I agree. The whole scene with them is strange, to hide them away with disinterest and without any sort of plan for preservation. I'll bet any number of operating museums would love to purchase them, especially the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in view of the unit's NYC, Monongahela and D&H heritage. In the very least, the rare 608A engines within should be prepared for long term storage to help preserve crankshaft surfaces, cylinder liners, injectors, rings and such.
I believe one had suffered a crankshaft failure. But anything can be fixed by a determined effort- regardless of price, etc.
Agreed, it has been a very mysterious deal. Wonder if we will ever see them again or if they will rust away to nothing behind closed doors? Somehow some way, something bad must have happened to make the owner lock them away like that.
My memory is the story included trespassers, vandals and thieves, in the time when these were acquired.
Usually, the copper in all the traction motor cables is the first stolen for the scrap value, along with any other wires they can get they're hands on. There was a string of an old BNSF GP38, 2 GP30's, and an SD9 near my work and they were picked clean like chicken bones after a week in a siding. They all ran when they were parked, but BNSF ended up scrapping them for being too costly to repair after that. Luckily, the SD9 went to Skykomish WA for display.
Sounds as though the thieves knew something about those engines. By that I mean they had possibly been involved in railroading, at one time... This kind of brazen theft smells like organized work. And, the recycler who bought the copper must have known quite well what they purchased was not something any random individual might bring in....
Same thing happened to the old switcher we used to borrow to move our museum cars around at the storage siding in east Houston. When the warehousing business there closed up, we offered to store the locomotive behind our fence that is topped with razor wire. The owner declined and within a month, there was hardly anything left that could not be cut of and carted away to be sold at scrap value. The engine was not pretty but it ran and worked good enough until then. We had a hard enough time with vandals on the old sleeping car seen in the background. We had it out from behind the fence to work on it to get it ready to ship to a museum in Arizona.
I am so proud to be an American. So proud, NOT!!!, to live among such low class gutter trash, who are protected by.... Well, I won't go there. What comes into mind in these instances is such as the "Code of Hammurabi".
Used to be that most people knew the difference between right and wrong, but now it seems that an increasing number of people base their decisions on what they can get away with. And you can get away with a lot .....
Meanwhile, we continue our steady decline and fall. When we finally crash into the bottom, those same folks who let such activities slide, will be very, very shocked their ideals failed.
Amtrak's Train 9 skirts Puget Sound at Mukilteo, WA, June 15, 1973 (Thomas G. Acheson) Amtrak's Empire Builder arriving at Seattle, WA, June 15, 1973 (Thomas G. Acheson)
I did a bit of looking on Google Maps and found the location of this photo. It is just south of Safeco Field. The photographer is standing on Edgar Martinez Drive (South) looking towards the South. The area has changed significantly, but the arched roof building above all the maintenance of way equipment is still standing. The train itself is Train 7, which is the Westbound train, so I do believe this to be an arrival at Seattle. (Map Coordinates: 47.590272, -122.331056)
Just to the right is where the Kingdome is just starting to be built. This area is now all Amtrak and Sounders servicing.
This is the WB Empire Builder, which took the NP route over Stampede Pass, (never did figure out why it was switched to NP tracks!), so it is coming up NB from Auburn.
This would have been during the time when they switched train routes at Spokane. The North Coast Hiawatha went via ex-GN, and the EB went via ex-NP. Like you, I have never heard or read any explanation for this. It ended in 1979, when the NCH was dropped. Which was what killed train traffic over (Montana) Homestake Pass.
Yeah, woulda' been a cool ride over the Milw, even though the ride itself was probably rough over Homestake!! And, it was detoured over Snoqualmie Pass awhile too! See alot of Milw thru Washington and Montana!
Homestake was in good shape back then. NP and BN kept it it good shape. I have a train order or two from a BN/ATK detour period. Washouts on Stampede Pass.
