As many of you know the Western Union Junction Railroad Club opperates a small Railroad Museume housed inside of a Former Milwaukee Road Caboose. Our Museum Grounds are located on a small parcell of Land that is owned by Canadian Pacific and is leased by the Village of Sturtevant, Wisconsin, in turn we pay the $1.00 lease to the railroad. This year we plan on starting to remodel a former Milwaukee road Boxcar that was given to our Museume into additional display space.

Some things we would like to do, add a new foor, so we can make a smooth surface to make it wheel chair friendly (currently it has a steel nailable floor) and to frame off the one end to look like a Depot office (about 9 x 11in size) , also the other end will have 1 foot deep display cases along the walls to allow artifact to be displayed. Has any other group done this?

I know their was a discussion that their should be an air gap between the steel sides of the boxcar and the walls (ie no spray foam directly on car sides)


I just want to make sure I do things , that will not harm the boxcar.

Thanks
Mike Slater
President of the WUJRRC&M

For thoughts and ideas you might contact the West Coast Railway Association and its West Coast Railway Heritage Park at Squamish, B.C. Canada. Last fall it was part way through converting an ex-troop sleeper into display space.

Website at:http://www.wcra.org/

Squamish is between Vancouver and Whistler for those of you following the Winter Olympics. And the Museum has special activities going on because of the Olympics.

Brian,

I am surprised to hear they are converting a car to display space. When I was there a couple of years ago; they had a big wooden building on site that they had moved from some other railroad property. And they were just finishing a two story replica train station building.

All in all it is quite an interesting place; there is a lot to see besides the famous Royal hudson that they were overhauling when i was there.

Ted Miles

Ted,

As I recall, the car being converted is one that was used for M/W crew accommodations and it will be used for interpreting the life of railroad men and women. And to encourage people to record their (or family members) railroad experience.

The buildings you mention are in full use. The shop building was the largest building moved in BC, if not Canada, when it was moved a decade or so ago. It is used for renovation/restoration work at the museum site and also houses the wooden business car "British Columbia" which is available for viewing through only one doorway. It is also used to presently store the "Royal Hudson' when it is not in use.

The station building is in full use and has little extra space. Downstairs is the museum store, office space, meeting room and rest rooms; upstairs is the library, etc.

The new round house will be used to display the "Royal Hudson", the biz car, and other notable items in the collection. But it will also be a multi-purpose event facility, so for special events, receptions, dinner parties, etc. some of the equipment will get moved out to provide space. The original goal was to have the building done for the Olympics; but, the interior is not completed. So they are using the leased ex-BC rail diesel shop building across the way for an Olympics related event (see their website).

I got the chance to make a quick trip to this little museum earlier today. Apparently it is only open on Sundays, May through October. The Milwaukee Road bay window caboose looks in decent shape and there are 3 boxcars sitting on a weed grown siding that is still connected to the CP (ex-Milwaukee Road) branch line and that are apparently owned now by the museum . They also have some other track equipment and signal displays. There is also some type of a frame building that is right across the CP branch from the museum that looks like it could have been a freight station at one time. Just wondered if this museum is still active. At one time, there was a local group named the Caledonia Historical Society that acquired the old Milwaukee Road main line passenger station and moved it to some park apparently in the area. Don't know if these two groups are one and the same. I also wonder how that depot restoration is going.

Any info appreciated. Thanks.

Les

yes we are still active, museume basiclly shut down now till spring. We hold our meetings at the local town hall on the third wends at 7pm. We also have a facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Weste ... 9507993445. If any one wants to vist on a day other than sundays email me at caboose (at) wi (dot) rr (dot) com

The Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum in Rochester, NY has done it:

http://rgvrrm.org/

With two cars..a baggage car, and a Reefer.

Baggage car:
http://rgvrrm.org/about/railroad/dlw2078/index.htm

Reefer:
http://rgvrrm.org/about/railroad/mdt14053/index.htm

exhibits inside the cars:
http://rgvrrm.org/about/exhibits/index.htm
http://rgvrrm.org/media/photos/exhibits ... _Large.jpg
http://rgvrrm.org/media/photos/exhibits ... _Large.jpg

(Disclaimer: im not a member of the RGVRRM, but I have seen both exhibits, and they are very nicely done!)


Scot

Are these exhibits ADA compliant via a ramp or lift?

The train and hardware store in North Lima, Ohio uses two boxcars to hold a lot of their stock, with shelving installed along the walls. We didn't go in when we went by this August, but have in the past and it works very well.

A while back someone posted a photo of a truckless boxcar converted into restrooms for visitors. Definitely one of the best re-uses of surplus equipment that I have seen.

ADA accessible = wheelchairs can get on it
ADA compliant = complies with the law fully, e.g. something which is exempt, like the USS Pampanito or your house.

Quite likely the cars are compliant but not accessible. The conditions under which this is allowed vary on many factors, the ruling one here is probably the financial resources of the museum. When your budget is $100,000 a year, you can get away with not putting in a bunch of accommodation that a $5M/year place would have to install.

There are some litigation-happy plaintiffs out there that would love to take issue with your statement in a court of law, and probably will as soon as they get around to finding you.......

Our group would love to install a ramp to make access into the boxcar accessible, If some one would like to donate a ramp I would make sure it would get installed. A few weeks ago I started to look at what supplies I would need to get to progress on the conversion for more display space. We had started to put in a floor in the boxcar, however since than our organization had to deal with a few other issues, one was some abandoned property left at our museum. Which by our state laws is now property of the museum. We also let a local model Railroad Club store their items in one of our boxcars rent free, they now have a new club house they are fixing up, and hopefully next spring the rest of their items will be moved out, than we can move out the rest of the items into the other storage/work shop car and progress with the re-model

Our industry is hopelessly behind the times in complying with ADA. We can't just hide behind the "exempt" dodge because the equipment is old. While a specific piece of equipment might be "exempt," your museum and its programs ARE NOT. You must be able to provide an "equivalent accommodation." There are a lot of diverging opinions what constitutes an equivalent accommodation, but the spirit of the law requires that a similar experience is available for the disabled.

While all of your rail equipment may be historic, and therefore "exempt," the ride itself is not because it is a museum program. If you can't get the disabled on the train, you must do as much as reasonably possible to recreate the the ride through photos, video, audio, models, etc. A rental birthday caboose presents exactly the same problem. How do you provide equivalent accommodation for a disabled birthday guest? Warning guests in advance that the party caboose cannot accommodate the disabled may not cut it in a court.

There are no firm guidelines for these "equivalent accommodations." It is much better to be able to provide the same accommodation to all visitors, but extra effort is needed to take care of those with sensory disabilities. If you pay attention when you visit museums and national parks, you will see more and more exhibits designed for the blind or deaf. These might include recorded audio descriptions of exhibits, or scale bronze models for the visually impaired. Videos should have captions for the deaf.

Back to the exhibit in a boxcar... you must either make the boxcar accessible, or you need to provide the same exhibits in a place that is accessible. A compliant ramp that goes up the approximately four-feet to boxcar sill height would require 48-linear feet of ramp with a 5-foot landing that the bottom, a 5-foot landing in the middle, and a 5-foot landing at the top. A wheelchair lift might be a better alternative than 63' of ramps and landings. There are a lot of additional requirements that address door hardware, thresholds, corridor widths, handrails, etc. ad nauseum. This stuff is not a place for "gitterdun." The requirements for building accessibility are very specific. Make sure you are doing it right from the start.

And "reasonably possible" is defined by your organization's financial capacity!

Think about the keystone of ADA: you must always do what is readily achievable (read: easy) to accommodate persons with disabilities.

The financial wherewithal test follows from that. $10,000 to create access is readily achievable for $10 million/year CSRM, but not for $50,000/year MTM. If it bankrupts your organization, it is not readily achievable by definition. That is consistent with the will of persons with disabilities: "Sure, my first preference is to be able to access it, but my second choice is that it continue to exist. It shouldn't have to close because of me."

Note in these institutions making these lavish accommodations, none of them are spending more than 3% of their annual income, except perhaps the government.


Which could be a website. But as far as having to make it accessible, hold on. Is it a new build or an old project? Could you put the exhibit in an accessible space instead of this space? Can you position the boxcar in front of ramps you already own (even if they're not ADA spec)? Can you build or adapt ramps for less than 2% of your annual budget? Such questions you must ponder to establish that you have done what is readily achievable.


New builds are a different rule. You are required to build it right, because the theory is that building accessible costs about the same as building non-accessible. Gosh, so you put the bathroom partitions in a slightly different place. Have a flat entrance instead of a grand staircase. Get rid of those 1-step elevation changes in the hallways. Stuff like that.


Those are extortion schemes. Deal with them appropriately: Molski, Righthaven, Prenda.
Don't confuse them with what is legal or not.