Customer Satisfaction

robertmacdowell · **Posted:** Tue Aug 18, 2009 8:19 pm

Bobharbison wrote:

Quote:

Another one of the things we've run into a lot with the Museum functions is the difficulty of depot/site museums where no moving train experience is offered at all.

There's an easy way to find solutions to that dilemna. Just check out what most airplane museums do in the same situation. Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, The Museum of Flight in Seattle are generally recognized as some of the finest museum's around.

Agreed. Given that these other transportation museums, that don't have operating artifacts, tend to widely outclass railway museums in terms of being a good museum -- may be an argument for parking the artifacts, or acting like we have.

Arguably the best railway museum in their respective states are the Henry Ford Museum and the California State Railroad Museum. There is a central exhibit hall where they display stuffed-and-mounted trains. There's also a train ride, but it's well separate from the museum proper. (separate admissions, even?)

robertmacdowell · **Posted:** Tue Aug 18, 2009 8:31 pm

Randy Gustafson wrote:

The biggest thing I hit, over and over, on satisfaction surveys is a) restrooms and general car conditions, and b) 'all we did was go backwards' back to the start. Honestly, people somehow still think its a big train set loop, or Disney World. Everybody has their work cut out for them for what to do on the return leg of the trip. You'd think people would understand that, but THEY DO NOT.

Yes, I couldn't agree more. You've heard my rant: Buy your railroad, Buy land alongside, Build carbarns. There is one thing I omit from that list because it would seem irrelevant, but it is not: the Ladies' bathroom. Without a clean one, you will have a serious customer retention problem. Wives have veto power over family or school outing decisions. "Older, but freshly painted and heavily scrubbed" won't cut it. It really needs to have "antiseptic clean" written all over it, and the most practical way to get there is a modern styled facility of recent construction.

As for the push-pull arrangement, I've seen several approaches on that one. By far the best is the Michigan Transit Museum's old approach. Drag the train one way with the diesel. The other way, spin up the diesel to be a "stationary generator" 600V power source and feed it to the electric train, which drags the locomotive behind as deadweight.

RCD · **Posted:** Tue Aug 18, 2009 10:49 pm

YOU WANT TO PRESERVE A F40PH!!!! YOU WANT TO RUN SUPER LINER CARS BEHIND IT TO GET REVENUE TO MAINTAIN IT! That is modern stuff we are only interested in saving stuff from when we were kids that by now is in such deplorable condition that it will take $$$$ to get running, after all kid who wants to ride in a nice finished super liner with air conditioning in hot weather when they can ride a beat up old coach in scorching heat pulled by a Alco that fills the cars with exhaust smoke.

(Please note: I am not referring to any of the two museums I belong to in this rant. AGAIN I repeat I am not referring to any of the two museums I belong to!)