HANDS ACROSS THE SEA - IN REVERSE
Chapter 2
As reported in Issue 78 of REPORT preliminary investigations are still underway toward requirments for shipping the recently donated French Railways "Liberation Mikado" 2-8-2 from France to San Diego (see builder's photo of sister engine at right; from collection of H. L. Broadbelt).
About all that can be reported this month are some early estimates of the shipping costs and assuming PSRMA has to underwrite the entire project here is a partial cost breakdown:
Ship Tariff: ...................$10,500.00
Crane Service-San Diego: .........6,500.00
Custom House Broker Service: .......350.00
AT&SF Movement Charge: ........appx 800.00
Crane Service-La Havre, France: .......???
Dunnage: ..............................???
With any luck we will receive condiderable reducticns in these charges, but to date this has not occured.
Also since the last issue, a few more facts concerning the history of the locomotive have come to light:
The correct road number in the French style is 141R1199, with the 141R refering to the class of locomotive and the 1199 being the individual number applied to the PSRMA donation. The actual erection date of our locomotive has been narrowed down to late 1946 or January of 1947. The locomotive carries the Baldwin Locomotive Works serial number 73048. The French Railways have informed PSRMA that some spare parts as well as maintenance records for the locomotive are available.
In service the 141Rf locomotives were capable of pulling 600-ton passenger jobs at 65 miles-per-hour or 1500-ton freights at 30 mph. The design of this class incorporated a perfect combination of simplicity and modernity. As recently as 1969 hundreds of these 2-8-2's were still storming the French countryside, although few remain today.
H. Chalmers Kerr, Jr., who masterminded the donation, has already gotten the massive fund-raising campaign underway. News releases have been sent out and the local press has given us good coverage} as of May 28th both San Diego papers, the Daily Californian, and the Escondido paper had carried the story.
The Associated Press has picked up the story, and hopefully it has been carried by other papers across the States. News releases with a photo have been sent to major U.S. and European newspapers as well as hobby publications. The news has been aired on radio KFMB and KOGO, and we expect special coverage about the Museum plus the donation on TV 10 and 8 in the near future.