[PRCo] Re: Railway museum slipping off the tracks | The Columbus Dispatch

[Fred Schneider]

That group in Fort Smith is doing a great job.   They have the town politicians in their pocket or they have their hands in the town pockets.   The town seems to let them lay rails where they wish.   They do a nice job.   

I regard it as a non-profit tourist attraction that runs pretty much full time for the benefit of the community.   Been there.   Rode it.   Photographed it.   Nice operation.   Better that the guts of a car at Worthington went there than rust away in Ohio.   



On Sep 10, 2010, at 9:48 AM, Ken and Tracie wrote:

> KCPS Birney was scrapped by the Fort Smith group to restore their chicken 
> coop. But it had been previously damaged in a fire, so I suppose I they 
> built one decent Birney out of two clunkers.
> 
> KCPS Birney 1545 would have been scrapped no matter what because it was 
> briefly owned by the Milwaukee Rapid Transit and Speedrail system. And there 
> is an unwritten law that all preserved Milwaukee transit equipment MUST 
> eventually be scrapped, unless it migrates to Illinois, where it may have a 
> fifty-fifty chance of being preserved and restored.
> 
> I call it "The TM Curse."
> 
> K.
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "John Swindler" <j_swindler at hotmail.com>
> To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
> Sent: Friday, September 10, 2010 5:51 AM
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Railway museum slipping off the tracks | The Columbus 
> Dispatch
> 
> 
>> 
>> 
>> I believe the Kansas City birney 1545 and the Detroit Peter Witt car have 
>> migrated elsewhere.  And there is 067 that migrated to PTM.  ORM is but 
>> one of several museums that make me thankful for the course steered by the 
>> local PTM people over the years.
>> 
>> Cheers
>> John
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Railway museum slipping off the tracks | The Columbus 
>>> Dispatch
>>> From: fwschneider at comcast.net
>>> Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2010 21:30:49 -0400
>>> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
>>> 
>>> For God's sake, Dennis, I hope we don't feel a compulsion to acquire any 
>>> of their junk.
>>> 
>>> Forty or more years ago they had a strong membership base interested 
>>> trolleys. They took two carbodies that were sheds, chicken coups or 
>>> outbuildings and restored them. One was a Columbus, Delaware and Marion 
>>> Red Bird built by ACF in the middle 1920s. Fabulous job. The other was a 
>>> mid 1920s Columbus, Ohio streetcar. Those were great restoration efforts. 
>>> They also had (still do have) an Illinois Terminal PCC. They also had a 
>>> C&LE Red Devil, brought back from Crandic and restored. Look great.
>>> 
>>> Then the steam types took over and the trolley guys left. All the work 
>>> that went into the property in the 1960s and 1970s evaporated. The 
>>> restored cars rusted. You can totally restore a streetcar, then put it 
>>> out in the weather for 40 years and it looks like &^%$. Those restored 
>>> cars need a transfusion of a few hundred thousand dollars each all over 
>>> again.
>>> 
>>> They also have an Erie gas-electric car. It also looks today like 
>>> something that was expelled from the rear of a passing horse. The N&W 
>>> steam engine they were running in the 1950s is a bucket of rust today and 
>>> incapable of being operated.
>>> 
>>> I made a quick inspection of the property the morning of that day you 
>>> qualified me on 4398. It's not worth the investment to bring it back to 
>>> life. What they have today is like trying to revive the 100 year old man 
>>> that just had a heart attack and has all his arteries plugged with 
>>> cholesterol. It isn't a museum; to quote the guide book that reviewed 
>>> Seashore some years ago, "it's a junk yard masquerading as a museum." But 
>>> it makes Seashore look like a supreme effort. Worthington actually looks 
>>> like a junkyard behind a hurricane fence. You actually look for the dog 
>>> but that would cost money to feed.
>>> 
>>> The Cynic
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Sep 9, 2010, at 6:55 AM, Dennis F Cramer wrote:
>>> 
>>>> http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/09/08/worthington-museum-slipping-off-the-tracks.html?sid=101
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> DF Cramer
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
>