For everyone that's keeping score on the Oregon Transportation Museum (a.k.a. Oregon State Railroad Museum) and Don L. Kirk, it appears that the domain registration has expired (http://www.osrm.org); Google has archived the site but going to the URL directly goes to a placeholder site.

I've done a little research and it appears he took the time to register the corporation with the State of Oregon and the corporate registration is valid. So he is at least registered with the Oregon Secretary of State's office.

As for Christian Way Baptist Church, there is also a corporation registration with California's Secretary of State Office (http://kepler.ss.ca.gov/corpdata/ShowAllList?QueryCorpNumber=C2861002). However there is virtually nothing in Google searches or in the local newspaper (http://www.redding.com) for this church, which is pecular since most churches/ministries will usually be listed in small town newspapers or have at least one news article about it.

The given street address (on the archived website - 12143 Mac's Rd. Redding, CA) appears to be valid but appears to be nothing more than a residence; this in itself isn't necessarily a problem (many charities lack a full time office and use the office of the charity's secretary, treasurer or president as their address; further many churches are based out of homes or actually have remodeled homes, or are otherwise located in residential neighborhoods) but it does raise questions as to just whose address it is and what activities take place at the given address. Google Earth shows nothing that appears to be a "church" (i.e. parking lot, playground, oversized building) so I'll assume it's just a house.

However the California Secretary of State's site gives a different address - 2361 S BONNYVIEW RD, Redding, California. This location, per Google Earth, is a larger building with some type of a parking lot, located just off of SR 273 and near the Union Pacific mainline. This address appears to have a little bit more legitimacy.

BUT: Google search on this address finds the following:

1. [redding.craigslist.org]
2. [ci.redding.ca.us]
2a. [weblink.ci.redding.ca.us]

Well, the 1st is somewhat interesting.
The 2nd and 3rd could reason the change of address...except neither list the Church as the owner of the property. That's strange...

So, my biggest question is that his website had stated that he was offering IRS tax-deduction receipts; however if there is no valid record of his entity (Oregon Transportation Museum) or the Christian Way Baptist Church being a registered non-profit tax-exempt entity through the IRS - this might be a BIG problem (especially for anyone that donated anything to him, and if they took the deduction on it!!)

Again - nothing **proves** that the OTM/OSRM is a "sham", but it certainly raises a LOT of questions. Nothing prevents anyone from registering with the Secretary of State in any state, but why would someone take the time, effort and money for nothing? Most churches are somewhat visible so I'm curious to know why there is so little on the church. If it's a Street Ministry as Mr. Kirk claims, what kind of work do they do? How do they do it? How many members do they have? What are their fundraising plans? And no one seems to have the answer as to why the "church" "owns" the "Oregon Transportation Museum", I find this to be strange in that non-profit organizations usually don't have "owners". I have heard of organizations that are subordinate to another for some simplicity sake, but this is usually a very temporary measure at best.

Mr. Kirk ought to get his webpage back up and running, and start documenting the legitimacy of his project. What is the business plan? I want to see the IRS tax-exempt certificate, it takes a few minutes (and can be done at most city libraries) to scan it and save it as a .JPG file. A lot of the material he had on the site was somewhat worthless (and a few things were ripped off of other sites, like is "purchasing a railcar advice" from Illinois Transit, which has since disbanded or at least shut down their website.) Why not put an artifact inventory on the website? Show plans for multiple cities - what were the plans in Sutherlin, and in Sweet Home, and in Dundee and in Sheridan? (I'm sure there were a few other suggested towns.)

Lots of questions, few answers... Either that or he has decided to give up. Let's just hope that if he does give up, that he donates his "collection" (whatever it is) to an existing, legitimate railroad museum. There's a dozen between Seattle and Oakland.