Who Loses if the Commission Sells the Birdcages?

No. 3 -- VIRGINIA AND TRUCKEE RAILWAY -- Nevada Railroad Reconstruction Chronicles

I will use this post for at least this one follow-up. After the discussion noted in the previous post Bonnie Weber continued to triangulate. Contradicting her early statements that the cars should be used in a parade, she then took the tack that it was time to see them go. More discussion ensued and then Dwight Millard said something, and I don't think he realized how funny it was!

He said that the only loser in the whole situation is the Western Pacific Museum because they will no longer get the rent money. I can't speak for FRRS or WPRM, but I think their attitude would be "don't let the door hit you on the way out."

If the Commission had taken care of these cars they would have been moved into the fenced yard a long ago. As it is now, all the traffic that goes by on the UP mainline gets a bad first impression of the Western Pacific Railroad Museum.

The many UP freight engineers who go by may not care much about the museum's "front door" on the rails. On the other hand, the UP 844 steam special went by this year with many passengers. There were both UP bigwigs and paid passengers who rode up through the Feather River Canyon. (Just to make you jealous, I rode from Portola to Winnemucca in a UP dome car, it was great!)

More to the point, last year Amtrak made many detours with the California Zephyr through Portola due to trackwork on Donner Pass. Every Amtrak passenger got a bad first impression of the WPRM.

Dwight Millard makes good points most of the time, but suggesting the WPRM would be the loser must have a lot of people in Portola laughing.