It could have been good (and shorter) and there are parts that I agree with, but it is too much of an expression of personal credentials while conceding no specific knowledge of the issue at hand. Worse, while tacitly conceding this is a failure; he goes on to take a swipe at people that might point to this episode or Steamtown in general as evidence of the shortcomings of government and instead claims domestic realities should be shelved for British experience.

I spent 23 years as an active volunteer in multiple capacities with over 3500 hours, was an officer and director of two different affiliated tax exempts, and served as the obstetrician for one of them. I knew ALL the superintendents except Latschar and the last one-of course I could say I knew enough about the last one after being harassed about getting a permit for a proposed off-site gathering in a year and a half old Facebook post-while recovering from chemo. I worked for three years to get a certain locomotive to visit, including drafting the paperwork and playing chauffeur. And not to put too fine a point on it, I have that MBA he describes as a missing necessity.

Steamtown as a federal property (As an aside Steamtown doesn't "own" 3713, the National Park Service is a custodian) came into existence in the 1980's. There have been seven Presidents of both parties since then and almost 20 Congresses. As for "priorities" there's always going to be some war, skirmish or threat of hostilities somewhere. And if not armed conflict; natural disasters or economic "crises".

At a certain point, you have to be willing to confront reality. The grand opening was 28 years ago. It's not like they don't know what's necessary.

(This seems unavailable now on the Trains Mag Site.)

Steamtown head says 3 to 4
operating steamers is a priority
By Justin Franz | October 30, 2015
RELATED TOPICS: EAST | HISTORICAL | STEAM/PRESERVATION | LOCOMOTIVES

So what's happened since then-especially until March 2020 when COVID caused operationus interruptus?


They blew an opportunity to have a visiting steam engine with a cult following, not even thanking the parties involved for their time-despite being reminded that such a courtesy was a good idea. I know, I did the reminding.

The shop staff was allowed to proceed to imminent retirement without using the time to get trainees on board (of course with limited operations, training would be limited)

The relationships with supporters/partners and volunteers were ruined.

Considering the idea to "protect our heritage for the long term" A building that was allowed to deteriorate after storm damage was razed and multiple pieces of rolling stock were scrapped. As one now deceased employee used to say documenting the neglect "this makes me sick".

One Superintendent checked enough appraisal boxes to get promoted off the Titanic; the successor received a thinly veiled demotion.

Trust me, like Fox Mulder I want to believe; but as a CPA I follow the Third Standard of Fieldwork:

"The auditor must obtain sufficient appropriate1 audit evidence by performing audit procedures to afford a reasonable basis for an opinion regarding the financial statements under audit. "

https://us.aicpa.org/content/dam/aicpa/ ... -00150.pdf


So tell me, why should I believe there's a revival in the works? Show me the evidence.

The Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania has entered the chat:


https://www.rrmuseumpa.org/


Brian Helfrich

Which will elicit the following complaints from the "peanut gallery":

"Look at all the stuff they've left to rot outside!"

"They actually scrapped some pieces rather than fix them!"

"The condition of PRR 4800 is absolutely inexcusable! Send it to somewhere it'll be properly cared for!!"

Ya can't win, I tell ya.

Now someone go invite the CSRM to the discussion............................

Well if we really want to be picky and show off an example of a government run railroad museum then we can just point across the point to one in York. The National Railway Museum is a prime example of what a great museum can look like. Heck funds are even being poured in on renovations.

And so has the Pennsylvania Auditor General.

https://www.paauditor.gov/Media/Default ... 102810.pdf

Full disclosure, those artifacts include items used by a great uncle at the Lehigh Valley's Ashmore facility, presently an remediated haz-mat site thanks to a successor occupants use of beryllium. Since I'm not going to see what if anything is left of where my grandmother's brother worked.

https://www.mcall.com/1999/04/13/beryll ... d-disease/

To this list I would add
California State Railroad Museum
Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City

Steamtown is a round museum peg in a square NPS hole. No amount of bandwidth, locked posts, or broken hearts will change the present environment. Sigh.

Sadly LWHS and B&M 3713 are the losers.

Wesley

SNHS can certainly succeed under the right leadership. See: Kip Hagen (and, fair enough to also mention Debbie Conway, once she found her footing).

It can also be driven off the rails and into the ballast by the wrong leadership. Thankfully, “Gomez Addams” has finally moved on.

With the concession that this really does appear a well run facility with an excellent facility and a great

Before you declare success; you have to define success.

Success has two elements: effectiveness (doing the right things); and efficiency (doing things right). I can tell you from direct experience as an auditor; it's a lot easier to determine whether an entity is efficient than whether it is effective, but sometimes they are intertwined- effectiveness is the pursuit of efficiency. In both cases however, you have to have some objective measurable or comparable criteria.

With that said the vast majority of people don't go much past their visceral reaction of whether an agency, agenda, initiative or program is a success or failure. Tp be fair some times, it's not really necessary-if there's s long term record of degradation, delay, missed opportunities, reduction and retraction.

This entire thread has now veered off of the termination of the agreement into a mandate on government sponsorship/affiliation in general. No other system or facility matters here.

The causes and effects of this episode might be Steamtown's fault, the Chapter's fault, the NPS' fault or nobody's fault, to borrow a part of the Richard Boone's lines from the movie Big Jake. What we know is it appears to be part of a pattern of an inability to start and finish a project in a continuous, timely manner.

One of the things that weighed heavily my judgment that the NPS wasn't going to improve its stewardship was the knowledge that the mechanical staff at Steamtown, mindful of their advancing years, need to minimize maintenance effort, and the growing difficulties in maintaining century old coaches from both "original fabric" as well as a diminishing inventory of parts and knowledge perspective proposed issuing an RFP for the construction of replicas with certain modern modern components (Tighlocks, ABDXLs, roller bearings).

While is true this would change the operating characteristics of a train and some mechanical and operating skills might be lost (there's precedent in this with the replacement of the Schedule 6 with 26), it would be a step in maintaining an operating experience in conformity with the now 20 year old Comprehensive Interpretive Plan that would be indistinguishable to the average visitor from a 100 year old coach with Type E? couplers, P or UC brakes and friction bearings).

It never saw the light of day and I regard it as an observable instance of ineffectiveness-not doing the right thing.

Well said. Thank you.

Wesley

Kip kept trains running (after slashing the excursion schedule from nearly 200 trips per year to about 30-to be fair average ridership plummeted post 9/11 so) but didn't move the ball on Steam. The diesels became a the sort of crutch that induces weakness.

Debbie got credit for getting the 26 operating (after 17 years) and was cooperative in getting the Friends organization together-which bluntly was in her interest as it was a performance objective. The 765 visit was a bit of a coup, but there were other aspects of her tenure that were less successful. Announcing publicly that 3-4 operating locomotives were a necessity without having resources in place to effect that was a mistake, as was not properly resolving the three year long consideration of a visiting locomotive. In the end I think she figured out the enormity of the task and looked for the lifeboat.

It is simply a fact that outside Ms. Farrell or Ms. Weinman no present Superintendent or promotable NPS candidate in the NPS knows much about trains or railroads. Under ideal circumstances, I think it takes 2-3 years to figure that out, let alone the complexities of the relationships with the PNERRA, the D-L and other other entities Steamtown deals with.

These are not ideal circumstances. There's been enormous "brain drain" over the past couple years. COVID somewhat accelerated this, but many retirements and departures were imminent by 2023 anyway. I wish the new Super every good fortune-it'll be an necessity-to survive, let alone prosper.

Are you sure it was Gomez and nor Morticia-or Uncle Fester?

Sam Hilliard: "They're going to crash!"

Gomez Addams: "Beautiful! Beautiful!"

Sam Hilliard: "You meant to blow them up?"

Gomez Addams: "Of course. Why else would a grown man play with trains?"

If I need to be corrected, please do, as many years have passed. From what I can recall, Kip had two road engines under steam for most of his time as Superintendent. I believe he had one season without steam when 3254 had to be pulled from service early.

It's been talked about before but having to move the rougher pieces of the collection to the park from Tobyhanna post-9/11 created a lot of issues. Someone else will have to comment on staff reduction during that era and how it compounded problems.

We did see the asbestos abatement project under Kip, which was the first step before volunteers could even begin to work on most of the outdoor pieces. And getting assets into the hands of a more appropriate steward was at least a possibility - Kip was very open to repatriating 2929 rather than see it rot, don't forget (what year did 2816 leave?).

Were things perfect? Of course not. You still had all the usual red tape that comes with any federal entity. But it seemed to me that Kip knew how to work the regs to his advantage (within reason) and was able to maintain good relations with community partners, unlike a more recent super. DLW 565 would be a notable and unfortunate exception, but you can't win them all.

We went from several projects moving along slowly to no projects and even saw some pieces scrapped with no warning to the museum community. Heck, they can't even heat the buildings now. We didn't know how good we had it, or how bad it could truly be.

Reading & Northern is already nipping at their heels, running excursions out of Pittston. Just contract with Andy Muller for steam already and concentrate on getting the physical plant back up to snuff. And pray that the Iron Horse group is crazy enough to keep making the feds look good.

Define evidence.

Shop forces refocused? Outside contractors re-engaged? What needles should be moved and would the people involved be at liberty to advertise such?

I can't see how this can be the fault of the Chapter in any way, shape or form. Volunteers and donors, who were already tax payers, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and provided free labor toward the restoration of a federal asset. For many years, this was accomplished by selling concessions at the Moscow Station. Devotion and drive that most organizations would kill for. Only to culminate in well more than a year of being the "bigger person" and negotiating in good faith with a bad actor.

We can only guess as to why the park service chose to end this decades-long arrangement of receiving free money. Uncle Sam should have just said "thank you."

My Dad always used to say that a lot of people/groups can be good every once in a while, the key to greatness is consistency. And I believe that is what you see at STEA. Not as much a function of money spent but more of who is in place at any given time. So things wax and wane but hopefully over the long haul there is forward momentum. I do not think the site will ever reach its full potential, but then again, how many of us do in our lifetimes?

So, before anybody throws too much dirt on the remains, here is some good news out of Scranton:
https://news.yahoo.com/donation-help-steamtown-national-historic-000300859.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

Also, people who should know tell me that the new rail ops guy from UP is real good. If they throw in a new Sup that has good business management skills, some leadership qualities, and the ability to hold people accountable, then you may have some new momentum forward.

They also need to finally figure out why the organization that established the preservation principles that form the basis for what most museums in the US (and many other countries) do with regards to managing their artifacts can not manage an early 20th century operating rail facility. It all starts with the person responsible for the structures (which, as I have pointed out previously includes not only the buildings but also many of the steam locomotives). The current organizational situation that has some artifacts under the Historian, some under the Curator, some under the shop, and a lot just tucked away all over the site allows for poor inventory control and no one person ultimately responsible for the coordinated preservation of the rail-related artifacts. I pointed this out when NPS interviewed me as part of creating the priorities for Kip's replacement, but apparently Regional decided not to include the deliverable of better inventory management in Deb Conway's to do list.