There's gonna be a lot of pics here, but they're all reasonable in size...
Railroaders are, by nature,
hoarders to the extreme and it just gets ridiculous at some point and needs to be cleared out. And I'm in the midsts of cleaning out a lot of crap in the Lincoln/Havelock area. One of the things that we've decided to part with is an old Rotary Snowplow -- BN 972558 (ex-CB&Q 205099 and 205028). This old girl gave almost 100 years of service, but she was damaged pretty extensively a number of years back and was l laid-up. She was built by Alco in 1915, rebuilt in 1949, and was the very first rotary converted from Steam to Electric, so there is some history behind her. There's an accompanying RSPU (an old F9 B-Unit, BN 755 an old NP unit)
Not too many of these were built, and only a relative handful remain operational today. Right now the plow is slated for the scrapper. There will be an auction of various items in the area, but the plow has no commercial value outside of its scrap metal. I'd prefer to sell it to a historical society or Museum for the scrap value (which would probably be somewhere in the $10-$20K range with the RSPU, but I'm no expert on scrap prices or weights, I'm just organizing the local material for auction), but it's possible that our Corporate Relations team could work out a donation for a reputable organization. The units roll, but aren't suitable to run on the mainline without some extensive work to qualify them, so transportation would have to be arranged.
The RSPU is in great shape but hasn't been run in almost 5 years. It probably wouldn't take much to get it running again. The plow portion of the plow was virtually destroyed in the accident and will need extensive restoration. From the plow rearward, the unit is in what I'd call Good shape. The good news is that I found the original diagrams and prints for the plow inside a locker in the RSPU which would help restore it. The bad thing is that they have water damage (since dried) and suffer from being poorly stored for decades. I believe they're salvageable, but I'm no document restoration expert and I didn't want to mess with them to unfold them and check their condition for fear of worsening their condition.
I've got our Corporate Relations team and our Curator (yes, the BNSF has its own Curator) looking for a home with their contacts, but I figured it was worth a shot to see if anyone here might know of an organization that would be interested.
Here's a bunch of images, including a couple of the units from their heyday:
