Whoops

A truly bizarre story has emerged from the Seashore Trolley Museum. They've accidentally scrapped one of their cars.

The car in question, shown above in photos taken this past March, was Waterville Fairfield & Oakland 60. One of about a dozen cars at Seashore hailing from Maine, it was originally built in 1923 by Brill for the Plymouth & Brockton Street Railway in Massachusetts as their car 400. In 1928, it was sold to the WF&O in Maine, where it operated until retirement in 1937. Its body came to Seashore in 1991 as part of the "Last Roundup" carbody collecting frenzy and it's been in storage since then. It was the last WF&O car and the last P&B car in existence, and was a moderately rare example of a double-truck Birney.

So, how do you accidentally scrap a car? Seashore emailed out a statement outlining the chain of events, which I've reproduced below for posterity. They brought in an outside company, evidently a scrapper, with an eye toward having the scrapper cut up Ottawa 825, which is on their "re-homing list." However, after consulting with the scrapper, they decided to put off this job because car 825 wasn't easily accessible to heavy equipment. And yet, museum volunteers evidently didn't get the word that the job had been put off; decided to invite the scrapper to cut up car 825 anyway; and then had the scrappers start on the wrong car. The result was that the scrapper had already started demolishing WF&O 60 by the time anyone realized something was amiss.

The museum is now stripping parts from the body and disposing of what's left. I've removed car 60 from the PNAERC list, leaving Seashore with 189 cars on the list. This particular car had presented a potential conundrum to Seashore; they've been rapidly deaccessing their sizable collection of deteriorated car bodies, of which this was clearly one. On the other hand, this particular car was also a part of the prized collection of Maine cars, making it a candidate to stay in the collection despite its condition. That decision is moot now.

The official statement from Seashore:

Dear Members of Our Valued Community,

I am reaching out to inform you of an unfortunate incident that occurred on Wednesday, July 24, which has affected our museum collection.

Due to the age and deterioration of some of the pieces in our collection, the decision was made by our Board of Trustees to de-accession specific cars that are beyond restoration so they can be offered through our re-homing efforts to other museums and hobbyists. After several months or years of pursuing another home for these items, the Curatorial Committee, authorized by the Board of Trustees, voted to move these cars to the campus scrap list. Our professional staff, along with Seashore volunteers or third-party contractors, would then manage the scrapping process.  We have policies in place for these activities, a series of checks and balances, to control how the cars in our collection are managed, the pace at which we seek to re-home an item, and steps in place for what needs to happen prior to scrapping a car in our collection before this work is completed. 

This year, the museum contracted a company we have used in the past to help us advance our car body scrapping efforts. In April 2024, upon review of the location of one car body in the scope of work, Ottawa 825, museum leadership and the contractor decided that we would not pursue this project with this contractor until other steps were taken by our yard crew to make the car body accessible to scrapped; the car body is currently not accessible to the needed machinery. These steps were communicated in writing by the contractor, and the timeline to pursue removing Ottawa 825 was pushed into fall 2024 to allow the volunteer-led departments involved in this process the time to complete this pre-work.

However, on July 24, without the knowledge of museum leadership, this contractor subcontracted directly with Seashore volunteers to scrap the Ottawa 825 car body. The contractor brought in equipment for another project the contractor was completing on campus and offered the equipment to these individuals to use to complete this work. 

Assuming this contractor had arranged this project with the museum's leadership, the subcontracted volunteers began what they thought was work to help the museum move forward on our scrapping initiatives.  The subcontracted volunteers did not confirm this work with our Executive Director, nor did they confirm the location of Ottawa 825 with our Executive Director, which are two of the steps listed in our scrapping policy. Several minutes into this work, the subcontracted volunteers realized that they had begun scrapping the wrong car body; instead of Ottawa 825, the team was in the process of scrapping Waterville 60.  Museum leadership was informed of the error after significant damage to the car's roof and vestibules had already been done.

The Curatorial Committee asked Restoration Shop staff and volunteers to assess the condition of Waterville 60 the following day; all reported that due to the car body's current location and condition, nothing within the museum's means can be done to safely continue preserving Waterville 60. The Curatorial Committee unanimously recommended to the Board of Trustees to de-accession Waterville 60 for immediate scrapping, and the Board of Trustees held an informational meeting on Friday July 26 and a follow-up email vote in accordance with our bylaws to do so. With the boards affirming vote, our Executive Director is now leading the efforts to remove Waterville 60, working with the contractor and other campus volunteers to come up with a plan for the safe removal of parts from the car body prior to completing the scrapping efforts.

Museum policy states that confirmation of a car’s demolition with leadership must be completed prior to taking any action. While this did not happen, leading to this loss to our collection of Waterville 60 and the added expense of needing to scrap the intended car, the issue has been addressed with those involved.  Reminders of this policy have been issued.  The museum will no longer be working with this contractor to scrap items in our collection or on our property.  We're also reviewing current museum policies for changes that may prevent a repeat of this event.

As valued members of our museum community, we wanted to share these details as you may have heard about the incident and we know you value the preservation of rail history as we all do.  This is a loss for our collection and historic transit preservation. While Waterville 60 was not one of the Maine trolleys listed in the National Register of Historic Places, nor has it ever received high enough priority within our collection to receive indoor storage, the car body is believed to be the last of its kind and is the only double truck Birney car in our collection.

We value the contributions of our volunteers and recognize that this museum’s operations would not be possible without their hard work, knowledge, and generosity with their time. The tremendous growth we have experienced over the past decade is a result of those of us who have worked together as a team to accomplish great things. Working alone or in silos is no longer a fit for our collaborative campus culture. This is a stark reminder that all of us need to work together to continue to move the museum and our collection forward; our Executive Director Katie Orlando and Director of Museum Operations Steve Berg must serve as the main contacts for all work taking place on our campus to prevent incidents like this from occurring again in the future.

Thank you for your understanding and continued support.