Well the latest online article about the Minnesota Zephyr quotes the owner saying he is looking for a scrapper to come and scrap both locomotives he has. One still sits on the property of his depot, the other sits on blocks about 800 feet to the south. There is an article on twincities.com but I can’t copy/paste to post the link here.
http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_22092194/stillwater-zephyr-owner-get-your-locomotive-off-city
See if this works…
So the owner wants 35 more days from the city so he can have time to scrap the engine where it sits; and the city wants to move the engine to the owner’s property right now and put the $12,000 cost of the move onto the owner’s property tax as a special assessment. The city’s offer seems fairly reasonable.
Is there not a market for that locomotive for some practical use? I know it takes time to sell railroad equipment, but if a buyer could be found, what could the locomotive sell for? If the city moves the engine to the owner’s property, he would have to get at least $12,000 for it in order to break even. I wonder if he would get anything at all for scrapping it.
Is that loco an Fp7 or F7? Ozark has it listed as an F7 on its data page but it is also listed as an FP7 elsewhere. Either way it would be a shame to see it scrapped as it appears to be in fairly good shape in photos in the Ozark listing.
One of the F’s is of CNW heritage. Could not find info in a quick search for the other.
Jay
According to the article, the owner got $4.25 million for selling the ROW to the city for a trail, and lives in West Palm Beach, Florida. Also, the locomotive came to be on city land because the low-bed truck trailer hauling it snapped an axle (I never heard of that happening before - what did they overlook ?). So there are some unusual circumstances, but I bet he could call Hulcher or Corman and they’d come and move the locos in 2 - 3 days, no sweat.
He should get a good payment for scrapping it. [:'(] Current prices for No. 1 Heavy Melting Scrap are the $350 per gross ton (2,240 lbs.) range (see: http://www.worldsteeldynamics.com/marley/Marleys%20Heavy%20Melt%20%2354.pdf/at_download/file ), which is about $312 per net ton (2,000 lbs.) or 15.6 cent per pound. If the loco is 100 tons (net - probably a little on the low side), it would have a gross value of about $31,200 (100 tons x $312).
To scrap it would be a couple guys at $20 per hour, say $250 per day each including the oxygen and acetylene. Let’s allow them a week - that would be 5 days x $500 = $2,500 to reduce the loco to big pieces. A magnet crane for a day - say, $1,000. To truck 100 tons is 5 truckloads - say, $1,000 each x 5 = $5,000. So adding it all up, the total cost to scrap is in the range of $8,500, say $10,000.
That would leave over $20,000 for the owner; even paying the city’s $12,000, he’d still walk away with $8,000 in less than a week’s time - how many of us can do that well ?!?
Alternatively, the owner should consider any immediate valid offer over said $8,000, and could negotiate up to $31,200 for bearing about the same costs to move it - or maybe settle for $20,000 if the buyer moves it ASAP, or some combination/ variation
Maybe the owner is trying to get the trucking company to finish the job or take them to court? I’d like to have the crankshaft or maybe some pistons. Where the engine sits is about 2+ miles from me. I’m not totally shocked by this. They had an 83 F350 chassis cab hi-rail truck for spraying the weeds. Some hooligans torched it at 2:40am during Lumberjack days in the early 2000s. Their insurance totaled it. Then I bought the truck for $400. They couldn’t find the title in their files so I had to wait while they got a replacement title from the state. The transaction took forever. I was going to replace the cab and use it for my lawn service. I ended up parting it after I found out what a PITA it is to do the paperwork and inspections on an F350 only when I am swapping on a cab from an F150.
A few years later sparks were coming off of the exhaust and starting grass fires along the tracks. The fire dept had to come out for several of them. (The tracks go right behind the house I live in) A few of those little fires I ran out and put out myself right along side the moving train. I posted it here on this forum and people told me he needed to have something in the exhaust cleaned. I sent the owner an emphatic letter and he looked me up in the phone book and called me to say it was taken care of. I have never met him in person.
A former co-worker of mine once worked for the Zephyr company. And her opinion was that it was poorly managed. I really wish him luck.
As for taxes, I think he would only be taxed for his capitol gains in the sale of the right of way.
Why can’t the locomotive be moved to a scrap yard for scrapping there? Or, move it to a train yard, where it could be hauled to a railroad specialized scrappper or rebuilder on the rails?
It is so big and heavy it takes large cranes, large semis, overweight permits, good weather, blocking of roads and intersections and lastly doing it at 1am. What a pain that is.
The owner came to the latest city council meeting and told his story about the trailer braking when the engine was loaded on it, the buyer who didn’t follow through in this poor economy. They gave him extra time to take care of it. He has lined up a scrapper to cut up both engines where they sit. The city council will give a go ahead on that if he gets a performance bond with that contractor and meets a few other requirements. If that falls through the city has lined up a contractor who will move the one engine that is on city property 500 feet back onto the depot property for $12,000. That amount would be assessed to the Mn Zephyrs next property tax bill.
Well he did not line up a scrapper in time so the city had the engine moved on thursday morning. Both engines now sitting on the south side of the Zephyr building. I’m sure he is probably still trying to sell them and get more for them than if they were scrapped. I will drive down to Anderson Windows and see if the passenger cars are still sitting down there. This poor economy is effecting him just like the rest of us.
If I hit the Powerball tonite…
What poor economy might that be?
Here in North Dakota things a booming. Plenty of work, all jobs are high paying, cause if they do not pay enough workers will go elsewhere.
Of course, we have no housing, and living in a tent in North Dakota is NOT an option.
ROAR
Many people do not realize how hard it is to scrap a locomotive especially if they have never done it before. I have worked in two scrap metal yards and we would never take locomotives or rail cars because they take so much time and effort to get them reduced into pieces. I also worked for a third company that overhauled locomotives and they took a job scrapping around 5 locomotives.
The 320 dollars a ton is way, way off. That is probably what the steel mills are paying the scrap yards for their scrap. Your average price for a ton of scrap is around 140-180 dollars a ton or about 9 cents a pound. Locomotives and other large pieces of scrap that must be cut with a torch are called “heavy torchables”. You get a considerably lower price for touchable scrap probably around 100-120 per ton since it has to be cut up by the burners.
Another problem is just finding a scrap yard that will accept locomotives which only a few do. Why? Because it takes 2 guys at least a couple of weeks to reduce it to scrap. Two guys are wasting money and time for something that weighs probably 160 tons. On the other hand you have a car shredder right next to it that is shredding 2 ton cars every 10 seconds. Railroad tracks, wheels, etc, get cut up fast in just minutes. Locomotives take weeks. It’s a waste of money generally speaking.
It may surprise you to learn that not only will most scrap yards reject locomotives, they will actually charge you to cut it up on the spot which could run in the thousands of dollars. So not only do you not make a dime, you also get charged to get it scrapped. That is what happened when I worked for that one company that decided to scrap some BC rail locomotives. They ended up hiring a contractor to cut them up because it was taking 4 guys over a month to cut up one locomotive.
Most scrap yards that do scrap locomotives have a special arrangement with the company. They get the locomotive and metals for free, but the person who owns the locomotive ends up gettin
I tried calling the Mayor and the city council to see if they could buy this guy some time, but it looks like everyone is on vacation. All of the city council people are up for election at the beginning of the year. Maybe they can get replaced.
I would hate to see two F units get cut up. There is hardly any of them out there.
It looks like all the passenger cars are still sitting down at Anderson Windows though I can only see 4 of them from the public road.
This is very similar to what happened in Chicago in 1987. Some of you might remember when Richard Jensen had a CB&Q 4-6-2 stored on property that Metra acquired. They gave him a few months to remove the locomotive or it would get cut up on the spot. It is a long story but his steam locomotive was cut up for scrap because he could not get it moved in time. You can read about it here…
http://www.steamlocomotive.com/union/jensen.shtml
Something doesn’t seem right about this whole Minnesota zephyr fiasco. If he received over 4 million he certainly has the funds to get things done. I would also think he could sue the moving company for a breach of contract if he lost the locomotives, since it is there responsibility to move those locomotives broken axles or not. The same thing happened when they moved that BIg boy in Nebraska. They had broken axles too.
I don’t think it would be too hard to get a emergency appeal and for the court to issue a injunction against the city counsel. I would think the historic nature and rarity of those locomotives would at least qualify for some time to contact some museums around the country.
It is hard to predict how this will come out. As I understand, the city is out of the loop in this issue because they have returned the one F7 locomotive to the owner’s property.
Actually, I guess they are not out of the loop because they have paid for the moving of the F7 to the owner’s property, which cost $10,000 reportedly. Therefore, the city expects the cost to be paid back over some years by that property.
I have not met him but this sounds like the way a person acts who is rich yet watches every penny, uses coupons and is so tight he squeeks.
I would not say that. He has every right to do what he wants to with his property. It takes some time to sell that equipment.
This is like a soap opera that never ends. The storage for the passenger cars down at Anderson Windows had not been paid and there was going to be a Sheriffs auction this last wednesday. Well the Zephyr owner came up with some money paid to Andersons. In the newspapers it said he owed $250,000 for storing those 5 or 6 cars there since July. Sounds like an awfully huge dollar amount to me. An un named person down at Andersons told me he was paying $100 a day for storage, which is still about $3000 a month. The latest newspaper articles now say he has, or might have found a place near Hudson Wi to store the cars. Sounds like to me he should take what he can get for his train in this down market. I got pictures of the engines sitting down on the south side of his building. One wheel on one of the trucks is worn down near the flange. The diameter of the flat part of the wheel near the flange is about 1 inch smaller than the diameter of the flat part of the wheel farthest from the flange. I really don’t know how to put the pictures up on this site.
Sure, lots of jobs in N.D. for oilfield trash, like west Texas years back living in packing crate shacks, what poor economy? take a look at Detroit on google maps, may be an indicator of the present economy. The U.S. is more than N.D.