring or contracting skill labor to do the work.

Sloan

This raisies some serious questions. No doubt these classics should be preserved, but where can they go? Many existing museums have more cars in their collections today than they ever can protect for the future. Many museums need to reduce their collections now if they hope to protect the rest of their cars for the future. A car that is rotting on a track out back is NOT really preserved. Eventually it will deteriorate beyond restoration. Keeping it covered with a tarp and keeping the weeds trimmed uses labor and money that would better be spent on core collection cars.

De-accessioning cars in a museum is very difficult and time consuming. Almost invariably a car chosen to go has a few very vocal members who want to preserve "their" favorite car. In some cases these are members who donated money to acquire that car.

Starting new museums also is unlikely. New museums steal support and money from existing museums. Both are in short supply as it is. Ideas anyone?

fk

More support and money so there's plenty to go around?

But seriously, folks, I think we need to start working on getting the public sector involved NOW - what with the rise of gasoline prices aiming towards the stratosphere, public transit is gaining more support among citizens. Charlotte got light rail off the drawing board by saving one lousy original streetcar - and now almost everybody in town wishes the process of building more lines could be streamlined and expedited (especially given the much greater than an ticipated success of the first line), which it can, of course - provided the federal government takes the lead on ramrodding transit dollars through the process, and eliminates the bureaucratic obstacles to rapid construction.

Point being, a history lesson about how we built cities before automobiles can help us plan for a future without them too. A nice, friendly nostalgic trolleycar or interurban car is a fine teacher.

dave

Frankly, what is lost is gone forever. It should be more about saving what remains as best any museum can. Some museums are doing very well, attracting both volunteers, visitors, and the important cash flow, and others, perhaps not quite so well. There a great number of classic old streetcars and interurbans cars preserved in museums that need great gobs of funding in order to preserve them before they fade away. More importantly are the facilities to house these great relics of the past. The Western Railway Museum (as an example, if i may) has built a great barn (and at great expense) and recently move cars into it. And this great barn is a help, but the need is also great to re-new another barn that is very old. This not new to them alone, many (most all) museums have older building that need to be updated or replace the existing facilities with vapor barriers, fans, humidity controls.... in order to make the cars they now have last into the next century.

It would be interesting to be here in a hundred years (or maybe not) and see what has transpired and what remains of these once great cars.

So, I encourage all to help your local (or not so local) museums with these tasks. (and get on with it).


Karl J.

I am afraid there is no good answer to this problem. Unfortunately, there are some museum groups that will eventually fail. Equally unfortunately, it is unlikely that these groups will be able to recognize that they have no future and dispose of their collections to organizations that can provide a better home before the collection turns into unrestorable junk.

Similarly, it is hard for a museum group to accept the fact that their collection is larger than they can support, and that downsizing is the only way that even a part of the collection will survive.

The establishment of the Electric City Trolley Museum in Scranton is a very informative example. A new museum organization established by a local government acquired the "homeless" collections of two museum groups. The new museum, not having the emotional attachments to each car of the predecessor groups, has downsized the collection by almost 1/3 in the process of aquisition, and I suspect there will be additional dispositions.

Excuse me, but exactly what Electro/Liberty Liner are you referring to?

As far as I know, only two exist: the one at IRM restored to CNS&M colors and the one at Rockhill saved as a Red Arrow Liberty Liner. Yes, I've heard allegations that Rockhill would be receptive to an offer for someone trustworthy to take her off their hands; yes, I've heard that any time either car takes to the rails, all the lights within a mile dim appreciably. Sure, one could make the case that the Liberty Liner is "wasted" at Rockhill, but the automatic default response has to be "propose a viable alternative." I'm not going to get either one on, say, the Chicago Loop or the Norristown High Speed Line anytime soon, and I've seen no indication that Rockhill or IRM is mistreating/neglecting either car.......

So.......... come again?

Thanks for the kind words, Sloan. You are correct about project management skills and duties. Add to that the people management skills to attract and recognize the efforts of a volunteer workforce.

I have also done over a dozen freight cars in addition to the Sand SPrings car, and being simpler, something like a tank car might only take 3 years each. But I am coming to the conclusion that the initial investment in money should not go to paint or new wood, but to provide some form of shelter for the piece. This will arrest over 90% of continued deterioration and also preserve completed work for decades. It is not a glamouous prospect and difficult to raise money for that, but it is very disheartening to compare photos of a newly restored car only to look at it again 10 years or more down the road.

In extreme, the CD&M redbird is an example.

Bob Kutella

I find it fanciful that the examples cited here, as well as other victims of preservation elsewhere are almost always referred to as "cars". It is as if they had trucks, seats, etc. intact. If someone found only the boiler of an NYC Hudson would we refer to it as a "locomotive"?

Calling them what they are, car bodies, certainly lowers the overall expectation in my book. I know miracles have happened - but when does reality set in?

Step one is indoor storage in a building with a roof, sides, doors and a lock. Step two is secure indoor storage with fire detection and supression. Otherwise you have projects as examples of what happens to years of efforts in less time that is often imagined. Properly packaged, it is possible to raise funds for such buildings.

Wesley

It's good that we take note of some of the more historic pieces of equipment that need considerably more care and attention than they're receiving right now, but each of these projects has its own story and its own unique qualities. To lump the Liberty Liner at RTM together with the Indianapolis Witt in Noblesville is to span an enormous disparity in condition, care, and planning.



To pick a few nits, as was mentioned elsewhere Indianapolis 186 is the only surviving Indianapolis streetcar but not the only streetcar from that state preserved; IR 202 at WRM, IR 205 at IRM and Gary 19 at IRM also hail from Indiana. Like 186, UT 437, I&C 606 and THI&E 81 are all car bodies. ITM, which owns all of the above cars, has actually done some past restoration work on a fifth car body, UT 429, cosmetically restoring it and putting it on its correct trucks. It's currently stored in their barn. (Recent aerial photos show THI&E 81 to have apparently disappeared from their yard, suggesting it may have been put inside their barn too.) CTA S606 burned on the CTA and later sustained frame damage, and I don't think it has been seriously considered as anything but a parts source since. The focus at ITM turned away from traction some years ago and they haven't run any electric cars in about eight years; they sold off one interurban car (since restored - it operated yesterday at IRM) in the late 1990's but I believe their deaccession movement ended there.

As for the other cars mentioned, the CD&M Redbird and T&E 40 on private land in Ohio may be moving indoors soon as I've been told that the owner in question acquired one of the old Trolleyville barns and is erecting it on his land; and the Liberty Liner at RTM and the CA&E 450's in Cleveland are all indoors, well preserved, and rightfully valued by their owners as historically significant pieces.

Things are getting better!

I am working on an article for this site that outlines more than 50 moves of street cars and Interurbans between the 22 or so traction museums in the United States and Canada.

As discussed there are several new car barns in operation including: Pennsylvania Trolley Museum, Western Railway Museum, Orange Empire Railway Museum and the Minesota Street Car Museum.

The Fort Collins and Yakima Museums have moved into historic car barns.

This results in at least cosmetic upgrades of many cars as they go on display in the new buildings.

It may not be popular to say theis but I think the future will see cosmetic restorations of a lot of the street cars out there. On my tours, I find new visitors like to see the interiors of cars, not the underbody equipment or if it moves. As long as some cars at the museum do move!

Static displays will cut down the time a restoration takes from 20 years to maybe half that. There are after all only so many Saturdays in a month.

One last thought; the Pieoria an Interurban sleeping car later a bunk car is at the Illinois Railway Museum. Does it still have its sleeping car interior or hardware?

Ted Miles

People have made it sound like proper preservation is elaborate -- I disagree wholeheartedly. It's nothing more than getting it under good cover. This has been said before - carbarns, carbarns, carbarns! And carbarns are cheap.

Yes, they are cheap. One of the cheapest costs of owning a car. Contrast to the cost of land and track to park it on outside. The cost of moving a car today. The cost of RESTORING a car. Barns only seem expensive because of economies of scale - it's cheapest to cover a whole bunch of cars at once. But it changes EVERYTHING at the museum.

* Suddenly your restoration efforts are four times as effective.
* Fundraising for the carbarn generates a lot of interest in the museum.
* People want to restore cars because they perceive their efforts will last.
* The fancy building gives your museum an air of legitimacy.
* Your museum now has a nice asset on the books.
* Neighbor goodwill and pride - unsightly junk is replaced by major asset.

Did I mention MoW gear? The key to getting productive trackwork out of volunteers is mechanized track equipment. But that was built for a short hard life, to be worn out before the weather eats them. The opposite happens at museums - so get those tools inside. That is the #1 thing you can do for your track.

Carbarns, carbarns, carbarns.

Most of it, yes. The car was somewhat modified for MOW service late in life but has retained most of its sleeping car layout and fixtures. At the moment its most pressing need is for new T&G siding and some structural and exterior woodwork, but it is stored safely indoors and is cosmetically restored and on public display.