So Craig T made a comment to me that if I want to get pictures of the STMA MOW and other cars they have in their yard I had better hurry because they were scrapping it all.
I drove down today to take some pictures of the rib side caboose brake gear because I can’t find where I saved any photos of it. And much to my surprise their yard is virtually empty. They indeed are scrapping all the iron they had on side tracks. Fortunately one of the two rib sides was still there, and it is the right one with older brake gear. So I got good pictures of that.
Also still there was the unusual plow that looks like a shop build plow made from either a rib side caboose or a rib side box car ( I am thinking the later). Other than their locos and log cars, the three pieces I want to model are the rib side caboose, that weird plow, and their old school Jordan spreader. But gone is the Jordan spreader.
After talking to one of the workers there, I got there in the nick of time. The caboose is sold and will be gone in short order to another railroad for restoration ( I am guessing in their colors, or back to the original Milwaukee colors but who knows). Fortunately last year I was allowed to climb all over it with a tape measure, paper, and a camera. So I have that one pretty well covered. The weird plow is likely the next in line for the torch. Now I have no desire to even come close to modeling it exactly. They cobbled it together and so will I . But I got more pictures today just in case. And the I have decent pictures of the spreader from previous trips, but best of all I have an unassembled HO kit of the exact style that I can copy and scale up.
So for my purposes I was not all that heart broken. But as a rail fan in general they had some pretty neat and unusual stuff right beside the road for years that you could admire. It was an ad hock museum. But no longer. I understand why, its an eye sore to most, a pile of rust to the crew, and scrap iron which is money to the owner. It was never going to be used again and like the employee told me most of it was so old and so far gone that it couldn’t have been moved to a rail museum if one even wanted it.
I get it, railroads are in the business of making money and useless scrap iron is only worth what the scrapper will give you. I can’t blame them one bit. But it does break my heart a little more than a bit to see it all go.