I suppose it's common to find old pieces of railroad equipment sitting on sidings in various states of disrepair throughout the world, but some of the ones that exist in my local area really bug me. Here in the backwoods areas of West Virginia, numerous old buildings, houses, trains, and other antiquities seem to somehow survive for decades past their prime. Long after they've disappeared almost everywhere else, they somehow manage to hang on. And yet no one ever seems to care...
They're doomed to simply slowly rust away. They often exist only for a brief while longer, until some of the locals get in an uproar about the "eyesore" in their community and the old relicts are finally torn down or scrapped. It's really amazing to me that the state, which fancies itself as being a "tourist destination", plays little or no attention to the preservation of the more the interesting old things that have somehow manage to survive 'way past their era...
Case in point (below): An 0-4-0 "fireless cooker" and a C&O coach has been sitting derelict on a siding in Hinton, W.Va. for over a decade now, and meanwhile, the vandals and the elements have slowly taken their toll on both of them.
More pics here...
I can remember driving through South Charleston, WV one morning over 15 years ago and doing a "double take" as I noticed the above locomotive, along with two other old steam locomotives, sitting in the yard tracks in front of the Union Carbide plant. I thought for a second or two I must have surely been caught up in a time-warp of some kind! But I soon found out the story: It seemed these old steamers had been stored inside the plant, protected from the elements, for decades, until someone at the plant decided they needed to go. At that time, the three old "tank" steam locomotives were in remarkably good shape, having been stored inside for years.
And so, "go" the old steamers went: One went to Hinton, and one to Oak Hill. I'm not certain what happen to the 3rd loco. The one in Oak Hill, WV is in somewhat better shape than the one at Hinton, but it too has been sitting outside rusting away for some time now. I wouldn't be surprised to see it being carted off the scrap yard sometime in the near future.
Around here at least, the problem usually isn't raising money or getting volunteers for the restoration efforts -- it's getting the local civil leaders, elected official, and local citizens to support (or even allow) such efforts to happen. The locals who claim such things are "eyesores" are usually the only ones that the local politicians seem to listen to... One city recently kicked the local railroad historical society out of town, apparently because they'd been making too many restoration efforts. Part of the "problem" seemed to be that the group was "guilty" of painting the station they restored back to its original orange color. (Apparently, there is no eyesore more hideous than an orange colored eyesore!)
Does this sort of stupity happen elsewhere, or is this just a West Virginia "thing"?
They're doomed to simply slowly rust away. They often exist only for a brief while longer, until some of the locals get in an uproar about the "eyesore" in their community and the old relicts are finally torn down or scrapped. It's really amazing to me that the state, which fancies itself as being a "tourist destination", plays little or no attention to the preservation of the more the interesting old things that have somehow manage to survive 'way past their era...
Case in point (below): An 0-4-0 "fireless cooker" and a C&O coach has been sitting derelict on a siding in Hinton, W.Va. for over a decade now, and meanwhile, the vandals and the elements have slowly taken their toll on both of them.
More pics here...
I can remember driving through South Charleston, WV one morning over 15 years ago and doing a "double take" as I noticed the above locomotive, along with two other old steam locomotives, sitting in the yard tracks in front of the Union Carbide plant. I thought for a second or two I must have surely been caught up in a time-warp of some kind! But I soon found out the story: It seemed these old steamers had been stored inside the plant, protected from the elements, for decades, until someone at the plant decided they needed to go. At that time, the three old "tank" steam locomotives were in remarkably good shape, having been stored inside for years.
And so, "go" the old steamers went: One went to Hinton, and one to Oak Hill. I'm not certain what happen to the 3rd loco. The one in Oak Hill, WV is in somewhat better shape than the one at Hinton, but it too has been sitting outside rusting away for some time now. I wouldn't be surprised to see it being carted off the scrap yard sometime in the near future.
Around here at least, the problem usually isn't raising money or getting volunteers for the restoration efforts -- it's getting the local civil leaders, elected official, and local citizens to support (or even allow) such efforts to happen. The locals who claim such things are "eyesores" are usually the only ones that the local politicians seem to listen to... One city recently kicked the local railroad historical society out of town, apparently because they'd been making too many restoration efforts. Part of the "problem" seemed to be that the group was "guilty" of painting the station they restored back to its original orange color. (Apparently, there is no eyesore more hideous than an orange colored eyesore!)
Does this sort of stupity happen elsewhere, or is this just a West Virginia "thing"?
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