How does one go about assessing "pure historic value or significance?" There must be more objective standards than the "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" methodology suggested in a thread below. Perhaps affiliation with an historic event, a portion of a story about an historic company or institution would work? What else?

Saving the last of every kind of locomotive because it still exists seems fraught with complications since there were way more locomotive types than there is dollars to care for one of each of them (let alone restore them.)

Let's keep these interesting, flame retardent threads going.

wyld@sbcglobal.net

> How does one go about assessing "pure
> historic value or significance?" There
> must be more objective standards than the
> "beauty is in the eye of the
> beholder" methodology suggested in a
> thread below. Perhaps affiliation with an
> historic event, a portion of a story about
> an historic company or institution would
> work? What else?

> Saving the last of every kind of locomotive
> because it still exists seems fraught with
> complications since there were way more
> locomotive types than there is dollars to
> care for one of each of them (let alone
> restore them.)

> Let's keep these interesting, flame
> retardent threads going.

My, my, Mr. Wylde, you sure give us a discussion topic that is not an easy one.

The significance of an object is not necessarily derived from a special event. The ordinary and common place is also important. Back in 1981 John White writing in "The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology" lamented that few common place locomotives and cars had been preserved. Railroad master mechanics and officers tended to save the early, odd, or unique engines and left out the standard designs that carried the freight.

If we are to educate the public about the significance of railroads in the development of our country the common 2-8-0 and a string of freight cars is needed. Sure a ride in a train is neat; but that is the means to tell the public about railroads.

The B&O Museum used the "Jim Crow" car to talk about Plessy v. Furguson and how it affected rail travel and the blacks. John Hankey noted how the inner city school kids took interest in a white man talking about segregation.

What is the mission? Is it to save everything possible or to develope a means of telling the railroad story?

Brian Norden

bnorden49@earthlink.net

> My, my, Mr. Wylde, you sure give us a
> discussion topic that is not an easy one.

> The significance of an object is not
> necessarily derived from a special event.
> The ordinary and common place is also
> important. Back in 1981 John White writing
> in "The Journal of the Society for
> Industrial Archeology" lamented that
> few common place locomotives and cars had
> been preserved. Railroad master mechanics
> and officers tended to save the early, odd,
> or unique engines and left out the standard
> designs that carried the freight.

I agree with Jack. The commonplace is our history. Though Colonial Williamsburg stresses to the public that it represents the top 2% of the population in regards to 18th century lifestyle, I would say that most visitors depart imagining themselves looking and living like Peyton Randolph or Thomas Jefferson.

A few years ago we put a Pennsy freight whistle on #89. The logic was that this was the most commonly heard whistle in our area during steam days. We kept it on for about two years and then replaced it with a Pennsy passenger whistle because even the Pennsy fans complained about the banshee. Only one positive comment from a local man who said it brought back memories because that was the whistle he most often heard.

It has been my observation that it is not realistic to try to present history as it was unless it is in line with people's expectations or it is politically correct in some form or another.

I travel by train whenever possible. My experience with on-board service personnel has been about 50-50 with half being very good to exceptional and the other half being mediocre to incompetent. In fifty or a hundred years when museums and tourist railroads are recreating passenger train travel in the year 2000 which way will they do it? I don't know, but I do know that if we treated our customers as "accurately" as the one half described above, our ridership would shrink significantly.

It has always been my opinion that the only way to tell any story accurately is to find a very benevolent sugar daddy with no agenda other than historical accuracy who is willing to bankroll the project with no regard for return on investment. It may not be a financial success, it would most likely break every current regulation on the books, and it would probably offend every special interest group in the world, but it would be a refreshing experience for those few people willing to look at their past, warts and all.

Since this isn't going to happen, I guess we do what we can within the boundaries of today's sensibilities, push the envelope a bit, and hope that at least part of the truth comes to light, figuring that some truth is better than none.

It certainly is an interesting topic.


linnwm@supernet.com

...by the winners of wars and, to extrapolate, the winners of corporate mergers. In the year 2102, some museum somewhere, will be trying to piece together one of the first double stack freight container trains.

> The significance of an object is not
> necessarily derived from a special event.
> The ordinary and common place is also
> important.

Gorden Chappel contributed some interesting thinking to this question in his study "Steam over Scranton," the collections survey NPS commissioned to assess the Steamtown locomotive collection. Here's an extended quote:

"Passing mention has been made of the importance of association of a particular locomotive or car with a particular railroad company; in other words, associative significance.

Most railroad museums have been the work of railroad enthusiasts not trained in curatorial or other museum professions or in any aspect of historic preservation. In preserving railroad locomotives and cars, they brought to their activity the perspective of railroad-oriented hobbyists and, in some instances, far more knowledge of the railroad industry than curatorial or other museum professionals would have, which often proved a considerable asset. But as a consequence of this background, emphasis frequently has been more on running trains, or at least locomotives, than on exhibiting them. There has consequently been a considerable bias toward viewing locomotives, in particular, as specimens of technology.

Certainly railroad rolling stock can be viewed from that perspective; a locomotive may have significance because of its wheel arrangement, type of valve gear, type of tender, or any of a number of other technological features. It may have significance as a unique specimen, or as a specimen representative of a type, or perhaps as a unique survivor of some type once common but now rare. Most railroad museums have viewed locomotives from this basically technological perspective, as well as from the standpoint of their operability. This view is not inappropriate. However, in approaching collecting locomotives and cars from that set of biases, it is easy to overlook another aspect of significance.

Apart from any technological significance that may attach to a particular locomotive or car, there is also the question of association--principally with particular railroad companies, though its association might also be one pertaining to a particular locomotive designer or chief mechanical officer, a particular engineer, or other individuals. A museum may have three physically identical locomotives, all built by the same builder to the same specifications in the same year, and when viewed from the standpoint of technology alone, the museum may need only one, the other two essentially being duplicates. But what if each of the three locomotives, though technologically identical, were operated by three entirely separate, distinct, and different railroad companies: perhaps an oilfleld railroad whose locomotive moved tank car loads of petroleum products in southern California, a mineral railroad whose locomotive hauled hopper car loads of copper ore to a Utah smelter, and a small Ohio short line that hauled mixed products to and from the towns it served, manufactures from industries along its line, and agricultural products from the rural country through which it passed, using every conceivable type of freight car rather than predominately cars of one type. Although physically identical, each locomotive would represent association with a separate and distinct history whose interpretation its tangible presence would enhance. Then it might be appropriate for the museum to keep all three because of their different associations, as they represent different aspects of railroad history. Even though physically the same, each of course would have been painted and lettered differently to reflect the patterns used by each particular company. This is one reason why it may be appropriate for the Steamtown collection to include more than one locomotive of the 2-8-0 wheel arrangement--the four in the Steamtown collection all represent different railroads.

Another example of associative significance is Nickel Plate Road Locomotive No. 44. It may have significance as the oldest surviving Nickel Plate locomotive. It also served on a New York State short line railroad, the Dansville and Mount Morris. But between those two owners, the locomotive operated on the Akron, Canton and Youngstown Railroad, an Ohio company designed as a "traffic thief' operation, and is the only locomotive surviving of all those that operated on the A.C.& Y. Thus this particular locomotive has associative significance with three railroads. Similarly, Rahway Valley No. 15 was built for Tennessee's Oneida & Western and may be the only surviving locomotive of that Tennessee short line. Technological significance is not the only significance by which a locomotive should be judged; it should also be judged by its associative significance with the company or companies that once owned and operated it.

Another factor to be kept in mind when considering the aspect of technological significance is that not every locomotive of identical wheel arrangement is necessarily identical in other aspects. None of the 2-8-0 locomotives in the Steamtown collection is identical to any of the others. Norwood & St. Lawrence 2-6-0 No. 210 has an all-weather cab, probably quite unusual on mogul locomotives. Delaware, Lackawanna & Western 2-6-0 No. 565 does not have an all-weather cab. Similarly, even if it were not the only 4-8-2 locomotive in the Steamtown collection, Grand Trunk Western Railroad No. 6039 would be desirable to retain because is the only locomotive in the collection with a Vanderbilt tender.

Furthermore, not every locomotive in a railroad museum need be operable to be worthy of being retained. Boilers that due to age, lack of strength, lap seam construction, iron fabric, or other aspects may never again operate may still be worthy of preservation as a locomotive that can serve as a static exhibit specimen, restored in appearance so as to represent accurately the appearance of that locomotive at some stage in the history of the railroad.

In interpreting the locomotives and cars at Steamtown, it is important that the National Park Service adopt the broad approach of considering the locomotives and cars from the standpoint of their associations and value as fixed exhibits, as well as from the standpoint of their technological significance and operability. The steam locomotive, by and large, became obsolete more than a third of a century ago, and most have been cut up for scrap. Even with some duplication among surviving specimens (such as, for example, the survival of eight Union Pacific Big Boys at various locations), there is probably not a single surviving steam locomotive in the United States that does not merit preservation in some railroad museum, transportation museum, local history museum, next to a preserved depot, in a city, town or county park, or on some tourist railroad.

A parallel issue is that of authenticity of the representation of historic locomotives and railroad cars in terms of paint, lettering, and numbering schemes. The rolling stock of Steamtown National Historic Site should be thoroughly studied, then accurately restored to its appearance during some important phase of its history. A common practice in excursion service is to adopt some nonhistoric, inaccurate, or wholly fictitious color, lettering, and numbering scheme for the sake of unity of appearance of a train. The Steamtown Foundation adopted a late Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad maroon and gray color, lettering, and numbering scheme for that purpose. Once studied and restored for museum exhibit purposes, locomotives and cars in the Steamtown NHS collection should not be repainted in historically inaccurate or fictitious color, lettering, and numbering schemes.

However, locomotives and cars that operated for more than one carrier during their history without physical change, but with different color, lettering, and numbering schemes while serving each carrier, may in the course of their exhibit service be repainted at different times to represent the different carriers they represented. The practice at some museums of painting a locomotive to represent one carrier in its past on one side, and on the other side painting it to represent an entirely different past carrier is not appropriate."

For more, get a copy from the Steamtown bookstore or read it online at http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_bo ... wn/shs.htm



Steam Over Scranton online edition
eledbetter@rypn.org

I love the banshee of that PRR hooter. Pleased I could help send it home.

History isn't always pretty. The motivation behind memorable evens which changed the world isn't always clear, black and white, or based on some beneficial ideal.

I have worked for the past almost 4 years in a small city with an incredible past which predates the colonial era and evolves in some interesting ways today. Being a southern port, its economic foundation was built on the backs of slave labor. It is the site of an early revolutionary war battle in which the Rebel forces were trounced because the leader waited while the British commander brought his reinforcements in to help him out (thanks, that's a good chap). Being an international center of commerce, its retention of a lot of historic structures was preserved through a civil war by ignominious surrender to an approaching enemy force which had destroyed the rest of the state on its march to the sea. Being a modern tourist heritage center, the best and most opulent of the historic structures have been preserved as a window onto the past.

As Linn mentions, this tells a tiny part of the story. The struggle to begin to preserve and interpret the industrial and commercial part of the history - which provided what was necessary to build the rest - is certainly going up a stiff grade. The more entrenched and fashionable institutions are loath to share the resources available.

It is equally difficult to encourage the organizations charged with the work to carry it out. In a city with a population which is largely black and native for generations we have an executive director of an historic organization who will not allow the interjection of interpretive information on the slave era, the Jim Crow era, the Pullman porters impact on society - by witholding any attempt to involve the largest segment of the poplulation for fear of offending them, he has turned away any support from that huge community and offended them more.

The tourism people don't yet believe that there is interest in the visiting public about the lives of the workers rather than the owners so none of the house museums reflect the lives of the average 1850 locomotive mechanic or 1880 tracklayer. I wonder if the interest expressed by the few who actually find the railroad museum despite its being a well kept secret only reflects that particular group, or that of the community at large?

Do we clean up and present only the top tiny bit of prettiest history and try to make explainations politically correct and concise because the market demands it, or does the market just accept what we choose to present? As Barnum reflected, nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public, but does that mean we can't prosper by exceeding the lowest common denominator in our interpretive efforts?

Frustrated and seeking enlightenment.

dave

irondave@bellsouth.net

In the end, isn't all just business? The ability to generate income? What generates business is what people find compelling enough to put their dollars behinid- no? I would hope that the 'busineess' of railway preservation would be to stimulate the public to educate itself about the truth of how things were/ are / could be. Stimulation is what Disney and Williamsburg are all about. Isn't it fine that people learn about the Great Northern hotels by staying at Disney's Wilderness Hotel in Florida or The Arts & Crafts movement at Disney in California or colonial life by visiting Williamsburg, or luxury travel aboard the 'Marion" at Strasburg- even if those places are "frauds?" Personally, I enjoy heightened, designed experiences. And that's what people seem willing to pay for. If I'm intrigued, I can interpret the 'reality' for myself.

Thanks Paul but my questions were (badly expressed):

1. Is reality itself adequately compelling?

2. If not, is the way we have altered it for marketing purposes the best / only way?

3. Can we provide a broader and thehrefore more complete and less misleading heightened reality and be as compelling?

dave

irondave@bellsouth.net

In my mind, no.. When I worked for Florida State Parks, the State Tourism Dept. commisioned a study to find out what brings people to Florida. Turned out, better than 20% planned on visiting at least one historic site. Sounds great, no? Well, turns out the #1 historic site folks wanted to visit was Epcot Center.
So, the fake history was stealing visitors (read $$$) from the real stuff.

Meanwhile, I've got a national historic landmark on my hands, rapidly deteriorating, that the park service marketed as a good place to go to the beach. No one ever lost money underestimating the tastes of the American Public.

I would also challenge the notion that one can learn about Great Northern's hotels while in Florida at Disney World. No doubt the hotels are not very much like the originals, and the context is completely different.

But, then, I'm kinda funny that way. If I want to learn about the life of an early 20th century shop worker, well, I go to the shop and work on thinks using period machines and techniques.
You'd be amazed how visitors react, many are truley interested in HOW this stuff was done, HOW we are restoring that car or this loke. For me, that works!

For as much (perhaps rightful) trashing that the RRers memorial museum in Altoona has taken here lately, it wouldn't hurt other museums to take a long look at what they HAVE done with their exhibits.
Yes, some of it seems kind of strange at first glance, but they are/were making an attempt to humanise the artifacts, to tell the stories of not only what and how, but who.

THAT may well be as good, or better, way to connect with the tourist as fake indian raids, or Thomas. Of course, the average foamer will say its boring...but who pays a bigger %age of the bills?

Engine's Moan

One has to take into account the mission of a given museum. Is it to demonstrate the look and feel of a working locomotive shop, demonstrate a branchline local, demonstrate big mainline steam, demonstrate life working in a depot or tower, or just to display trains like painting on a wall. Interactive museums are often more pleasing to most people, we are a true multimedia society.

The museums that demonstrate something rather just display stuff are the ones I take my family to visit. In my own opinion the stuffy museums will be forced by outside pressures to become demonstrate something.

Tom Gears



Forgotten Delaware
tom@forgottendelaware.com

> For as much (perhaps rightful) trashing that
> the RRers memorial museum in Altoona has
> taken here lately, it wouldn't hurt other
> museums to take a long look at what they
> HAVE done with their exhibits.
> Yes, some of it seems kind of strange at
> first glance, but they are/were making an
> attempt to humanise the artifacts, to tell
> the stories of not only what and how, but
> who.

> THAT may well be as good, or better, way to
> connect with the tourist as fake indian
> raids, or Thomas. Of course, the average
> foamer will say its boring...but who pays a
> bigger %age of the bills?

Several good points made here by Linn and others. It reminds me of a story told by John Hankey, who talked about what happened when potential donors came to tour the B&O museum. When they asked him how he intended to interpret the railroad worker's life of the 19th century for current-day museum visitors, he'd answer (in typically Hankeyesque fashion) that he'd see to it that every 10th visitor would leave the museum with a mangled limb.

In working as the historian consultant to Christopher Chadbourne & Associates on the Altoona Railroaders Memorial Museum project, I found myself for the first time to be thinking about--and planning interpretive-design exhibits around--ethnicity and denominational religion and barrooms and worker furloughs and the entire cultural landscape of a railroad city. It was both challenging and liberating to think about railroad history from this perspective rather than the (please no flames) same-old, same-old, K4-M1-I1-L1-X29-P70-N5 march-of-technology story. Our challenge was to not reject those themes because we'd grown familiar with them, but rather to use them to tell a broader story, instead of insisting that the public get in line with an (assumed but incorrect) innate interest in K4s, M1s, etc. In planning, we went on the assumption that so long as we treated the classic technology story with respect, we would retain the railfan visitation, while using it as a tool to tell the wider story of an entire community would retain the interest of non-railfans, who make up the great majority of visitors.

In that respect, the fact that Altoona lacked a stellar rolling-stock collection proved to be a blessing in disguise. At many if not most sites, the rolling stock collection drives the interpretation. Here, it could not. The result was that it forced the museum, and us as interpretive planners, to focus on the distinctives of the site. In the end we found ourselves telling a story that no other city in America could tell. In so doing, we had to tell it from the standpoint of the railroad wife, the savings-and-loan officer, and so on. This, I think, got us much closer to the reality story than if we had taken a more traditional path.

One of the most poignant stories came from an oral history in which a retiree related his experience as a promising young PRR shop laborer many years earlier. As an energetic and heads-up young man, he was noticed as a candidate for career advancement. His supervisor asked him what faith he followed. When he responded that he was Catholic, the boss's face dropped. He told the young man, "I'm sorry, I wish I could help you, but you go to the wrong church...."

It's those stories that give us more insight into the nature and traditions of American railroading than 1,000 statistical numbers about K4-M1-I1 etc. tractive effort and cylinder diameters ever will. The technological story is important -- and because it's based on facts, we tend to equate facts with truth -- but it's not the only truth we have to tell. Increasingly, we need to dig for the stories that give color and depth to the facts-and-figures story.

Dan Cupper
Harrisburg, Pa.


cupper@att.net

> Thanks Paul but my questions were (badly
> expressed):

> 1. Is reality itself adequately compelling?

in my opinion, any reality is individually discovered. It can't be demonstrated by any single place or experience, only stimulated. So, no, as far as how any place or museum can interpret it.

> 2. If not, is the way we have altered it for
> marketing purposes the best / only way?

Probably that's the actual reality, seems sad to say.

> 3. Can we provide a broader and thehrefore
> more complete and less misleading heightened
> reality and be as compelling?

Probably not, of course depending on who 'we' are- but especially 'Where' we are- physically in the landscape. There are some very compelling places with sensitive talented people. EBT, Durango- Silverton, CTS, Wk&S, Steamtown(!); the Moedingers' have stimulated untold numbers to discover and furthur investigate all kinds of realities. I think, too, you have to take into account the written and photo documentation. There's a lot out there, but you have to put it togeather yourself. I still think the 'heightened' stimulated- steroidic(?) experiences are what it takes to get most of the public on the journey. Once your on it- well, all kinds of possibilities.

Let me give an example of how we do it at my museum. The Balclutha is an 1886 cargo carrying sailing ship, one of four from the 1880s left in the world.

Yhe staff and volunteers who tell her story tell the whole thing. From the crew in their primitive living conditions to the Master in his wood panaled suite of rooms. No one element of the story is all of it, tell the visitors all of it!

ted_miles@nps.gov