Re: D&RGW 375 in Durango

I read an article one time, a rather sad one, about municipalities and steam locomotive/railroad equipment donations. They pretty much looked at it as a White Elephant. Or a money-pit. First, you had to have a section of track, probably a concrete pad, a fence, and you'd have to paint it, maintain it, clean up graffiti, and broken windows. And of course, insurance. Somebody was goin g to climb on the darn thing drunk and fall off. Usually, there were local railfans pushing for a great big wonderful locomotive that would take up half the town's budget, and to assuage the voters, they would try to minimize the city budget damage by taking on something a - bit smaller. Of course, those fine voters pushing to have that Erie Triplex never contribute time or money to take care of it. And then, some group or another comes along, promises to "restore it to operation" then takes it apart, spreads it all over the place, and then "runs out of money." And the poor town fathers have to clean up the mess. Seems like that happened kind of recently...

RGS 20 cost $2 million to restore to operation. And she's tiny. A beautiful locomotive, but tiny nonetheless. Imagine how much it would cost to restore something like a Big Boy!

Or maintain one in a park. 4004 was restored cosmetically a couple of years ago, it looks great! Behind a $45000 fence.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/25/2022 10:54PM by rdamurphy.