2156 and 2050 restoration

[NW Mailing List]

Mike

I can understand your sentiments about losing a piece for display. However, I will respectfully disagree. In this era of less and less funding for Museums, most places struggle to keep up with maintenance and or restoration. In my mind, Museums need to focus on what is more meaningful (read local) to their area heritage. There is truly no "national" railroad museum, and honestly, this country is too large to bring together ALL aspects of railroading from such a wide spectrum and really address them equally, especially with tighter funding.

In the post 9/11 era, funding as well as museum attendance is down. Groups that have a huge wide ranging collection, were once referred to in a Trains Magazine editorial as the "McRailroad Museum" no real theme around their collection, no real focus. Trying to be everything to everybody.

That being said, I be the first to say, Roanoke does not need to be home to a Wabash E8, a demonstrator FT B unit or a NKP Berkshire among others. Not one of those has or had an actual connection to Virginia in their regular service life, so why were they here? In some cases they were "pet projects" of folks who could wield influence or cash, or because the folks in N&W could simply provide such at that time. However, a lot of stuff truly belongs elsewhere, in territory where they served and are more iconic. At least the 763 is now much closer to home in Ohio. I think if museum management is smart, they would be happy to bring in pieces that connect to their area, and in turn, giving up pieces that have no real connection to their own.

Museums can rapidly turn into a "museum of scrap iron and metal". The general public has no real concept of what that rusty piece of crap sitting out back is, they come to a museum to see nice stuff, not something that looks like it was sitting in a junk yard unless that is the story behind it. With no funding or no champion, something like a Union Pacific "Centennial" located hundreds of miles from the UP might just end up rotting away and ultimately be scrapped far afield. But it was neat at the time it was acquired.

The maintenance on static equipment is almost always an ongoing battle, unless you are truly blessed with covered storage, that is still pretty rare. 

As I understand it, the 2050 was originally offered to Roanoke Transportation Museum. However, Roanoke was just part of the Roanoke City park system and government, and did not have or want to spend the money to get the 2050 back here in 1970 or so. I understand that the cost was to pay the B&O to move it to get it to the N&W, where it probably would have come to Roanoke for free.

Ken Miller


On Dec 16, 2013, at 9:07 AM, NW Mailing List wrote:


> As a Virginia transplant to Illinois and N&W Historical Society member, I want to let you know I would hate for the Illinois Railway Museum to lose the 2050 and for the National Transportation Museum in St Louis to lose the 2156.  There are N&W fans worldwide and we like having a small piece of its history in easy driving distance.  That said, I do understand the desire to bring the girls home to Roanoke.  And seeing them under steam would be glorious...since I have missed everything since then, steam wise.

> Something neat happened at IRM--I was videotaping a kid about 5 years old running around being a nuisance...(to everyone but me)...he climbed on the nose of 2050 and was yanking the bell cord...I muttered to myself, That's N&W brass, boy, and you just go to town and let me record.  His parents have no idea that they were the ones being a nuisance...they took him off the locomotive!

> Mike Shockley

> Peoria, IL

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