NickD said:NickD said:NickD said:On the topic of #611, there were a lot of people disappointed to learn that she apparently will not be running on the Virginia Scenic Railway for the Goshen-Staunton Shenandoah Valley Limited, after running a couple of those trips late last fall.
Directly from the Buckingham Branch Railway/Virginia Scenic Railway's page. Definitely very strange when all of the trips were sold out last year, and BBR/VSR launched a pretty huge renovation at Goshen to accommodate the trips, including building a new 1500ft siding from scratch, access roads into a new 400 car parking facility and provisions for watering and coaling the #611, as well as rounding up cars for a train from all corners of the land and building a volunteer train crew of car hosts.
According to Ross Rowland, who seems to be involved at a certain level with this operation, there were perhaps some issues between BBR and Virginia Museum of Transportation. Sounded like BBR busted their ass getting Goshen set up and running the trips, and VMT didn't really back them up. There were also some rumored leadership issues within the #611 crew which added additional turmoil to the equation. The small crew who got it done last year said we need at least a year off to catch our breath. According to both Ross and the unnamed BBR employee, the BBR will likely run the trips again in 2025 but this year was too much.
Unfortunately, it sounds like another year will tick off the #611's boiler cert with no action. The #611 becomes due for her 1472 in 2030, and I have to wonder what the future will hold for her then. She was restored in 2015 for the NS 21st Century Steam program, which unexpectedly shut down in 2017, and since then it's always been a struggle to find a place for her to be able to run in the long-term.
Some more news has shaken out on this, and it sounds like things are getting kind of ugly at Virginia Museum of Transportation. Six board members resigned at the beginning of the recent membership meeting. Among them is a former official of Norfolk Southern who understands modern railroad operations as well as Will Harris who is the person who spearheaded the events last year in Goshen and funded them with his own personal money. That included, but was not limited to, constructing the new 1500ft long siding so the #611 and train had an operating base on his land, building a 400-car parking lot, building access roads into the facility, organizing the volunteer car host crews, locating and moving the 17 cars needed to make a train to Goshen, and ensuring there were coal & watering capabilities on site, and he did this using his own funds, and land, believing in the long term future for steam in VA. All of the transformation that took place to turn an open field into a stop point for excursions with parking and gravel pathways was paid for by him and not the museum.
Each board member that resigned apparently handed in a letter of resignation which included a list of the issues they had concerns about. All of the letters mentioned things such as....
1) financial irresponsiblity with the state money
2) VMT interference with the operations of the #611
3) Questions around locomotive maintenance and conditionA volunter who had been involved with VMT for years on this project and others, noted that the financial irresponsibility subject comes up often. There have been a lot of questions about the state funding and how it was spent or where it. When the "Fire Up 611" campaign kicked off back in 2015, part of the project's fundraising was for the VMT to construct a maintenance facility for the locomotive. All traces of this initiative and the program have been wiped clean from their site unfortunately. Every inspection and bit of work done on the locomotive has been done at Strasburg or the N.C. Transportation Museum. Questions about what happened to the money that was raised for the proposed locomotive facility that has not been built were always side-stepped. Some in the membership have also asked to see the financial records or where the money is going only to be told that this is private information despite VMT being a non-profit.
Also, moving forward, since Harris resigned from the Board, IF the #611 has a future on the Buckingham Branch, there exists the possibility that maybe he won't be willing to play nice anymore. Not trying to insinuate that Harris is vindictive or anything like that, but this could this could become a situation similar to what had developed on the East Broad Top where one guy, thinking he would be running the show owns a portion of land associated with the railroad, but since he isn't involved now can do whatever he wants and no one can do anything about it to stop him. Or Harris could effectively charge VMT ransom to store their locomotive on his siding/land and charge a per diem on any tickets sold originating from his location. Otherwise, VMT would have to find somewhere else with the logistical resources to do what has already been done in the most ideal location.
Some people reached out to VMT and tried to get any info, but mostly got the same ol' stuff run through a PR filter, including a delightful line about 'the board has always been unanimous', which is obviously bunk. You don't have six members of the board unexpectedly resign all at once if things are just peachy. They also said that they are "in support of the engine's operations" but as one volunteer on the #611 said, they were on layover in Crewe in 2017 and had a board member come up in the cab and tell him that he liked the engine to be at the museum since he thought it brought more people through the front door. So, guess they aren't unanimous.
Harris reportedly retired due to health concerns and a desire to spend more time with his grandchildren, and the statements have been that there's no discord on the board (no word from the other 5 board members) but "For health reasons and to spend more time with his family" is the oldest of shopworn excuses for a forced retirement. Right up there with "has left to pursue other opportunities". I'd be interested to see what each of the other quitting board members gave as their reason.
Doyle Mccormack once said that there are more cold engines sitting around for egotistical and political reasons rather than mechanical issues, and this seems to be a case of that. There definitely seems to be a steam locomotive curse: The more successful you are, the closer you come to a meltdown.
The crisis here continues to deepen. The local newspapers in Roanoke have gotten a hold of this tale, and now the resigned board members are pushing for an audit. One board member who hasn't resigned has said that "the museum is either audited or reviewed by Anderson & Reed accountants on an annual basis, although it’s been a few years since the last audit." Which seems to be contradictory. Resigned board members also showed places where financial numbers allegedly differed, such as with a large order of merchandise placed ahead of the Norfolk & Western J Class 611 steam engine excursions that happened in Goshen last fall. Among the 611 merchandise, museum staff ordered roughly 6,000 hats themed to the beloved steam engine, but sold fewer than 1,000 hats during the excursions, according to documents. They also showed documents where the museum’s cost to purchase each hat varied by almost $6 per piece, depending on which document. Pretty eyebrow-raising is that the letter said there is more than $130,000 worth of excess merchandise leftover from recent 611 excursions, after $230,000 of goods were purchased for an event budgeted at $65,000. Sounds like those who were making the excursion happen are mad that poor choices by others at the museum were tanking the profitability of the trip.
It raises lots of other troubling issues. One of them is that the VMT Board is in discussions with the FRA regarding allegations that the "point man" in charge of seeing to it that the locomotive was in compliance with all FRA regulations failed. Another is that there's still no accounting for the over $2 million grant for the railroad to construct a facility and store the locomotive. The facility has never been built in the 7 years since they fired up the #611 again, but no one can seem to say where the money is.
The VM/N&W #611 controversy continues to deepen.
I recently learned that after Will Harris, the former CEO of the VMT and the now-resigned board members who were aligned with him, put in tons of money and effort to run the highly successful #611 excursions run in Nov. 2023, some of the ones on the VMT Executive BOD (think a 'special' BOD within the BOD and the ones that make most of the decisions) also threatened to sue Will Harris under the assumption that he would be profiting by running the trips off of his property. Many, many 18 hour days were spent building an entire operating base in Goshen (on Harris's land) which included a brand new 1700 ft. long dedicated siding used for boarding, a 400-car parking lot, a large welcoming center tent that functioned as a waiting room, souvenir shop and credentials center, brand new 3/4 mile-long gravel entrance road off the main highway, 220V commercial power, city water line, ample lighting so as to fully function after sunset, extensive signage and on and on. That's right, as he is spending a very large amount of HIS own money on HIS own property, spending 7 days a week with 12+ hours a day on site, using his own guys from his lumber business on the project to make sure they get it done and to give THEM a place to run THEIR engine and make some money, these goofballs on the Executive BOD are trying threaten him with legal action. They have also recently told Will Harris to remove his ex-E.J. Lavino Co. 0-6-0 tank engine from the museum grounds.
VMT is claiming that they had an audit performed and there was no wrongdoing and money was accounted for. I'm not an accountant or a legal expert but someone on RYPN explained that VMT had an " agreed upon procedures engagement" and not audit and as such comes with restrictions on use and publication. VMT is using the report to publicly assert it's compliance with grant requirements and its financial health generally, but that that's not necessarily how an AUPE works and that the report doesn't really show financial health of the organization. It was all a lot of legalese and accountant speak that I didn't understand, but the gist of it was since we can't actually see the report, that neither confirms nor denies the accusations, and that type of procedure isn't really correct to address the implied deficiencies.
Now, this last bit is a rumor, although one that is implied to come from a solid source, and some of it is backed up by people who know workers and volunteers at the museum. The first part is that the state of Virginia offered VMT money in return that they run #611 out of Goshen again this year. Evidently VMT told the state "thanks, but no thanks" and that they would rather keep the engine on display in Roanoke. That lines up with previous statements by board members to volunteers about preferring the #611 to be on static display because it drives up visitorship at the museum when it's there. Another person confirmed that VMT has canceled the lease on the four Atlantic Railway bilevel commuter cars, and they knew that because one of their coworkers and a friend had been hired to prepare the cars for movement.
Also, it was rumored that VMT has not paid NS for any of the ferry moves from 2023, which is something I had heard in previous years too, like why it spent almost a year on static display at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania without running before the move to Goshen. Also NS is reportedly about to pull the switch for the two northernmost tracks at the museum as apart of realigning their mainline alongside the museum, and that the museum is also losing access to the two tracks that do not go under the covered portion of the railyard. If NS is pulling rail access to the museum, that's kind of the death knell for any immediate operations and I have to wonder what that will mean for the equipment they have stored out in the yard that they don't have room for. Based on Google Earth satellite photos, it's still there and includes, but is not limited to an NKP GP7, an RF&P E8, an NW/EL/CR SDP45, two wreck derricks, some other assorted diesels and passenger cars. They also have one or two ex-N&W 4-8-0s, the so-called "Lost Engines of Roanoke", out in the weeds there somewhere. If true, that doesn't sound like good news for VMT or #611, especially since #611 was carded in 2015, and therefore only has 5 more years of runtime left before her next 1472, and it certainly sounds like she won't be running in 2025.
Now, in regards to the state of Virginia wanting steam to return to Goshen, I have heard that they offered the same deal to another group which has accepted the offer, but they will not be ready until 2026 at the earliest. Hmmm, seems like a certain C&O 4-8-4 has announced that it will be undergoing a restoration and will be ready by 2026, and the BBR/VSR line is ex-C&O territory, plus Will Harris and that engine's former owner are quite friendly.
