Thank you Mr. Cornillie for saying it so well! Now what's needed is for someone(s) to come up with a new business model that addresses your realities and sets us on a new course to success while the saved pieces are still extant.
Certainly a major challenge-but worth the effort!
Ross Rowland

I've been working on it as a back (back back) burner project for a few years now. Plan to have something out by the end of this year or so.

Tom Cornillie

Sounds like an article on the way I am looking forward to reading.

Academic museum related credentials? On this board, off the top of my head, Kurt, Ted, TJ, and our own lovely and talented Erik Ledbetter. No doubt i am ignorant of others, apologies to any I have left out.

Many more business and marketing related professionals post as well.

It will be wonderful to see what discussions arise.

dave

I wonder if there is really a lot of interest in the segregation issue? One of the cars I have worked on was in fact set up as a segregated car when it left regular service in 1955! This area of our history makes me personnally uncomfortable. However, I have inquired of several sources if this should be somehow displayed or portrayed and how it could be done in a way to be a positive aspect to remembering our history. These were asked of 'mainline' museum sources, not in light of our small rail preservation community. I never received even one answer let alone any suggestions.

Bob Kutella

Jim Hankey spoke about the interpretation of segregation at the B&O Museum when he was guest speaker at ARM way back in 1992. I do not recall the details now, but he talked about his success teaching the subject to school children using a passenger coach, maybe the C&O car recently restored by Strasburg.

There is a lesson plan, complete with an activity demonstrating segregation on busses in Montgomery Alabama, on the PBS website for the documentary "Eyes on the Prize" (link below). I am working to incorporate this into our offerings at National Capital, possibly for black history month.

http://pbsvideodb.pbs.org/resources/eyes/less_02.html

Wesley

I did my share of arm-wrestling over this with the ED in Savannah, who suffered from a bad case of honky guilt by proxy. He even had renamed the white and colored washrooms the east and west washrooms!

The Jim Crow era and its demise is an almost tangible way to reach out and involve a community generally missing in our organizations. Seen much apart from white guys with gray hair at your board meetings lately? That and the incredible history of the Pullman porters and stewards who built the economies of middle and upper class black society for almost a century ought to be told - but in an unapologetic, unemotional, factual, politically neutral way. The Buckingham Lining Bar Gang (and similar) demonstrates the musical and cultural ties between African and American railroading cultures, and in a very entertaining way.

If your museum is in an area in which civil rights history is being interpreted by another museum, a joint cooperative program is a fine way to widen your base of support. Jazz and blues groups also.

History is what happened and it didn't always show us off as a society in our best light. Avoiding large chunks of it is like cutting off half of your yardstick and then tring to measure how far you have gone.

dave

Lovely? Dave, you are confusing me with my wife. I know it was dark in that restarant we dined in in Savannah, but really...

On a more serious note, RE Bob Kutella's question about interpreting segregation, I think Dave just gave some excellent advice. Partnering with a nearby civil rights museum is a terrific idea; or, in the absence of such a museum locally, reaching out to the local chapter of the NAACP, etc. Done right, interpretation of segregation can make for a powerful and timely exhibit that will reach many visitors who will be unmoved by your cutaway 567 display, etc.

The C&O car the B&O uses to interpret segregation is indeed the ex-H.V. combine recently restored by Strasburg and now safely ensconsed in the Roundhouse with ramp access for the mobility impaired. The current signage makes low-key reference to its Jim Crow history but I beleive Ed Williams has some more elaborate programming for it in the works.

Sorry Tom, you left yourself wide-open here -

History, Historic Preservation AND American Transportation History, B.A. Denison University 1997, M.A. Clemson University 1999, studied under Dr. Richard Saunders and Dr. H. Roger Grant at Clemson, both of which are members of the Lexington Group and have written some of the most inlfuential books on railroad history (corporate and otherwise) around. That said, I am as proud if not prouder to say that I have worked under or around guys like Jason Johnson, John Rimmasch, Tim Sposato and a host of others. If I'm honest, I probably learned more real-world skills or "hands-on" from guys like this; or doing during the resto of our combine, or my neophyte apprentineship hostling and time spent needle-gunning and running in tubes on steam beat those out hands down, I have to say; and both Rich and Roger would agree, trust me.

Seriously though, the bigger issue (and I know at least Erik has been there) is the disconnect between the two that you talk about. Even my museum's main emphasis is not rail preservation --- its a small element of what we do, and we barely did it all prior to opening our Edison Depot Museum/ restoring our combine. Part of the problem is that, and its taking me a few years to truly get this, "book smarts" really don't equate with the people doing 90% of the resto of passenger equipment/ steam/ etc., and the museum world still sees us as a bunch of hobbyists. It doens't (and I know Tom is going to argue with me here) take a M.A. or PhD to learn how to needle-gun; on the same token, needle-gunning skills don't really equate when conserving a photograph or blueprint.

Trust me, if a job came available for an archivist who is also trained as a hostler/ fireman and has needle-gunnning and woodworking skills (can you tell I LOVE needle-gunning --- my book "Zen and the Art of Needle-gunning" will be out soon), something say where your conserving blueprints and original letters and documentation in the morning, and needle-gunning a coach or firebox exterior in the afternoon, I'd be there in a heartbeat.

Sadly, no such animal ----- but one can dream.

TJ

TJ, keep your eye on Ely Nevada. Your job may materialize yet. :-)

Like I say, one can dream ---- maybe I should be brushing up on me firing skills ---- see you in an hour Marty!

TJ

See my other comment in this thread. The Enola Gay is an historic artifact with a story. So are many of the others displayed at the Air and Space Museum. The Edu-tainment comes from having a great story to tell about the artifact other than "this was part of this or that 20-car order in 19xx". The story behind the cars, who went on vacation in them, how their interactions sounded, what the fears and dreams of that era were. In another thread about CSRM leaving a Santa Fe locomotive out to rust, mention was made about "Scotty's engine". I remember the whole story and can picture the locomotive because of the Scotty story. It is right and proper for CSRM to display a locomotive with such a history and the guests like me love it. I don't have the answers, but we had better do as much research on the people that the passenger cars hauled as we do the various paint or generator schemes.

Thanks for posting that write up on the National Register. I was going to do the same thing!

Reading between the lines--think President of the United States.

At my museum we have one car connected with Franklin Roosevelt and
another with President Taft. Soon they are going indoors in a new car barn with fire supression.

Think also Senators and Congressmen who traveled in them but also campaigned from them.

Those cars can have National Significance not just regional interest.

Ted Miles

Jim Crow --

I recall John Hankey talking years ago about his (then current) time at B&O Museum. They would have inner-city (read black) school children on field trips. These kids had heard of Plessey v. Furguson and the resulting Jim Crow accomodations. They would take notice, even go wide-eyed, to hear a white-man talk of this case and its resulting segregation.

P.S. if my spelling of any of the names is incorrect, it is because I'm up way past my bedtime.

Night.

I want to commend your viewpoint on this ugly and often horrific aspect of American history. But it is our history, and we are a healthier society for acknowledging it's coming, better still, it's going. The best way to move beyond segregation and racial inequality is to recognize what it was and why it had to die as a way of life. I think the historic interpretation shows we are better people today than perhaps we were in the past.
No shame today. It's history.