This wouldn't include the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad which is a hybrid between a tourist railroad and a legit transportation service. Unfortunately, we start off with some bad news....

 

www.trains.com

 

Ohio tourist line to be liquidated

Published: Wednesday, October 14, 2009

 

MINERVA, Ohio — An auctioneer will sell off the locomotives and cars of Minerva's Steam Railroad Museum tomorrow, the Canton (Ohio) Repository has reported. The museum operated diesel-powered excursions over two miles of Ohi-Rail Corp. track until rising costs shut the freight railroad down in 2006.

 

On the auction block are an Alco S2 and S4 diesel, passenger cars, a caboose, a baggage car, and machine shop equipment. However, Wheeling & Lake Erie 0-6-0 No. 3960 won't be included in the auction.

 

Not surpised. I am surprised this deosn't happen more orften. A lot of tourist lines start off with the best of intentions without a business plan. They simply don't realize what they are getting into.

The shame sometimes is that a lot of historic railroad equipment winds up being under-maintained (if maintained at all), because the money just isn't there to do it.  It sits and rusts and we lose it to decay.  The Minerva group actually did a fairly good job of maintaining what they had, so hopefully a better-funded rail museum will pick up the best of what they have.

Maybe Amtrak should start rounding up the Pullman Standard and Budd-built Heritage Fleet cars that ended up with tourist railroads, and re-shop them at Beech Grove ( :wink: ) to help alleviate rolling-stock shortages. Give the tourist roads a cash infusion, and put some wonderful cars back where they belong - cruising the Class I mainlines at 90-110 mph.

 

Seriously, those beautiful, solid, stainless-steel beauties, in good condition, provided a smoother, quieter ride than anything Amtrak owns now. At 90mph on NE Corridor track, I felt virtually no sensation of motion unless I looked out the window.

 

Straying OT. I shut up now.