My hope in posting this was to reinforce what I posted in October about what I saw during the search process for the replacement Superintendent a few years back and how I thought that would impact future collection decisions at STEA. Much thanks to Mr. Ellsworth and a few others for repeating the themes and emphasizing the need to be proactive.

Mr. Travis - the photo you reference was one I included to show what the caboose nearest the parking lot and awning looked like before the track hoe chewed into it. The photo is old, from 2006, and shot from a distance, but it is the best I could come up with quickly. An FB post identifies this as Central Vermont Railways 4021. This is the caboose "Al P." discusses in his post on 8-25. My apologies if my post was not clear.

Al P. - any chance you can post more information about your caboose, including some pics?

6-18003 and bigjim4life - there have been several other excellent threads about volunteer recruitment and retention that would make a good start to a discussion on the challenges the Park Service faces in recruiting and retaining volunteers.

PMC - there have been several great threads on preservation standards. My hope in posting this information was to further a constructive discussion which leads to greater communication between the rest of the preservation community and the Park Service so that this sort of thing does not occur again. As to preservation standards, the point here is that an artifact can not be preserved if it does not exist.

baniaj2 - The most likely source for historical data/documentation on these cars, or any other artifact in Scranton, if such data exists, is likely to be found in the NPS library at STEA. My suggestion is to reach out to Pat McKnight, the NPS Historian/Archivist and the person ultimately responsible for documenting what they have up there.

Pat McKnight Pat_McKnight@nps.gov 570-340-5193

As to why this happened now, my guess is that these items were scrapped as part of "cleaning up the yard" for the Park Service's big yearly event, Railfest, which is this September 3rd and 4th.

There are many great artifacts in Scranton (equipment, parts, signals). My hope is that, with better communication and a more collegial approach, more can be done to make sure as many of them as possible make it through the next decade.

There is also a reasonable chance that Steamtown uses a single or one or two Contracting Officers (CO). These are Federal employees and have a special status in Government that allows them to commit US government funds. Sometimes you run into Contract Specialists who are contractors working under the authority of a CO.

All CO's I've worked with keep email lists of vendors for when they post certain types of repeat announcements on FBO and will email that list the link to the FBO posting. Looking at the posting JR listed will provide the CO contact information. Contact them ask if he/she has a contact list for Steamtown announcements. Likewise, Federal employees can email FBO postings to vendors who they believe may be interested in the work.


Bob

Meanwhile, in another thread, there is up for grabs a FREE TO A GOOD HOME 1889 Jackson and Sharp coach located in PA, in far better shape than the combine at Steamtown, and no takers so far. Should no taker be found and the car scrapped, will we all read/hear through/of 4 pages and counting, the moans and groans about it not having enough time to be saved and all ttat shoulda coulda woulda that goes with it?

The Steamtown cars are gone, let's put some energy into stuff that still exists and needs rescue!

Most organizations need a couple weeks minimally to meet and decide whether to pursue an opportunity for acquisition after considering whether it would fit into their mission and if they can realistically absorb it and preserve it. 3 days? Give it time.......

No, because no taker is needed and J.R.May has agreed to champion the car at least as far as needed to stabilize/cocoon it for outside storage indefinitely.

I think it is valuable to note that this state of affairs came about, at least in part, because someone on the Steamtown Facebook thread brought up the West Chester car situation, and it was then a bit excitedly called up in that separate post here. It could be argued that without those two steps, the present offer to safeguard the car's condition would not have been made so quickly or effectively. And it can also be argued that there won't be any shoulda coulda woulda decay leading to scrapping for that little trailer... because there was moaning and groaning here that led to recognizing its situation more clearly and immediately.

...Oh, hey, Junior, your sig indicates you're in Philadelphia. I'm 1000 miles away and have volunteered to help stabilize car 104 when the time comes. Can we rely on your help too?

There is still plenty of stuff at Steamtown that can use your help? How about the B&M diner (would look real good behind 3713 one day) or NKP 44 (Oldest surviving Nickel Plate locomotive, old enough that it predates the nickname Nickel Plate Road). What's done is done. Stop pretending you cared about the pieces Steamtown scrapped and start actually caring about what's there and can be improved.

So a quick pause to dive deep into the long term storage in my brain recalled a request for offers by Steamtown years ago when they cleared all the excess equipment from the old yard at the Tobyhanna Army Depot. A quick Google search turned up an old thead from this very site dated 2001. Basically if you had a desire to save one of the pieces you just had to present a proposal to them and there was a damn good chance you'd get the piece.

Out of that list several items found new homes and a few were cut up. Here we are 15 years later and somehow now it's a travesty that a wooden B&M combine and a couple of wooden hacks were shredded after they were offered so long ago, that the Twin Towers were still standing. I'm not sure how much some of you know about the climate in the northeastern US but suffice it to say that after languishing outside through decades of New England and Pennsylvania winters the cars were pretty well roached in 2001. Thus the reason no one jumped on them then. Not even Strasburg went after the B&M car and they did wind up getting a Rutland boxcar from the great purge.

Here's a link to the 2001 thread.
http://www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1290

Kevin O

[quote="Scranton Yard"]
The first pic below shows the snow plow and one coach just prior to scrapping.*** The coach next to it was also scrapped. I believe this could have been one of several Pullman-built wood coaches (ca. 1910 or earlier), numbered in the 1200s by the Boston and Maine, that the Steamtown Foundation had up in VT. My understanding is that B&M added a steel underframe in the mid '20s and combine doors around 1950 at which time the cars were converted to MOW. *** Thank you to anyone with more accurate information on either of these two pieces. [/quote]

Actually, the yellow-painted passenger next to the snowplow in your first photo was Rutland 253, the blind-end combine that's shown in your subsequent photo of its red-painted side. Built in 1902, it appears in several well-known photos show it on the tail end of milk trains crossing Lake Champlain over the Rouses Point-Alburgh trestle (one example being on pg. 262 of Shaughnessy's "The Rutland Road", for those who have a copy). One of the comments on the Steamtown Facebook page showing the scrapping of this poor cadaver taking place was to the effect of "Too bad, I hope no Rutland equipment gets scrapped!" (Sigh.) However, it is a fact that two other Rutland combines, both of which also ran in milk train service, survive today in good condition: 260 (built as a coach by Wagner in 1891) at the Railroad Museum of New England, and 255 (ex-Ogdensburgh & Lake Champlain, built as a coach by Harlan & Hollingsworth in 1898) now at the Railway Historical Society of Northern New York.

The red, white and blue-painted coach in another of your photos of the recent scrapings was, in fact, a Boston & Maine 12xx-series coach (built by Pullman in 1907, converted to a MOW "combine" with sliding doors following retirement from passenger service in the late 1930s). Several other B&M 12xx-series coaches service: 1246 was another "poorer example" left behind in Vermont by Steamtown Foundation like Al P.'s now-immaculate CV caboose mentioned above, and was subsequently saved by David Woodbury, whose detailed feature articles on RyPN documenting its restoration will be familiar to long-time viewers of this site (it is now on display at the former Contoocook, New Hampshire station). Another B&M 12xx-series coach, restored to work-service configuration, is displayed at Lowell, Mass. with B&M 0-6-0 no. 410. At least four B&M 12xx-series cars are at the Strasburg R. R., ranging in condition from immaculate restoration to changed completely into something different.

The scrapping of two passenger cars in very bad condition, each by far the worst example among several others in preservation, was hardly an irrational decision by the National Park Service. How they came to be in such deplorable shape under Park Service ownership, after having been moved to Scranton by Steamtown Foundation at great expense and in preference to then-worse examples, is another matter entirely.

A technical note to those who have mentioned "saving the truss rods" and that the two scrapped coaches "looked pretty straight." What you are seeing are Commonwealth steel underframes, supplied as a kit to railroads in the 1910-ish period, for retrofitting to wood-frame coaches. Apparently (based on a Commonwealth Steel Castings catalog from that era), Commonwealth supplied combined bolster/platform castings and the intermediate combined cross members and queen posts, and the railroads would supply an I-beam center sill of whatever length was required. (Commonwealth also supplied truck frame castings to which the pedestals, equalizers, and so forth from composite trucks could be transferred). Many "truss rod underframe" cars surviving today consist of an older wooden carbody set onto a Commonwealth-type steel frame.

This is a good subject in many ways, but learn from this cause it is going to be happening more and more. I think it is inevitable that more and more museums are going to do similar scrapping. Some of the replies in this thread are right on, be proactive if you want to "save" or buy a pc of equipment. Scrapping a derelict car to save another one might truly be like donating organs, yes sad that some one dies, but the end results the death was not totally in vain and indeed some good comes from it.

Mid Continents restoration group recently orchestrated and purchased and has about finished scrapping out a wooden coach to furnish the needed parts for a much better restoration candidate. I applaud MC for this, now this is making a very good outcome out of a bad situation. Nobody likes seeing an artifact scrapped or sold, but in this case I think it a win win situation. To sell the entire car or crane to a scrapper and not save the parts that are valuable and irreplaceable is unfortunate {I am being nice here}.

Being that NPS didn't do this is a good thing. I am glad that some peoples worst fears were not valid or true. When this thread started I was concerned that it could of been bad. Sounds like they did what they had too and saved what they should of. Still think this is a learning opportunity for all of us. What may appear to be a really dark time for restoration may be a true opportunity for museums or private parties to step up to the plate and save or aquire some pretty neat stuff without to much competition. Most people and organizations are strapped for money and space. "And you too can own your very own railroad car". Oh such dark humor! Regards, John.

Firstly I must confess to being totally supportive of Steamtown's move to start cleaning up its site by scrapping some of the junk that has detracted from the overall presentation for many years.

The topic also raises the question of what would happen to the entire collection (including the site itself), if Trump were to be elected ( a huge long shot IMHO) and kept his word of cutting the Federal budget 15% across the board and promising a balanced Federal budget every year he was POTUS?? If the Dep't. of the Interior were to receive a 15% cut you can be sure that a good number of its poorer performing parks ( net cost per visitor) would be shuttered and S'town would almost certainly be one of them.

I wonder if there are provisions in the endless Federal writings that cover what happens when a property that is part of the NPS is closed?? My guess is that this is covered somewhere??

Just wondering. Ross Rowland

Mr. Churchward:

Thank you for the additional and corrected information about this equipment.

So, the half red and half yellow coach next to Claremont and Concord Railroad Snowplow 60 was Rutland 253. According to an old Steamtown Foundation brochure, 253 was used on Rutland main line passenger and branch line passenger trains in mixed trains. The brochure goes on to state that it was constructed to a New York Central pattern in 1902 by the Osgood Bradley Co. Later use was indeed as a caboose in night milk trains. Steamtown Foundation often renumbered the equipment - many of the 12xxx B&M coaches are listed as 2xx numbers, so can you confirm that the 253 number given for the Rutland coach is indeed the original road number of this car.

I had read Mr. Woodbury's article on his work with 1246. Great story. I also appreciated the irony in the context of Al P.'s caboose. It is an unfortunately common theme with equipment that was once part of Mr. Blount's large collection. I believe Strasburg has several similar cars, both the 66' Pullman variety (B&M 1179 from Steamtown Foundation, 1182, 1211, and 1245) and the slightly later 68' Laconia version (B&M 1271, 1293, 1313, and 1393). Was the car that was scrapped B&M 1216 (66', Pullman, 1906)? If so, this was originally listed (as "Boston and Maine Combination Car 1216") for possible scrapping back in '01 when the Park Service had to clear some stored equipment out from Tobyhanna, PA. I can not find any further information on 1216 in the Steamtown Foundation literature.

Great information regarding the steel under frames.

As to the "how did it come to this" after 25 years of Park Service stewardship, I would like to go into that but do not want to send the thread in a direction where it gets sent to Railfanning Siberia, locked, or deleted. Thanks to information provided by posters such as yourself, it has become even more clear to me that at least some of these pieces were not the basket cases when they came down to Scranton that some of the FB posters have made them out to be.

Mr. Rowland:

According to your bio, you were a very successful Wall Street guy back in your day. From your postings, you put yourself forward as someone who still has many connections higher up in many Fortune 500 corporations. I have to believe that a man of your great resources and professional stature knows how to, or has someone that can, look up a federal statute, regulation, or rule. As a way of making sure the preservation community is properly prepared in the event that your highly plausible scenario regarding the NPS operation in Scranton comes to pass, please marshall your troops, find an answer to your inquiry, and post it on this thread where the information may be of value. Thank you.

As a ridiculously long-overdue follow-up to the original 2001 deaccession list, it behooves me to point out that one of the pieces on that long-ago list, Great Western Ry. (UK) "coach" 6705 (actually a Collett brake corridor composite carriage, was eventually repatriated to Britain, arriving there in 2007 (along with a shipload of EMD export locos) and under restoration for the West Somerset Railway ever since.

Then he takes steps to assure that is exactly what happens...

Hot Metal - No worries. Did a bit of an edit. I guess the irony of having just posted my comments on thread lock and almost immediately that post follows momentarily got the best of me. Thanks for the sanity check.