I have a feeling that in a decade or two, once the historical value of the F40PH is fully realized, many railroad museums will be stalking all the F40PHs in service at various transit agencies, looking to acquire them. This is about what happened with all the EMD and Alco covered wagons in service with Metra, MARC, LIRR, etc...
As for IRM, you don't know any of the internal planning/happenings going on there, so I wouldn't criticize them too much. The AEM-7 was faced with imminent retirement and disposal, so one was acquired. On the other hand, there are plenty of F40PH locomotives currently in service on Metra just an hour away, including some former Amtrak ones. And they aren't being replaced very quickly. So IRM certainly has time to acquire one, while in the meantime focusing on more time-sensitive acquisitions. IRM certainly gets a lot of criticism, which I suppose is expected as the nation's largest rail museum.
Lucas

Rumor has it that all the F40 locomotives, Pacific Parlor cars, and Horizon cars on the sale list were sold to one party.

Care to elaborate?

So any updates?

I emailed Amtrak last Tuesday (2/12) asking if they had a time frame for announcing the winners and the exact reply I received was "Fri/Mon ??"

Seeing as how Friday passed and Monday was a federal holiday, I am hopeful for this week.

Matt Bumgarner

The interesting question is as to whether Amtrak HAS to "announce" successful bidders.

As a "public" agency, a degree of transparency is required so as to eliminate any appearances of impropriety should, for example, a large block of cars have been awarded or "donated" to a former member of the Board of Directors or whatnot.

On the other hand, as a quasi-public agency that operates like a private corporation, they could claim that's not applicable.

As I understood it, nobody got any cars "donated" to museums or other non-profits that approached Amtrak, so in theory that either means they went for any dollars that were offered (maybe even $10 bids?), or the scrappers and speculators were very hungry for cars..........

Amtrak has said they honer FOIA request even though they say they don't have to. www.amtrak.com/foia

I don't think GS sales (we called it DRMO back in the day) has to tell anyone who bought surplused military gear. I'd think the same could apply in this case.

Amtrak 231, owned by Dynamic Rail Preservation, is now at the Nevada State Railroad Museum, Boulder City, along with Amtrak SDP-40F 644... They have both visited the shop for inspection and minor work. Upon completion of their annual inspections they will be able to operate.

F40PH's run at both the Grand Canyon and Agawa Canyon Tour Lines. While not necessarily preservation, I consider them to be (at least for the time being). Although not a museum, the Grand Canyon Railroad seems to have an appreciation for preservation.

One F40PH sits at a fire training facility in Meridian, Mississippi.

Another converted (for freight service) F40PH, resides at the AOSR in Sugarcreek, Ohio.
I do not believe this one counts, as it has been heavily modified.

Also, I have heard that Western Rail (the NRE of the Northwest) is fixing up an F40PH for a new tourist line somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

A very helpful resource for F40PH statuses:
http://www.f40ph.org/Sta.html

I sincerely hope railroad museums across the country wake up and realize the significance of this locomotive before it is too late. (Especially with the recent changes and current leadership of Amtrak). I am grateful to the organizations that have preserved the current 3; but if we have 16 surviving GG1's (locomotives that only ran in the Northeast), why can't we have 16+ preserved F40PH's (locomotives that ran almost everywhere)?

There is another converted for freight F40PH at the Western Maryland Scenic RR as #450...

Metra may have some F40PH's available. They are purchasing rebuilt SD70MAC's (no kidding): https://metrarail.com/about-metra/newsr ... e-purchase

"So, any updates?"

It's my understanding that the process Amtrak has to go thru to obtain final approval of all the various bids for these cars is far, far more complicated than it was back in the 1980's and 1990's. The Phase II sale of almost 100 cars also proved to be much more of a handful to sort thru than anyone expected. Successful bidders of cars "back in the day" were not used to having to wait so long to obtain results. So we just have to be patient. There will be no public announcement of winning bidders. Said parties who participated in the "Phase II" sale will find out before long, but it will likely be the end of March at the earliest and probably early April before sale Invoices go out and people start paying for their cars. And it will then be several months before these cars can be prepped and leave Beech Grove. Keep in mind that there is essentially one person at Amtrak handling all of this process and she is doing the best she can to follow the current protocol Amtrak and the FRA have established for this process. Also keep in mind that we are darn lucky Amtrak decided to offer this equipment for sale and donation to all interested parties instead of to scrappers only.

The Western Rail F40PH (Amtrak 315) sale fell through when I asked them about the cost they said what I have been saying for years, the parts inside of them are very valuable since they are the same as a lot of the high demand SD and GP units. The railroad preservation community really screwed up on this Amtrak was getting rid of them for around $25k. The last F40PH I saw for sale with that price tag was a cab on a frame and motorless trucks.

Sorry to hear that. May I ask which operation was interested in it?
We lost of lot of F40PH's in the mid-2000's when Rail World stripped a couple and sent their engines to Poland.