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| Why We Do This By Aarne Frobom | ||
| Whenever Pere Marquette 1225 runs, it attracts a crowd of people. We like to see that, for a number of reasons: | ||
| 1. It makes us feel like terrific big shots. | ||
| 2. It means there's a crowd that our souvenir stand can sell stuff to. | ||
| 3. It means that maybe, just maybe, there's a few young people who will become interested enough in the project to join up, and assure the locomotive of caretakers for the next decade. | ||
| 4. It means we're doing our job of presenting history to people in a way they can understand. | ||
| But whenever we see a crowd gathered around Locomotive 1225, we wonder, "What do people see when they look at the 1225?" What's the Point? | ||
| That's the central question of the museum business. Professional curators devote a lot of worry to it, fine-tuning their presentation of art or artifacts to get a particular message across. That is hard enough in a conventional museum, where labels and viewpoints can be managed in a controlled environment. It's a whole different proposition on a railroad. Using a main line for a museum presents terrible problems, but has an enormous potential that steam-engine operators haven't even begun to exploit. Even the corporate-sponsored steam operations of the major carriers over the last couple decades probably fell far short of their potential for reaching people. The questions remain: Why make this presentation? What will people get out of it? | ||
| Project 1225's new shop and roundhouse will be designed so that visitors can see the work of maintaining locomotives, and come away with the knowledge that making transportation with steam power was a very different task from doing it with internal combustion. The adjoining Tuscola and Saginaw Bay Diesel shop will help make the point through contrast. The engine's movements over the road will recreate the drama that was a by-product of steam locomotion. For these events, the lines of the T&SB Rwy. Co. will be transformed into a linear exhibit hall. | ||
| The ability to re-create scenes like this before a big crowd has been the motivating goal of Project 1225 from the start, but a big audience isn't necessarily welcome on a heavily-trafficked, non-passenger-carrying railroad. We are fortunate to be located on a railroad where we can do this from time to time, and show people, This is what you had to do to make transportation with steam power. | ||
| We enjoy putting on shows with Locomotive 1225, and part of the enjoyment comes from listening to people's reactions and questions. A common one is, *How old is it?* Many people are surprised to hear the locomotive was built in 1941. A steam locomotive is now so strange to people that most think it's much older. The last time we fired the engine up at Owosso, one spectator thought she was looking at something from the time of the revolutionary war. | ||
| Does it matter that people don't know when the industrial age started? | ||
| This condition isn't limited to the unlettered. In a recent issue of the Society for Industrial Archeology Newsletter, Society President Sandy Norman wrote back from a sabbatical in England, "I have been going on field trips with American college students on a semester-abroad program. Watching students get involved with the history of technology has been a lot of fun, but their general lack of knowledge and the difficulty they have in grasping concepts has been a bit frightening. In the Museum of London they studied a wonderful exhibit on the need for fresh water in the city, and the rise of plumbing, but couldn't quite put it all into the big picture. On polling I found that none of these students came from a college or university that offered courses in the history of technology . . ." | ||
| It's easy for custodians of specialized knowledge to feel smug, and take snobbish pleasure in knowing something no one else does. Railfans have a tendency to mistake trivia for knowledge. We occasionally have to remind ourselves that outside of the Owosso shop, no one cares about the difference between a Pere Marquette Class N or N-1. It doesn't matter whether anyone knows that the 1225 was built in 1941 instead of 1937. But it's beneficial to know why plumbing is important, and that pure water and cheap power didn't just happen. Knowing what a railroad can do is a basic economic fact. Railroad fans can take pride in knowing the workings of a complex, productive system. | ||
| People should know that you can make power and money when you burn coal to boil water, and that you'll be left with smoke and ash afterwards. The 1225 can teach these things in a language people understand. | ||
| This country faces hard questions of policy at the points where engineering, economics, environment, and science come together. To answer these questions, people need to know how the world works. Railroad museums can show them how one important bit of it works. We don't think it's at all smug to want to guard this knowledge, share it with people, and send them away from the tracks a little better able to "put it all in the big picture." | ||
| Reprinted with permission from the July, 1999 edition of Project 1225, the magazine of The Michigan State Trust for Railway Preservation, Inc. Membership in Project 1225 is open to anyone, and dues are $25 per year. | ||
| AARNE FROBOM is a Director of the Michigan State Trust for Railway Preservation and Project 1225. His opinion piece "The Sustainable Steam Locomotive" appeared in the December 1996 TRAINS magazine. | ||
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