What happened to the California State Railroad Museums locomotives?

It seems to me that every single railfan who has ever heard of CSRM has a different story or a different report on the various intrigues surrounding the ATSF engines and the Locomotive works.

For example, that 2009 article talks about the Museum leasing the shop buildings. It is my understanding that CSRM was gifted the buildings it's using from UP and they aren't leasing anything. They are the CSRM's to do with as they please and that this little fact caused a large amount of delay in the various projects as it was not understood by all parties.

Again, many a railfan will still tell you that the City and business interests are going to kick them out when in fact they have no power to do so.

Another good one I once heard is that the business development's Environmental impact assessments drilled down to 200 feet and still found contaminants and so it would be impossible to rezone the land at all. This is clearly not true since the project moved past that point.

As for the 2 locomotives. 844's tender derailed on the curve before it hit the diamond back in September. So the curves are too tight for a Centipede Tender. Neither of the Santa Fe Engines have that kind of tender though so I'd assume the 4-8-4 is good to go. The 2-10-4 might be a different story.

 

Got you.

The last word I had on who owns the shops? Understood it to be CSRM. Interesting news with regard to the rail yard going in. There's another video out there describing it but you will have to find it on your own. I ain't embedding it...grin!

 

I am the project manager for Township 9 (http://www.t9ontheriver.com/). Township 9 is at North 7th and Richards Blvd in the site of the former Bercut Richards Cannery, adjacent to the Railyards. T9 and The Railyards are the two major urban infill projects in Sacramento, although our project is much further along. We've already built out our first phase of streets, parks, and gone vertical with residential structures. Our project is almost identical to the Railyards in that we

Thomas Enterprises foreclosed on the Railyards Project three years ago. The City of Sacramento has taken ownership of the project. I'm pretty involved in its progress because both the Railyards and T9 use Prop 1C Infrastructure Improvement Grant Funds ($55mm for Railyards, $30mm for us), and the same City staffers who handle our disbursement requests for funds, also run the Railyards funding.

Currently, they are busy at work with infrastructure and soil remediation. It's called a "brownfield" project, but this site should really be called BLACKfield. The soil is incredibly contaminated (obviously). They have also recently completed the track realignment, and the 5th and 6th street overpasses which will provide the main ingress/egress for The Railyards.

The Sacramento Library Archives have thousands of great pictures of the Railyards in its heyday. I got to tour the buildings about two years ago and it was quite incredible. The amount of history there is unfathomable.

Sacramento's Historic Preservation Committee will do a great job with The Railyards, just as they did with our historic Cannery site. I've seen quite a few of the renderings and they are almost all railroad oriented.

This is a massive project -it is said to be the largest active urban infill project in the Country (244 acres). The fact that progress has been slow in this economy is no shocker. However, Sacramento's real estate market is red hot right now. In addition, with the new ownership of the Sacramento Kings and the new arena that will developed in the next 2-3 years, we (in the Downtown real estate business) expect development to explode over the next five years. The Kings ownership change happened 1.5 weeks ago, and we already have hundreds of new & foreign investors visiting Downtown sites. It's getting pretty crazy, and also very exciting for us in the business.

The president of the Sacramento Rotary, who is also chair to the Railyards Railroad Technology Museum spent a week in a class with me a couple months back. He informally asked me to sit on the board for the new museum because they didn't have anyone from the real estate development business yet. Needless to say, I am quite excited about that!

Noah

EDIT: Jeff Dorso in that video is one of my close friends. haha, funny, just watched that for the first time.

 

The City of Sacramento owns the shops from what I understand. However, they have already been designated the structures as historic landmarks so they are already slated for preservation -likely with an adaptive reuse spin.

 

I really don't believe the City would kick them out. They are in support of preserving the history as much as all of us are.

Here's the Draft EIR to eliminate any speculation on soils: http://www.cityofsacramento.org/dsd/projects/railyards/deir/
My guy at Geocon Environmental who is now working on Railyards says it's a crap ton of aeration and removal, but they'll get there (1,000,000:1).

 

I took some photos of the shops back in the day:


Somewhere, I have several more, one where you can see the top of a Santa Fe steam loco over the diesels.
Also, I was there in Old Sac with my son, walking along the river and turntable area of the museum. We didn't get a chance to go inside, but we did see the the diamonds and a Capitol Corridore train crossing the river.

 

I also took a short video while we were in Sacramento. We were just in time to watch them put the trains to bed:

[video=youtube_share;UHqHhZqF6rk]http://youtu.be/UHqHhZqF6rk[/video]

 

And here's the Capitol Corridor train crossing the river by the musuem.

 

I dunno what it is, but it was cool to watch!