According to a listing on the website for railroad equipment broker Ozark Mountain Railcar, 17 pieces of equipment, including two locomotives, a heater car and several passenger cars, will be up for auction beginning at 7 a.m. Sept. 9, with bidding ending at 7 p.m. on Sept. 11. The reserve bid for some of the cars is as low as $950, while the reserve for the locomotives and heater cars is set at $4,800 each. According to the Ozark Mountain Website, whatever is not successfully sold will be scrapped.
According to the website, the equipment is on the grounds formerly occupied by the Indiana Transportation Museum, which was evicted by the City of Noblesville, Ind., in July 2018 following a long and complicated battle between the city and the museum and after a 50-year residency in the city. ITM operated on 35 miles of isolated track, which it did not own, out of the former location. ITM Acting Chairman Les McConnell told Trains News Wire in March that the organization was attempting to find a suitable place for its equipment and that the museum was attempting to purchase a section of track from Logansport & Eel River Railroad on which to operate and store its equipment.
A call to McConnell seeking comment was not returned.
According to the Ozark Mountain website, the equipment remaining in Noblesville is considered to have been abandoned by ITM.
“The equipment being sold is located at property owned by the City of Noblesville, Indiana, known as Forest Park, which was previously leased to the Indiana Transportation Museum (ITM),” the website says. “Pursuant to the Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law, and Order issued in Hamilton County, Indiana Cause No. 29C01-1805-PL-004434 on June 29, 2018, all structures, additions, equipment, or property on the Forest Park premises previously leased by ITM and not removed by July 12, 2018 was deemed abandoned to the City.”
Among the items listed for auction are:
• Former Amtrak, nee Great Northern, steam generator car no. 661, a 1950-built B-unit rebuilt by Amtrak into a steam generator for passenger service. Built as GN EMD F3B no. 434B, the car is listed as being in “original condition.”
• Former Milwaukee Road EMD FP7A no. 96C, a 1951-built locomotive currently painted in Monon Railroad livery for use at the museum.
• Former Milwaukee Road EMD F7B no. 68B, a 1950-built locomotive retired in 1980. The locomotive will require restoration and must be trucked from the property.
• Former Pennsylvania Railroad Railway Post Office car no. 6523, a 1911-built RPO baggage car built by PRR’s Altoona shops.
• Former PRR Pullman sleeper no. 8007, the “Philadelphia County.” A 13-bedroom sleeper, the roller-bearing-equipped car was retired in 1967 after 30 years of service on trains including the “Broadway Limited.” According to Ozark Mountain’s website, the car has not been modified since it’s retirement. Reserve bid price is $1,900.
• Former Santa Fe stainless steel coaches nos. 3083 and 2400. The cars are 1938 and a 1939 respectively Budd-built long-distance coaches, both of which have been used as a parts source for other cars. The reserve price on each car is $3,200.
Other items included in the auction are Milwaukee Road refrigerator car no. 37191; Lake Erie & Western camp car no. X50571; PRR box car no. 497329; Swift Premium refrigerator cars nos. 25011, 25019 and 25023; U.S. Navy boxcar no. 4828; Louisville & Nashville box car no. 112088; a wooden Wabash box car; and a wooden, outside-braced boxcar believed to have been built for the Wabash Railroad.
A timeline for the scrapping of the unsold equipment is not listed.
For more information, visit ozarkmountainrailcar.com.
@Ce Mc: The remaining hulks will be scrapped in place. First cut up with torches, picked up by an end loader and dumped into the back of the dump truck and hauled off to a metals recycler.
The remaining crossings will be taken out by the local highway departments. Rail sold for scrap and the rubber crossing materials recycled for other run down crossings (Indiana has a lot).
The signaling equipment will be disconnected from power, the signal stands removed & collected and sold on the resale market.
It’s too bad that there is an anti-transit constituency that holds sway in the houses of Indiana government. That ROW would have made the foundation for transit to Indy from the north side as that is where the growth is. As it stands now it will join the Monon Trail.
Will the City of Noblesville be on the hook for the costs of scrapping? It would only be fitting as without a rail connection transporting the items to the scrappers will be expensive – more expensive than any scrap value they will get from the equipment.
On the other hand, give credit where due. Well-intentioned men scrambled through different time periods to save what most roads couldn’t bother with. They saw clearly that “it was now or never.”
And FWIW back in 1980 or so I spent an enjoyable day at IRM.
“Save everything, and you’ll end up preserving nothing.” Jim Bistline
Having the TRAINS published directory of rail museums, I would agree that there are way too many museums. Having visited many of them, I would agree that some are just barely above junkyard status.
Train museums and preservation are like church nurseries, everybody wants one, but no one wants to volunteer themselves.
Being so run on the cheap, most “museums” are made up of two distinct characteristics.
One working engine and several rows of derelict rail cars, and mountains of rusted out parts (for cars and for tracks) so that the museum actually looks more like a hoarders paradise than a place to understand history.
I get it, its a bygone era but we can’t save everything and there just isn’t enough people with the dough to support this kind of hobby.
I have seen more rusted out Swift bacon reefers than I thought existed in real life. It seems everyone wanted to save them.
Unfortunately, restoring an FP is not the same as restoring a 57 Chevy in your backyard garage.
Just ask the guy who bought that Alco FA hulk in Mexico and did a full working restoration and painted it in Nickel Plate so he could relish in his childhood. Definitely not a cheap way to indulge a hobby.
It’s was a worthy effort whose time has come and moved on.
Another testimony to the three dictums of museums: 1) maintain your roof 2) own everything on your property (including the property) and 3) monitor every penny. Kotler, Neil G. and Philip Kotler. 1998. Museum Strategy and Marketing : Designing Missions, Building Audiences, Generating Revenue and Resources. Jossey-Bass.
Link If you are in the museum industry, read this book.
I just drove through Fishers, IN today. The tracks and ties have already been removed. Crossings are still inact for now, but the end is not far. All to satisfy the Nimbys.
We would be better off with fewer albeit well funded and maintained railroad museums. Too many of them are just one step above being a railroad junk yard.
Years ago the Santa Fe and MKT gave Temple, TX a steam locomotive, two passenger cars, a troop sleeper, two or three cabooses, a box car, and two diesel locomotives. Apparently the equipment was accepted without any thought of how it would be maintained. And it hasn’t haven’t been!
The steam locomotive – a Pacific – had deteriorated to the point that it appeared on the verge of falling apart. So, someone came up with the money to paint it. Black! All black! Everything! It looks awful to someone who knows how it should look. To make matter worse, there is a picture of the locomotive when it was in service. It surely was not painted all black. I may be in the minority, but to paint a beautiful Pacific locomotive all black is a travesty.
The equipment sits behind the Temple and former Santa Fe’s division office building. It is one of the best period examples of a midwestern railroad building that I have seen. The city and state have built two attractive buildings on the sides of a plaza that fronts the building. The buildings and plaza draw one to the beautiful Santa Fe Building. The plaza is appropriately named Sante Fe Plaza.
For those arriving or departing on the Texas Eagle, the impression probably is not so grand. They are treated to a string of derelict railroad locomotives and car. As if to add insult to injury, the equipment partially blocks the view of the backside of the building, which is just beautiful as the front side.
The situation in Temple is an excellent example of the powers that be accepted a freebie without any thought of how they would keep it up. Most of them probably are dead. And their legacy has been handed off to the present administration, which apparently has no idea what to do with the equipment.
Milwaukee Road EMD F7B no. 68B…. The locomotive … must be trucked from the property. The equipment is on an isolated line, all if it will have to trucked from the property.
Somebody please save the F-units. Covered wagons are becoming increasingly rare and these should be preserved. I would but I don’t have the means. Then, have them repainted back to the MILW livery.
I’d buy all of it if I could. Shame what’s happened to this museum
when I viewed the auction, it said that the would start on Monday at 7am CST/8am EST and end on Wednesday at 7pm CST/8pm EST