N&W historic steam engine escapes scrap

[NW Mailing List]

This appears to be another one of those cases where assumptions about plans to preserve certain significant items are discovered to be incorrect too late to save the items.  In this case, fortunately, the sale of the one locomotive has alerted us that the disposition of the remaining "lost locomotives" is far from settled.  And at least that one appears out of danger.

Everything I have seen in the Roanoke press, especially coming out of the Virginia Museum of Transportation, over the past few years has assured us that all this equipment is bound for the VMT.  It was just a matter of raising the funds to do the moving job, we were told.  (And the biggest expense was going to be asbestos abatement.  That didn't seem to be a problem the other day!)  Well, it appears that nobody bothered to check with the owners who were supposedly "donating" these items to the museum.  Who can blame them when someone is actually willing to pay something for what the owners consider to be scrap metal comes calling?

This happened repeatedly when I was on the VMT BOD back in the '90's.  We were repeatedly assured by people in a position to know that, first, the railroad and, later, Cycle Systems was donating the GP30 #522 to the museum; we just had to make room for it.  And that yellow and black self-propelled rail geometry car that sat in Louis Scrap for several years?  Oh, nothing was going to happen to it; they were just keeping it for the museum.  Hmmm, wonder where they're keeping it now.  That's just a couple of examples.

At least the 522 has met a happy fate.  Cycle Systems sold it to the Roanoke Chapter, NRHS, and they have done a fantastic job of restoring it and running it.

I just wish we could have put together that representative collection of coal hoppers that were still available in the late '80's and early '90's, one each of an H9, H10, H2a, H16 and an unmodified H11.  Now all I hear is rumors that one or more of a couple of these classes are stashed away back in some hollow in West Virginia.  A wild goose chase is a poor substitute for the orderly assemblage of a historical collection.

Sam Putney
  

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: NW Mailing List 
  To: NW Mailing List 
  Sent: Friday, July 11, 2008 7:40 AM
  Subject: Re: N&W historic steam engine escapes scrap


        This demonstrates that if there is a will, there's a way!  Of course these engines could be saved!  The only problem was, no one with the clout wants to push the issue to get it done.



        They should all be saved.  I think that if some private individual wants to do it, then that's super!  If I had the money, then I'd buy one as well and put it behind my house if nothing else!



        Maybe some other folks will come out of the woodwork and buy the rest of them up before the torch gets them.  Torching those old locomotives would be beyond disgraceful.



        Ben Blevins



        --- On Tue, 7/8/08, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:


          From: NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
          Subject: N&W historic steam engine escapes scrap
          To: "NW Mailing List" <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
          Date: Tuesday, July 8, 2008, 7:04 AM


N&W historic steam engine escapes scrap
The 1903-built Norfolk & Western locomotive will be hauled away to Ohio.


http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/168637
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