  YOU ARE BROWSING THE OLD STEAMCENTRAL.COM. TO SEE OUR LATEST ENTRIES, CLICK HERE. | ||
| Why Don't Our Museums Measure Up? | ||
| by John A. Craft | ||
| I've been corresponding recently with a friend about the definition of preservation. John's contention is that saving the skills once common in railroading is as important as saving the equipment, buildings and infrastructure that we cherish. No argument there; the fear of losing the skills required to overhaul steam locomotives was a real concern of many in the 1960s, which fortunately has turned out to be at least partially misplaced. | ||
| But John raised the bar with his statement that train-handling skills were passing away. In a sense he's right - most mainline trains today are controlled with dynamic brakes, not air brakes, and there's noone left on any railroad with substantial steam experience (remember, steam has been gone for more than 40 years in most locations). Steve Lee has made the point that if full-time diesel engineers are at a loss to handle a long steam-powered train, the postal worker who managed to get enough friends and money together to restore Ol' Number 999 should not be trusted at the throttle, no matter how much he feels entitled. | ||
| But my thought process went on beyond that a bit. Even if we manage to preserve hundreds of working steam locomotives, trainloads of passenger and freight cars, miles of track and dozens of stations, and every skill ever learned, what is the result? WHY do we do it? What's the RATIONALE for preservation, whatever the definition turns out to be? The answer. by looking at the results, seems to be "for our own pleasure." Steam locomotives that aren't welcome on their home railroad because of bad relations; railfans who would rather see 4449 cold in Daylight paint than under steam lettered for BNSF; tourist lines that offer a hot ride behind a diesel in a dirty coach; all-day death-march "excursions." They all point to a group of selfish individuals wanting to play trains at the expense of railroads and the public. | ||
| Small wonder that while old-car enthusiasts and Confederate Air Force pilots are portrayed as interesting individuals, the media uniformly spin rail enthusiasts as "train nuts" just one whistle bast away from an all-expense-paid, padded room at the county hospital. | ||
| Ever been to a "railroad museum?" Sure, there are a few good ones - the North Carolina Transportation Museum and the Mid-Continent Railway Museum come to mind - but the majority of "museums" are little more than a rusting collection of equipment with no focus and no context. Most organizations either never understood the term in the first place, or didn't change with the times. | ||
| And make no mistake - the meaning of the word "museum" has changed drastically since UP and N&W dropped their fires. In 1960 a museum existed to collect artifacts, little more. Standards for exhibits were very low - in the example of an Egyptian exhibit, maybe a few artifacts from a tomb, a mummy, an index card typed with some geologic information, and a prominent "donated by" credit. Contrast that with the Field Museum's Egyptian exhibit of today - a three-level recreation of a tomb, exhibits placed in historical context, artifacts shown in use, interactive exhibits for kids. | ||
| There's no sin in simply offering a train ride - if there's a market for it, sell it. But don't dress it up as preservation. A "museum" must be more than a mismatched collection of hardware to be successful. If you want to impress the community, see philanthropic dollars flow your way, and earn the respect of your peers, take the interpretation and education mandate of a museum more seriously. | ||
| So how does this apply to the rail museum world? Should all museums look like the California State Railroad Museum? Of course not. But neither should they look like a scrapyard. What's missing is context, the ability to see why that dome car was important. (Pulling it at 5mph on a grown-up branchline behind a switcher isn't the proper context.) | ||
| Pick a focus. The best museums focus on their region, although another theme (the streamlined passenger train, the steam locomotive) will work too. If you're museum's in South Dakota and all your equipment comes from Massachusetts, Florida, Arizona and Finland, just WHAT is your "museum" about? If your train ride features fluted-side passenger cars behind a rock-quarry 0-4-0T, what educational point are you trying to make? If your collection is in St. Louis, do you really need a Lackawanna 4-4-0? Why not swap it for something more appropriate to your area? | ||
| Clean up your displays. In 1982 I was in Bellevue, Ohio, photographing ex-NKP 2-8-4 765, and spent a few moments around the Mad River & NKP RRHS grounds. No operations, strictly a static exhibit. But every string of cars had an engine at one end, and strings of freight cars had a caboose. In a small space the Mad River group manages to convey quite a lot. Compare this to some of the more notorious collections in the Deep South, where there's no rhyme or reason to the arrangement of equipment. | ||
| Show the entire environment. Interpretation is the not-so-new standard in the field. Don't just display a switcher; switch some cars from the proper era, with roofwalks. (And not with radios - make the crew learn proper hand signals.) Don't just offer a train ride - show life at the station as it was, with baggage handling, mail exchange, orders being delivered, a couple of retirees loafing at the depot. Atmospheric, not antiseptic, should be the goal. | ||
| Our counterparts in England excel at this. Visit the Ramsbottom station on the East Lancashire Railway, or Damems on the Worth Valley, or Horsted Keynes on the Bluebell. The station area reeks of a period, be it Victorian, Edwardian, or post-war. When trains meet, batons are exchanged, baggage carts are rolled to the guard's van, crewmen share a quick conversation. You feel like you're a part of the period - and you learn a little about the context in which the railroad was a large part of daily life, a context now changed by Motorways, television, and urban sprawl. | ||
| And on selected weekends, these lines (and most other "preserved railways" in the UK) pull out all the stops for a "Gala." Extra passenger services are laid on, freight trains are run, sometimes locomotives are hired from other lines or private owners. (Imagine what kind of gala the C&TS could put on with a K28 borrowed from Durango.) | ||
| Interpretation and education should be the reason that any museum exists today. And education does not have to be stuffy or classroom-based. It's not giving the construction details of Ol' Number 999, or dry statistics about corporate entities and dates. Explain WHY the East Tennessee & Virginia was built, not just when. Relate WHERE Ol' Number 999 worked, WHAT she hauled, and WHY she was replaced. Note that our agricultural society rapidly became an industrial one after 1918, and that this change fundamentally affected the railroads. Look to Old Stourbridge, Plimouth, and Williamsburg for inspiration. | ||
| Let me close with a concrete example. The Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in Chattanooga, Tennessee, operates a steam-hauled passenger train daily during the tourist season. Both ends of the short run feature stations; crewmen are properly attired in white shirts and black hats and trousers. It's one of the better train rides. But a few of the above ideas - offering a demonstration of the RPO and baggage cars as well as the turntable demonstration, comparing orders at the operator's window - would raise the TVRM experience a notch or two on the Interpret-O-Meter. Maybe many people wouldn't notice - but many would. And isn't it important that we educate as well as enjoy? | ||
| JAC | ||
| What's your reaction? Send your comments to mail@steamcentral.com. | ||
| From Don Micheletti, Golden Gate Railroad Museum: | ||
| You hit on one of my pet peeves - education. One of the very important aspects of running a Museum (or whatever you want to call it) is capturing what information is available on running steam locomotives. We focus on the mechanics of the monster. How are crown brasses put in? How do you tram? How do you install a staybolt? What is the correct way to test an air pump? This information is available through people, railroads "mechanical circulars" and a lot of other stuff. The people are, surprisingly, the least reliable. Many are nearing 90 and are relying on memory of what they did, for the last time, 50 years ago - frequently they remember wrong! this is difficult to admit because these folks are a real living link to much of the work we do. We use this information and try to pass on what we "relearn" and learn by doing. We need to train younger people so these machines we give our life to will continue to exist - as operating pieces of history. The postal worker who raised the funds to get 'ol 999 running should be allowed the opportunity to LEARN to run 'ol 999. What all of the railroad engineers I have encountered seem to forget is that they are people too. They LEARNED what they do - they were not born with it! It is their responsibility to teach others. What they do is difficult. It takes a lot of time to learn all the rules and regulations. It takes time to learn how to handle a train. But all of this work is now being done by PEOPLE - just like the postal worker. This is stuff that can be learned just like everything else. And just like everything else some will not make the grade. I have spent most of my life working in a field which involves skilled craftsmen of many types. In every case, save one, those people have been willing and are enthusiastic about passing their skills and interesting others in what they do. The skill which is an exception is those in the railroad industry. Across the board there seems to be a paranoia of some type. I don't understand it. These people need to pass the knowledge on! | ||
| From Jim Lundquist: | ||
| Too many of us have forgotten exactly who "belongs" to the equipment - it's the people, and the museum is simply the caretaker. Each museum needs to become aware of what their public needs and strive to meet that need, not just saving for the sake of saving, but restoring and telling a local story of railroading by doing so. Almost every museum has too much to even keep paint on, much less tell a story.Remember people - it belongs to the visitors - not the museum. | ||
| From Ron Goldfeder: | ||
| I suggest you expand upon your excellent and thought provoking article by printing the article from Railroad History #176 (Spring 97) entitled "Preservation Topics: Are Railroad Museums Forgetting the Basics." This points out how most railroad museums are assuming that people know such basic things as "What steers the train." The reality is in many cases they don't, and you can hear this when you listen to how they talk among themselves while at your museum. I realize this is a step back from what interpretation means at a museum that operates a train, but many don't. And even those that do miss these things, along with even identifying what people are looking at. How often have you visited a "museum" where almost nothing is identified, beyond the markings on the cars or locomotives. Why have we preserved this thing, what is it, what does it do and how is it used? All these are questions that deserve an answer and an identifying sign that visitors can read if they wnat to find out. Many of our museums fail tis test. Expecting them to "raise the bar" in operations when they can't even see this as a need expects far more from them than has been shown to date. | ||
| From Rudd Long, Historic Railroad Shops, Savannah, Georgia: | ||
| A fine article. I plan on passing a few copies around at the next board meeting if there are no objections. You've certainly hit the nail on the head, or at least not bent the spike over entirely. . . We have far too many "cowboys without a clue" in this business . . . At any rate, thanks again, please do keep expressing your opinions. | ||
| From Randy Minter, President, Atlanta Chapter - NRHS: | ||
| "I see that the future and our survival is solely dependant upon our ability to adapt to the needs of the sources of potential funding in the future. There are people that need to know that we have stability and can make the hard decisions necessary to operate a BUSINESS. We can no longer run out and pick a new project engine without considering, "What do we do if we get this thing done?" The future truly belongs to those who are unafraid to adapt and even give up some control to reach a higher level. I feel that is the direction we at the Atlanta NRHS are headed, but it does not come easy." | ||
| YOU ARE BROWSING THE OLD STEAMCENTRAL.COM. TO SEE OUR LATEST ENTRIES, CLICK HERE. | ||