Does your railroad museum or preservation group have a good succession plan? Strasburg Rail Road President Linn Moedinger shares his insight as he prepares to pass his own job onto the next generation.

http://theroundhousepodcast.com/2018/07 ... sentation/

This was a recorded presentation from the HeritageRail Alliance conference this past spring.

Thanks for posting this. I rather enjoyed this presentation and I'm glad to have the chance to relive it.

These podcasts are USELESS to those like me who are hearing impaired. Is there a written version of the presentation somewhere so it can be read instead of listened to? Even YouTube videos are superior in this regard as captions (subtitles) are an option on some so I can at least understand those. Podcasts to a hearing impaired person is like giving a blind person a (non-braille) book to read - while the information is "there" it can't be accessed.

Ask and you shall receive:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VRQC16q-5g

Nick - thanks for the link to the captioned video! I will watch it later when I have time.

Nick / Train-a-Mania --
Thank you very much for the link to Linn Moedinger's excellent and very informative and honest prsentation. Until you posted this, I did not even know your website existed. Thank you!

Robert J --
Thank you very much for asking for a text version of Linn's talk. I am not hearing-impaired, but I usually prefer to read text, rather than to have to spend a comparatively long time listening to a talk, and I also like to be able to stop reading and go back and refer to things when my mind wanders -- as it often does. (Whose mind doesn't wander? Oh, hello, Jedi Master! < G > )

Nick / Train-a-Mania --
Thank you very, veyry much for telling us that YouTube often provides transcripts to some videos, and for posting the link to the YouTube version of Linn's talk. I would never have even tried to find a transcript had you not said it existed. Thank you!

Linn Moedinger --
Thank you VERY much for your most exellent and honest and imformative and thought-provoking talk! I learned much from it and really enjoyed it. Thank you!

This -- providing transcripts of audio talks -- is yet one more example of how doing thngs to help disabled people usually helps non-disabled people, too, in ways that were not expected.

I have the opposite problem. I wish Youtube had an audio only option. I love listening to videos of speeches while i am working but it burns up so much of my data.

And as someone legitimately hearing-impaired who still needs the closed-captioning on the TV full-time because too many people don't enunciate, be advised that, although the auto-caption feature of YouTube and TV is a Godsend to the deaf, at times what's presented in the caption may bear little to no relation to what was actually said, especially if non-standard terminology or jargon is being used.

I have noticed on the YouTube videos that sometimes the captions are "scrambled" or have the wrong words in them as Alexander has noted in his post above. I've noticed the same thing on my local TV news stations too so it's not limited to YouTube. I suspect this is because voice to text dictation program software is translating the audio to captions automatically. In other words someone is not sitting there listening and writing the captions in real time like they do for a home video release.

Yes, it can be confusing (and amusing too!) at times but if one knows the subject I usually can figure out the proper word/meaning. It's better than the alternative - no captions at all.

One other use for captions is that they help people learn the language.

You've hit the nail on the head, so to speak. As one who essentially "reads" TV (I have no need for the sound to even be on) I've seen it all. Yes, in recent years most real-time captioning is done with voice recognition software and a human back-up; occasionally you'll see the captioning stop, back up, and then the real words appear. With youtube, they eliminate the human assist, and whatever garbage comes out of the software is what you get.

Then again, even when it was all manually generated, sometime the tech would simply become overwhelmed; that's a lot of decisions to make in little time, especially if the tech doesn't know the subject. I remember the first time I saw captioning, sitting in a sports bar (we didn't have it on our set at home)... the sports program was discussing Dick Butkus, which repeatedly came up in the captioning as "Dick Butt Kiss." My thought at the time was... needs work.

Finally getting around to listening to this and was wondering if the visual materials were available someplace? I know a few people that need to listen and hopefully understand this topic.

You can't teach leadership and you can't teach compassion. But both can be learned. I thank the OP for sharing and Lynn Modinger for the presentation. Very small list of people who have the ability to lead. "The position" or title does not give leadership, that comes from the person. The message applies to all organizations rail or otherwise. For profit or non profit. When directors/supervisors work from their ego they have lost track of where the productivity and spirit of cooperation went. I have been told it is the BOD responsibility to rein in their own when a director goes astray. We are all human so having a BOD working together hopefully can negate some of these human tendencies. Which in turn hopefully trickles down to the rest of the organization. From the top to the bottom of the food chain we lead by example for good or ill. Thank you Lynn for your presentation I think every person ought to listen or read this presentation. It is as important as boiler calculations, historical significance and any other aspect in our world. Regards, John.

That is so true. I had the good fortune to learn real leadership from one of the veterans of the original rail preservation movement-the late Robert M. Soule at TVRM. He demonstrated leadership from the trenches, so to speak. Never spoke much about his accomplishments-he was always focused on what needed attention and put great emphasis on each volunteer/employee putting out the best quality work that they were capable of. Each person there knew that our success was due to each team member doing their job to the best of their ability. TVRM continues to thrive under the new leadership of Mr. Andrews.

At my new organization, Old Pueblo Trolley, I will be in the first group of leaders to take on the torch from the founding members. I was quickly brought into the leadership organization and am currently on the Board of Directors. I am involved in different projects and we are currently identifying members who have the ability and desire to get involved with leadership in our organization. As others have taken on more responsibilities, the older members are slowly stepping back, allowing the transition to occur naturally. I began regularly attending ARM/ATRRM/HRA conferences in 2006, realizing that railroad museums do not exist in a vacuum and that I would need to develop personal relations with people in leadership positions at other museums. That plus it gave me the opportunity to catch up with friends from the other organizations.