The other Museums have not tried to move up to the higher echelon of Museums by being accredited. RRMPA didn't make it but learned what they needed to do.

Did anyone note in this thread there is a railroad across the street from RRMPA that operates vintage wood passenger cars and steam locomotives? Just not the ones in the RRMPA collection.

Phil Mulligan

Meanwhile, the B&O Railroad Museum, which by now only operates a couple diesels and offers rides on non-collection rolling stock, IS accredited by the AAM and partnered with the Smithsonian Institution.

"So there."

I certainly hope Tennessee Valley, Nevada State, and Illinois Railway Museum (among others) never get a -accredited then!

If accredited = death to steam - I’m out! Haha.

And that debate has been around as long as there have been railroad museums.

Accreditation does NOT mean, by itself, "death to steam."

The museum standards that apply in a case like this means you do not "consume" museum artifacts/holdings by exposing them to wear and tear.

In other words, you don't let every museum visitor hold and read the Declaration of Independence or a Gutenberg Bible, you don't loan out Henry VIII's royal cape to the Renaissance Faire, you don't let zoo visitors play with the giant pandas, and you don't take everybody for a ride in the last Wells Fargo stagecoach. And this fight has become literally explosive of late, with the crashes of several World War Two aircraft that arguably should no longer be flying.

Now, there have always been areas of contention with this approach. Every museum can get accused of being a "boring warehouse of dusty old things with 'DO NOT TOUCH' signs," and throughout the latter half of the 20th Century "interactive" became the buzz word. People become fascinated by actually holding old tools or arms, seeing and hearing a vintage aircraft or auto operate, and--as we all know--actually riding behind a steam locomotive on a vintage railroad train. And now we have "children's museums" that are all interactive--crayons, touch screens, videos--and no artifacts whatsoever.

The compromise? Expendable substitutes or replicas, museums that offer operating experiences at the cost of "accreditation," and/or private ownership.

East Strasburg offers the perfect compromise literally across the street from one another. Museum on the south side, operable (and often rebuilt) non-museum equipment in private hands on the north side.

You want to see Pennsy steam operate? Go throw your money at Long Island 35 or 39, PRR 643, PRR 1361, and PRR 4483, and support the PRR T1 Trust. Reading steam or RDCs or Reading coaches? Not that far away, every weekend or several times a year now! Am I a bit disappointed that I can't ride PRR 3556 anymore? Sure, but I consider that a small price to pay for its long-term preservation, and besides, I can still ride on Maryland & Pennsylvania 20 instead, and I've even ridden on a few major railroad business cars, a full length Santa Fe dome, etc. because not every "museum piece" is in a museum.

Both the Baltimore Streetcar Museum and the B&O Museum have had the foresight to find ingenious ways to "enhance the visitor experience" while reducing or eliminating wear and "consumption" on their artifacts--the former by partnering with the Friends of the Philadelphia Trolley to offer homes for several Philadelphia cars (including a restored PCC, a work car and a snowsweeper) that can be used to reduce wear on the unique original Baltimore equipment, and the latter by assembling a trainset of PRR stainless cars and a purchased non-B&O switcher to run the "First Mile" train.

You want steam and its obvious attractions? Call up the Gramlings, or find a way to host a traveling steamer like UP 4014, NKP 765, this upcoming "American Freedom Train 2026," or whatever. Or go find one of dozens of UP and Santa Fe steamers stuffed, mounted, and largely forgotten throughout the West. But don't wear out the REAL museum artifacts.

Not having a SR Ps-4 to see in steam is a small price to pay for getting to see, hear, ride behind, and experience SR 4501, 630, and 722, and creating the fans that would later revive N&W 611 and 1218, NKP 765, T&P 610, and legions of other steamers.

Yep. In the RR Museum of PA's case, it's one of the handful of reasons that I'm not a fan of what the T1 Trust is doing.

Instead of making something practical or usable in such a scenario (like most of the world's other new build steam has done), they're making an albatross that will only really be able to be used to the fullest in very, very specific circumstances and at great cost when it is.

Think about how much more utility a replica of something like the PRR H3 would've had. It'd be road portable and wouldn't beat the hell out of anywhere it runs meaning it could visit far more operations and reach far more people over its lifetime.

I think they would have trouble raising money if the subject of the build was something like that. Sure, they would need much less money overall but my guess is it would be a net negative. Similar arguments apply to the ongoing expenses assuming they get to that point - yes a consolidation would be much cheaper to operate but people (by and large) aren't going to be all that excited to see it. 5550 will be a spectacle and there's nothing wrong with that.

I don't see anything wrong with what they are doing provided they have a place to run the engine when done which it sounds like they will. It is a historically significant locomotive type/class without any survivors. If the project is successful then it would pave the way for other more practical builds.

With due respect to actually completely agreeing with your premise:

The problem with this proposition is that "sex sells." This is dramatically demonstrated by contrasting the fundraising for the utterly more realistic and practical rebuild of the LIRR G5s (crickets chirping, anyone?) with the fundraising and construction of the "pie in the sky" PRR T1 Project.

Similarly, in Britain, the fundraising for several more realistic and practical steam replica/rebuild projects has languished far behind the well-known A1 Tornado (which took eighteen years to bring to fruition, and its successor LNER P2 2-8-2 express loco replication.

Example: Kitbashing a common and expendable ex-Barry "Hall" 4-6-0 hulk into a later-extinct "Saint" class, now "GWR 2999 Lady of Legend" which debuted at Didcot in 2019, took thirty years of fundraising and ten years of reconstructing--and half or so of the parts were already there! There are perhaps a dozen or so other such replica/rebuild proposals languishing in various states of construction or hiatus in the UK, but you've not heard of them because they lack the braggadocio and appeal of a PRR T1--or, similarly, like contrasting the planned rebuild of some random U.S. or Canadian 2-6-0 or 4-6-0 or Pacific (CN 92? CN 1533? PRR 1361?) to the UP Big Boy.

Ok, I’ll state the obvious, surprised no one else has. Short of catastrophic boiler explosion or wreck, locomotives will remain essentially intact and visually unchanged through decades of operation. Boilers tubes, wheel bearings and the like were and are regularly replaced without any perceptible effect. The notion of “original fabric” isn’t quite the same thing on a steam locomotive as say the Declaration of Independence or a valuable painting. Railroads as a matter of regular maintenance changed all sorts of things multiple times over a locomotive’s service life. Those Pennsy engines are no exception, the Pennsy was well known for regularly changing out whole fireboxes and boilers. The boiler plates, journal brass, tires etc on those museum engines are not original, just old. Replacing those parts with new metal would have no meaningful impact. Allowing museum visitors to see one of the PRR locomotives in steam and perhaps even a ride would have a substantial impact, in my opinion.
As for the financial investment, the museum commission spends rather large sums on cosmetic restoration, I’m sure replacing some of that “original fabric” in the process.
I have an old friend who worked at that museum for years and was a proponent for the conservation of original fabric argument. Me, I’ve always been an operations/ mechanical guy. The whole reason for being involved in this business is to see steam in action.
Just my two cents.

Mark

So donate to the fundraising to restore LIRR G5 39 across the street.

Best of both worlds--you get to see a PRR-design loco with a red keystone number plate, designed for passenger service, IN STEAM, and it ISN'T a one-of-a-kind museum artifact, at least from a museum that thinks in such terms. (Hell, if you blow it up, there's still LIRR 35 back on Long Island!!!!)

That’s fair. I’d love to see a G in steam. I wish them luck with their fundraising efforts. Though I suspect the museum could come up with 1 million$ a lot easier than the Long Island group seeking donations.

Once again, you're ignoring "protocols".

As a state-run, state-funded member of a state agency, the RR Museum of Pa. CANNOT "raise funds" in that manner.

That's the job of the Friends of the RR Museum of Pa.

Past directors of the Museum have told me in person that they and their staff are not allowed to directly solicit funds for acquisition or restoration except through submitting budgets to Harrisburg. In fact, they're not even allowed to suggest that a piece, collection, etc. would be a worthy addition to their assets--that has to come from offers outside the Museum (Friends, Amtrak, estate, whatever).

So the next problem is that the LIRR loco isn't part of the RR Museum of Pa. collection, therefore it's out of the scope of the Friends to raise funds for its restoration.

In broad theory, it's even outside the scope of the PRR Technical & Historical Society--LIRR is not PRR, no matter how much overlap and ownership there was. (It sure as hell shouldn't stop them, but it could.)

And there isn't a "Friends of the Strasburg Rail Road" in large part because they're a for-profit corporation.

So you're down to what the LIRR groups can do, and they have an uphill battle--like trying to get folks in Burlington-land to donate to the restoration of CB&Q 4960 in Virginia or Arizona, or people in PRR territory to donate to restoring a PRR K4s to run in Virginia where 611 was. (Now, OTOH N&W 611 did VERY well running on the Strasburg--but that was after decades of proving itself on the main line on its home turf.)

Now this is where someone else's offbeat suggestion of "photographers who want to pay to take pictures of it" should in theory come into play.................

You're completely right on that. It's why people are donating toward the spectacle. It's not for me to say what people should be allowed to do with their money. But they should be honest with themselves about what they're doing with it and why.

I wasn’t clear. I meant the museum has funding and could choose to spend that money to make one of their engines operate, if they ever got past the notion that it would be unthinkable.

The Museum has less funding than you seem to think.

How much do you think they spent on the cosmetic restoration of 460?