As the debate on museums and tourist railroads not presreving enough or there is more to be done after executives scrap locomotives and rolling stock anyways as they would be forced to consider anyone else would at least use the parts for their own operation as some museums have lost their homes as they’ll be forced into thinning the herd when they don’t have the room at the new location for their entire inventory as executives would be forced to consider how to move a reading T1 or an UP big boy along with a DD40AX.
Welcome to the Forum Danielm!
A bit of advice, and I’m not busting your chops by any means, but before you compose a post slow it down a couple of clicks, take a deep breath, think about what you want to say, and then start putting the words down. Watch your sentence structure and punctuation. I read your post and honestly I’m not sure what you’re getting at.
I’m not trying to be the grammar cop here, just offering a bit of advice. Some posters here write better than others but I certainly don’t want people to be scared away because their wordsmithing isn’t as good as some others.
Read and look at what others posters do and learn from it. Remember what a wise man said, “Before you can write, you need to read!”
Again, welcome!
Danielm,
Welcome aboard my friend you will find no better group to share your railroad thoughts with than this steam lovin crew on the Trains Magazine Forum!
Couple of comments here - “the executives” who mostly scrapped all the steam - well this happened when I was a kid in the 1950’s. Usually what remains in the way of preserved steam locomotives - is now fought over by an assortment of junk picking collector vultures - that feel hording the rusty junk locomotives is their chosen mission in life.
Take that vile crew of city officials in Elkhart, Indiana who have the last remaining New York Central passenger steam locomotive NYC 3001 firmly locked away in public - rusting away on display - now missing many parts - so they and the city museum can charge $5 a head for any rubber necks who would seek out New York Central railroad history as a curiosity. Thats right the rusting disolving locomotive is paying for some city income irregardless of what happens to it. THANKS ELKHART city with a heart or is it hart?
Equally infamous are the “railfans gone bezerk” these are the craven rail wienies who want it all - all they can get hold of - to hord. Because its MINE! These groups can be found wherever steam locomotives operate. Here is their infamous call sign - “Its no problem - we can remake any steam engine regardless of heritage into whatever missing railroad locomotive icon we want!” Yes, here is the classic fight between the Coalition For Sustainable Rail and the City of Topeka Kansas. For the life and death struggle of the last remaining Santa Fe “Super Hudson” - ATSF 3463.
Either the engine dies by neglect and rusts to death in Topeka or it gets turned into the firebreathing science fiction monster locomoti
Welcome DanielM,
Perhaps I’m the only one here that noticed, but you seem to be talking about the two articles in the May 2017 Trains issue that discuss whether or not we saved to much or too little and wanted to open up a debate on the Trains Forum about that topic. At least that is what I read from your post, and I wondered why no one else had opened up that topic yet, or better yet, why wasn’t it put here by the Trains staff themselves, it seems something suited to this forum.
So, before I state my opinion on why and what I think the correct answer is, let’s open the topic. Did we save to much or not enough?
The answer is solidly “both”; it depends on the context.
This subject has been repeatedly taken up by the participants on RyPN, a site largely by and for serious preservationists, and those discussions have been interesting.
Plenty has been lost that ‘should’ have been saved, ranging from NYC Hudsons to the last Shark booster carbody. But much of what was saved is not kept maintained, or succumbs to accident or vandalism, or is “deaccessioned” (a fancy museum term for ‘gotten rid of’) when there is no longer interest. There have been several vivid examples of what happens when ‘the herd has to be thinned’ in various contexts. Sometimes it is done rationally and caringly – other times, egos or stupidity get in the way. The point is made often that there isn’t time and money to keep everything, or even all the things a particular museum ought to keep … and that is usually followed by notice that interest in all too many artifacts (not usually steam locomotives, but almost any other category) is waning as the folks interested in it age and, to put it gently, stop going to museums or on excursions.
I’d say it all depends on the willingness, dedication and interest of society in general towards preservation. Equipment can rust away in a museum just as easily as it can “in the wild”, so to speak. In recent years a museum in South Africa(?) was forced to scrap several locomotives that were being cut up “in the middle of the night” by people scavenging for scrap metal. Granted, the scavengers were most often trying to get money for food, but it still comes down to wether or not a group can adequately protect what’s being preserved.
Did we save too much, or save too little? Well, the answer is “It depends.”
If you’re a rail museum and you’ve got so much equipment on hand you can’t afford to keep it all up you’ve got too much, and you’ve got some hard decisions too make. Visitors aren’t going to pay an admission fee to view a junkyard, they can do that free. A year or so ago there was a poster here who posted some shocking photographs of rail equipment rapidly deteriorating to absolute junk status in the Steamtown collection. They’ve got some hard decisions to make.
Some places I’m sure wish they had more, maybe they should network with those who have too much. It’s a quandary with not easy answers.
I think that museums have to look at the overall, national picture. Some items were “oversaved”, if there is such a word. As fine as they are, there sure are a lot of GG1s out there. Yet many first generation diesels are extinct. I guess it also depends on what railroads want to donate. The C&O, NKP, RDG and AT&SF, among others, did a fine job. Some others, not so much…
unfortunately railroad management looks out for its shareholders, and to be honest it’s their number one job.
They were not in the business of preserving history, their competitors were not either. You don’t find many preserved dc 7 or 707, not many historical trucks, or ships or tugs. Many railroads were fighting for their lives even as early as the late fifties. NYC was struggling with the NYC thruway, the Ohio turnpike that were built with tax payers funds and parallel their main lines. Railroading in the east and north east was bleak. They were fighting for their future, not looking backwards. They were fighting changing times, factories were moving south, not out of the country. The were fighting the low cost and very flexible trucking industry, along with barges and pipelines. Every dollar was needed to compete.
With that said some roads did a better job, some saw it as preserving it’s culture, the best being the Union Pacific.
Preservation is not easy when it comes out of your bottom line and you have to rationalize it to your stock holders. Preserving steam or their jobs, wasn’t a hard decision.
Let’s be thankful for the roads that did more and more thankfully to the roads that still do.
That’s always been true. Scrap value usually won when compared with historical, philanthropic or public relations value. Every once in awhile someone comes foreward with a plan to save this beauty from the torch:
http://cruiselinehistory.com/?s=united+states
It would be great to see her at least turned into a hotel/convention center like the Queen Mary but Philly doesn’t really seem to be the best place to do it. Dockage and maintenance costs are about 60 thou a month. Unless a real plan for development can be hammered out, she’ll have to be scrapped. Imagine how few steam locomotives we’d have today if the overhead costs were similar.
Concerning steamships that now serve as fast hotels (fast to the dock) has anyone else styed at the Delta King in Sacramento? It, along with the Delta Queen, (which migrated to the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers) were built for overnight service between Sacramento and San Francisco. My wife and I spent a night there several years ago.
Right you are Becky, and there’s the rub. Big antiques, whether they’re ocean liners, B-17’s, steam locomotives, or buildings still have to earn their keep in one way or another, or eventually they’re doomed.
Sad to see a magnificent example of the shipbuilder’s art like the United States, the holder of the “Blue Ribband Of The North Atlantic”, wasting away like that, isn’t it? See that discoloration just above the waterline, that greyish-pinkish strip? The steel got that way from the ship speeding it’s way across the Atlantic, the sheer pounding of the salt water against the steel, she was that fast, 35-plus knots at least, and her top speed
Not to totally derail this thread, but isn’t the United States aluminum hulled and hence one of the reasons she’s in such great shape?
Aluminum fittings were used in a lot of places to save weight but I don’t think that the hull is aluminum. The chief reason that the “United States” hasn’t already been turned into razor blades is asbestos. A lot of it was used to insulate the boilers and steam lines and the cost of its removal and disposal precludes a lot of contractors from bidding on its demolition.
Regarding “The Big U,” it was sold sometime in the 1980s and its interior was totally gutted. Its a bare shell inside. 20 or so years ago it was towed from Norfolk (where it sat since 1968) to Turkey and the asbestos was removed. It was then towed to Philly. When I was stationed in Norfolk between 1974 & 1979 I used to see it every day. it would occasioanally be towed to a different pier and it was well maintained. All of its interior fittings, furniture and linens and so forth were still stored on board. I was told by a chief on my ship that the engines were jacked over ever couple of days. I once tried to drive into the area where it was tied up but a security guard said that there was no way possible.
There would be occasional articles in the paper about rumours of it being revived as the 20,000 jobs (shore staff, not just the crew) associated with the ship were all in the Hampton Roads area but nothing ever came of it. A damned shame and I think it’s destined for scrap. There are You Tube videos where you can take a virtual tour of the ship and it looks pretty hopeless. The amount of money to restore it would be incredible.
If you look at Penny’s picture immediately preceding, you can see the corrosion down the hull.
It’s the superstructure that is primarily aluminum (the Gibbses were very careful to avoid a Morro-Castle-like situation by keeping any material that would support combustion to a minimum, and reputedly any part containing wood was swapped out for one made in aluminum…)
Supposedly the only wooden bits on the ship were the pianos and butcher blocks. Gibbs was also thinking of the Normandie.
And Gibbs wanted the pianos in aluminum, too - he could have used Bluethners with golden-tone aliquot resonance … a larger version of:
Or … sexier … Rippen
Well I stand corrected. Damn shame that a ship bearing the name of our nation with her pedigree isn’t worth saving in the eyes of our government. Hopefully the foundation is able to save her, every few years some generous donor comes along and gives them enough to get by for a little longer. We managed to save four Iowa class (albeit in much better condition) and we only have one SS United States.