Seems to me a "1920's railroad" and a trolley museum that turned down an EP-5 because it was out of scope of their collections should both be praised... especially since this was 40+ years ago.

We talk a lot about collections management and not saving it all. These two organizations made what was, arguably, the right move.

Rob

Perhaps, Rob, but let's also remember that stuff that exists can be swapped around/traded/found a new home for, and stuff that becomes razor blades is lost forever. Some of us in CT will always remember how 3016 was lost, and how a Jet was lost.

Of course, a good case could be made that perhaps we should just use models and photographs and interactive graphics in state-of-the-art museum displays, and not bother with the full-sized stuff. Far too messy and complicated and expensive, don't you think?

Howard P.

Is the Kennecott unit older than the Lackawanna Tri-Power boxcabs? They could either run diesel-electric, straight electric or battery-powered. I think they were an early effort to deal with anti-smoke laws in the greater NYC area around the turn of the 20th c.

King Solomon was right- 'There's nothing new under the Sun!'.

robert,
of course you are correct; but I was responding to a question on the location of main line electrics.

The WRM has three Kennecott electric locomotives. Each of the is designed to do a different job for the copper railroad. One is a pit loco used to pull strings of ore cars down in the open pit mine, the ssecond is a switcher used to put together the long strings of ore cars going out to the concentrators and processing plant and the third is a main line locomotive used to pull the long strings of cars.

I find standing next to a 125 tons of electric technology awsome and feel that it is too bad that many people in our museum and out side it think it is somehow "wrong" to have them in the collection.

I will not descend from my electric powered soap box!

Ted Miles

Well, it is wrong if it doesn't fit in with your mission. I'd like to see some national museum take on interpreting heavy electric rail history as a core mission - IRM seems closest, but for its regional bias. St Louis might be good - but preferably somebody with a heavy electrified track to demonstrate on, and show the public how we did environmentally credible high speed freight and people hauling better 60 years ago than we do today.

dave
edited for typo

Good points, HP, and further evidence that very little about these topics is black & white. Or black, orange and white.

Rob

PS: And yes, I am glad I saw an EP-5 once, though never saw one on the move.

Well, here's a relevant question: Where is there a formerly electrified mainline now either abandoned or at sufficiently low branchline status that a museum could acquire the line and re-electrify it? I can't think of any offhand, but I don't know all the little branchlines that existed in the east.

Few of us do, I'm lucky if I can keep up with what worked in any particular location I'm working in for the duration of the project.

Around where I am now, the P&N would be an obvious choice - preferably as part of a museum interpreting energy / electrical energy / Duke Power / hydroelectric power - whatever puts it in a larger context. Lots of P&N left and miles of abandoned roadbed in proximity to dams and generating plants to choose from. Beautiful stations left here and there too.......

dave

BTW, 2 EP-5's survived long enough (1980?) to be tested on the LIRR's Harold Protect Job (rescuing stalled trains from the East River Tunnels). When the LIRR passed on them (at the direction of a former NH man), their ultimate fate was a scrap dealer in Kearney, NJ. They could've been bought-but weren't and were scrapped.

DPK

"their ultimate fate was a scrap dealer in Kearney, NJ. They could've been bought-but weren't and were scrapped."

As was so typical for Naporano, their sale price was a delusion-- $100,000 each, in 1978 dollars. They certainly didn't bring that much in pieces. CR was willing to sell one to the preservation group in CT for $25,000-- much more in line with its "value".

Howard P.
Accelerating Resistor, CT