Sorry for a random photo posting. This locomotive had been preserved at one time. I was just curious if any of you had seen it in this state.


More photos:
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/steamlocomotivephotosandrestoration/message/1382

I'm not sure if they noticed it or not, but there is a sizable hole in the tender...

Wonder what they did with that full bunker of coal? 5629 was a beautiful engine in her prime, she should never have ended up scrapped like this.

That is a very sad sight! Does anyone know why this Engine was scrapped? Was she salvaged for parts at all?

Oh, boy, this one is gonna ignite some hot messages!!!

It was not "preserved"; it was owned by an individual who was a somewhat eccentric and very pioneering steam genius (no, I never met him, but from what I know & have been told by his close friends, that's not a bad description). It was a long and convoluted story, with plenty of twists, and any number of points it could have had a better ending. The final order to destroy 5629 was the result of an intransigent court system, as well.

There are some regular posters here who have great knowledge of this situation, and of the other locomotives this person once owned (and were also scrapped). There is also plenty of info about all of this on the web.

Howard P.

No, it hadn't. It had been REserved. Reserved for possible future preservation.

It was no more preserved than that B&M wooden coach. For exactly the same reason: It wasn't on protected property.

THIS IS NOT UNIQUE. Whole railway museums -- big, well funded ones -- are in EXACTLY the same situation. One key decision away from being evicted. This describes most of the big museums in California, as well as Bluewater, ITM, Brookins, the list goes on. And time and again, perfectly respectable outfits blithely ignore the inconvenient truth of their housing predicament until disaster strikes and they are sent scrambling.

Ask any of the old, successful museums how they started, and you find that they also deferred buying land for a really long time. But they finally did, and that's why they're still here, and many other museums are not.

Anyway, until it's on your land, it's not your artifact. You're just reserving it.

If I can move a can of gasoline a bit closer to the campfire....

My memory says that the Chicago & Western Indiana RR (upon whose land the loco sat at time of scrapping) had sued for the removal of the loco, that the loco was ultimately scrapped, that Dick Jensen (the individual owner in question) later received a $1.7 million judgment against the C&WI, and that said judgment may well have been still in appeals when Jensen died.

And you wonder why big railroads might be wary of private parties wanting to run a steam locomotive on their property?

The locomotive that C&WI had scrapped was ex-CB&Q 4-8-4 #5632, which the Burlington had used on excursions until 1965. When Louis Menk became President of the Burlington upon the retirement of Harry Murphy, he shut down the steam program and 5632 was sold to Richard Jensen.

The C&WI saga involved CB&Q 4-8-4 5632 (famed excursion engine of the 1959-1965 period), NKP 2-8-2 965, CB&Q 2-8-2 4963, a Southern short line's 4-6-0, several baggage cars/boxcars/gons full of parts and machinery.

All that stuff was moved by C&WI to a scrap yard (5632's trailer truck was torch-cut off in the process), and some of it was scrapped, thus the lawsuit.

CB&Q 4963 ultimately was acquired from the scrapyard by IRM (in trade for some GTW 0-8-0 hulks).

There has often been some confusion between 5632 and 5629; both very active Chicagoland excursion engines of that era, and both eventually owned by the same person.

Howard P.

Look at this:

http://www.steamlocomotive.com/union/jensen.shtml

Howard P.

The 4-6-0 in question was Hampton & Branchville 32, former Lancaster & Chester 32 and Mississippi Eastern 303, which for a while in the mid-1960s was in York, Pa. as part of a never-got-anywhere "York Southern" excursion line proposal. According to Conrad's Steam Loco Directory, if I can assume there's a typo in the chronology, it was sold in a court-ordered sale to a scrap yard in 1968, and Jensen snatched it up from the scrap yard ca. 1970. So it seems that some of the "scrapping for lack of storage fees" was more common in the 1960s than we might otherwise remember.

I sent several folks that were traveling to Chicago around its last reported location, but most of them wouldn't even go to such a rough neighborhood. Fortunately, it eventually ended up at the Monticello Ry. Museum:
http://www.steamlocomotive.info/vlocomo ... isplay=436



Now, as I recall, the South Carollina RR Museum has sister engine H&B 44, but............

I am aware that the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum in Campo, CA and the Orange Empire Railway Museum in Perris, CA both own their own land.

Jim

Without igniting anything, I think it can be said, this was a totally unnecessary, perversion of using the law to advance a public (in name) goal. Neither 5629 nor 5632 should have been relegated to total destruction. Everything that could be done to assure scrapping was done, while everything possible to assure preservation was turned aside.

One of the saddest days in my life was when I happened by just as they were starting the cutting. I was in high school and had recently gotten my license and went to see about a rumor of a steam engine in a scrap yard.

Oh, gosh, I am so sorry you had to go through that. I was quite disheartened just at seeing the picture in this thread. Bad thing to look at online just before going to bed, but seeing it in person sure takes the cake.

...although the general public reading this thread (if they do, in fact, read this) would probably think we're all crazy. :)