I see various maps that illustrate natural disasters by region. In the next century, I imagine every museum will suffer damage from some kind of weather-related event. Or perhaps even a geologic one.

Just in the past few years we have seen Shore Line Trolley Museum flooded by Hurricanes Irene and Sandy, and Galveston Railroad Museum flooded by Ike. Some of that equipment will never be the same again.

Well, maybe not all museums will suffer weather damage. At least on this map, Michigan and Northern Ohio/Indiana look pretty good.



As a footnote, Shore Line's $2 Million fundraiser for new elevated carbarns is nearly complete (applause.) http://www.bera.org/etc-photos.html

Looks like I'm sitting pretty here in Youngstown. Actually though, tornadoes can occur anywhere in Ohio, and we could get lake effect snow storms that dump enough snow to tax roof systems.

Natural disasters can happen anywhere.

The Baltimore Streetcar Museum has been flooded three times in its history, with the 1979 one being severe enough to shut down operations for close to a year.

The Wilmington & Western, in the Red Clay Creek Valley, has been essentially "wiped off the map" twice by floods and rebuilt.

The flooding in question in both cases were driven by the remnants of tropical storms/hurricanes. They may want to expand the "hurricanes" impact zones on that map.

We all know about the snow roof collapse of the B&O Museum Roundhouse in 2003. If we're delusional, "global warming" will take care of that in the future....... (55 degrees outside here a Zip code or two away now....)

The Wilmington & Western RR was nearly destroyed by floods in 1999 and 2003. Imagine this time 8 plus miles of damage to roadbed.

There's not much you can do about railroads given the general scarcity of suitable rail lines.

Museum sites are another matter entirely. Floods are the usual case, but also a special case. Floods are a risk everywhere, but not in all of everywhere. Since water flows downhill, this risk (at a parcel level) is extremely well understood, and plotted to high detail. Eyes wide open, railroad museums choose to be flooded anyway by purchasing land that trades away flood security for other considerations. Luck never has anything to do with it. Flooding always happens over a sufficiently long period, and we are finding that to be a lot shorter than we hoped for.

Tornadoes can also be quite devastating. The Colfax Railroad Museum site has experienced an F5 about 60 years ago that destroyed the freight house end of the stone depot that now houses our artifacts collection and last year an F1 removed 40' of the wooden depot's roof that resulted in our acquiring the building and land from the 93 year old owner who didn't want to rebuild. Our car shed was built with hurricane clips on the roof and bent 3 feet in the wind, but only lost a few shingles and had some snapped clips that needed replacing. A few years back, the Soo Line display in Ladysmith WI had its 3 cars lifted off their trucks and then bounced about 10 feet. The car bodies were lifted and spun using multiple cranes to minimize further damage, but they still do go around curves better in one direction.
Herb Sakalaucks
Colfax RR Museum