Yes, there is communication between museums, historical societies and short lines. We’ve been contacted about an FM engine a few months back from a group needing to down size. While it is a running engine, it doesn’t fit our focus of the WP so we had to turn it down. We have members with connections all over the country. There are three engines out there we’d like to acquire but no funds to do so. They fit our museum and we’ve been contacted about them. Now the sale of the Milwaukee U25B was in the works several yrs before you saw it on the yahoo list I can assure you. There was a time we thought it wouldn’t get to a proper Milwaukee museum. One of the comments about the SD9’s were, there are quite a few still out there. At what point do they become rare enough to tackle a basket case such as 4450? I can’t answer that. While I personally would have liked to keep it, it would have been in the way and continued to deteriorate. Just because you didn’t see it on a Yahoo group doesn’t mean we didn’t offer it.
We have WP engines that will never run again. What do we do with them? One GP7 is a candidate to stuff and mount for display. What do we do with 6 running Geeps? We have four f units, three that run and the fourth to be restored. We have 3 WP switch engines, two run, one almost back into service, two cylinder liners waiting to get installed. We have one ex-SP TR6 that runs, we use it on our caboose train. We have a U30B that needs lots of TLC and money. I would love to get it running but that is unlikely. Also we have several CZ passenger cars waiting for restoration. As I keep saying, time, money and volunteers needed.
Greg Elems
