Dale & Richard:
Thanks for the kind words. If anyone is likely to move a mine winding engine and re=erect it, Rick Rowlands would be the most likely. The happy truth is that the Germans seem to make an effort to preserve their industrial past, as well as preserving and keeping things like steam ice breakers operational and in steam regularly. Unfortunately, here in the USA, the same cannot be said. Unless a successful grass roots effort is mounted, or some influential people get into the loop, most preservation projects die along the way. The efforts to rebuild and return the coastal steamer "Nobska" is one such example, and the water pumping plant near Boston is another. The Nobska wound up as scrap, and the water pumping plant, with some incredible examples of steam pumping engines was mostly scrapped to make way for condos and trendy shops. I'd like to think the Germans will make some effort to preserve this last steam winder. It is too historic NOT to be preserved.
I think of the old ore carriers and the Hullets and so many other wonderful examples of working steam or industrial equipment ( like the Hullet unloaders). Instead of preserving some portion where it sat, intact, they wind up dismantled and laying in some outdoor boneyard awaiting the day they can be re-erected to show what once was. Fat chance of that with something like the Hullet unloaders. The old ore carriers which were in steam into the 1980's had some fine triple expansion engines in them. None, other than the "Valley Camp" at Sault Ste. Marie, MI, were preserved. The few preserved classic ore carriers all have turbines in them. The "Edna G", the last steam tug in active service to fly the US flag, sits at her dock in Two Harbors, MN, preserved but no plans to put her back in steam. She was in steam well into the 1980's. At least she was not cut up, but she did sit there until a full-blown asbestos abatement was done.
On the home front, which I mean quite literally, we are engaged in a fight for survival to keep the Catskill Mountain Railroad from being torn up for yet another Rail Trail. The amount of dirty fighting and plain underhandedness by the Ulster County Executive and this prize "Ecofacist" who is a self-appointed advocate for the rail trail is not to be believed. I am not going to write down all that has gone on, but suffice it to say that truth, logic, and anything rational does not prevail.
If anyone dragged in a German winding engine, they'd be confronted with the ecofacists hollering about asbestos, calling it a public health hazard (as they did to some of our old railroad passenger coaches awaiting restoration), and pull every quasi-legal manuver and overblown melodrama to beat the people with the winding engine to death so they would abandon and go away. As I said, we are in the fight of our lives, with the Rail Trail people trying to take 30 years of hard work from us, including rebuilding multispan steel railroad bridges, for a rail trail. They have every other former branch RR line in our county already as rail trails, but this one ecofacist has fixed her sights on our railroad, and the county exec has sided with her and come after us. Nothing about this is either just, rational, nor makes any sense fiscally or otherwise.
Better the engine stays in Germany with people who appreciate it and will care for it. Incidentally, the German word for scrapped is "verschrottet". I go to this German steam engine site pretty regularly to browse and daydream. All too often, you see engines that were in service into the 1980's with the word "verschrottet". Fortunately, a great number of stationary and marine steam engines, as well as winding engines are preserved or plans made to preserve them. Some have been relocated to museums, and some few still can be put in steam. A far cry from the USA, sorry to say.
Actually, I do have a few somewhat different uses for that winding engine, now that Dale mentions the idea. I won't elaborate.
