Calling SW Ohio Gaugers...

[nkp_174]

Most groups have a hard time turning away equipment...and then find themselves spread too thin. They fail to tarp or repaint their wooden equipment and it falls further behind. The have too many locomotives and so some rust away (why don't they tarp them???). I've heard it suggested by people with museum and operations experience that the best thing that can be done in some cases is to just cut up insignificant equipment (1950s cabooses and such) which need work...so that they neither distract the organization nor the visitors from the valuable parts of their collection.

Connersville used to run both their prairie and their EBT 0-6-0...but both were sidelined (illegal lap seam boilers). They managed to scrape up the money for a new boiler for the 2-6-2. You may recall the maxim measure twice, cut once? Well, that new boiler is a good reminder of why :cry: The EBT engine is toiling in the weeds at the back of the place...looking terrible...it is the only surviving 0-6-0 I can think of which represents 1880s and 1890s switch engines (it was built to an obsolete design when new).

For groups which operate some of their equipment, it tends to skew their efforts towards it and cause a disproportional degree of neglect on what needs just a little attention...and allows those pieces to slip away. The need to keep something operational distracts from basic protection of the other equipment. It makes it difficult to be both a museum and an operator.