Exactly. I just liked to know figures about it. Dave Crosby helpfully wrote:




Did the number of office staff shrink in the same way?

I remember Obamas promises. He wanted to have roads, bridges and other infrastructure repaired and thus make a win/win-situation for the nation and for employment.

Very soon, pressure groups called all that a "macho stimulus program". So he changed the program from what might have been good for the nation towards what may be good for people who prefer sitting in offices part-time instead of hard work.

And this is what I suspect in the case of Steamtown what might have happened. Cut the real workers and leave/employ the politicaly correct group. *I may be wrong.*


Mike

[quote="484Mike] *I may be wrong.*Mike[/quote]

And you are.....gross oversimplification of a situation that has been under way for 30 years now experimenting with the extent to which investment in the public good can be reduced to send its cost back into the private sector, where it is theoretically going to be even more productive.........and has very little to do with the current white house administrations difficulties in gaining support from the legislative branch or the other way around. Fewer guys in overalls in Scranton is pretty much meaningless in the greater picture........I don't know if you were alive in the 1950-1980 time frame when the public sector expanded, or even in the 1980's when the redactive experiment was started as a philosophical economic movement, almost like a religion.......but if you are going to offer opinions on it you might want to know the history before writing and gain some perspctive that will help you understand bigger things than "it takes longer to fix an engine at Steamtown." That's like a sniffle in a cancer ward.

dave

Blaming the Chief Executive because of the manner in which a National Historic Site is managed is way, way, too simple. This goes back for decades, and is cloaked as a "them versus us" issue. Getting down to fixing the problem, more money needs to be channeled into specific programs that provide services tot he general population, such as parks, recreation sites, museums. Part of it currently goes to open artery programs that can't keep pace with the objectives. And while health and welfare eat enormous sums of money, unusable weapon systems eat more ($182,000,000 per jet fighter?). The best thing to do is write to your congress people and senators, and demand money be channeled towards the things that directly affect the lives of you and your children.

And all of the above disregards the simple fact that Steamtown NHS itself can fairly be described, whether we like it or not, as an opportunistic political creation, which if it were in a field we disliked we would easily and eagerly label as "pork-barrel" spending.

Once again speaking with a historical perspective in mind (which of course means I'm old), this is hardly the first time, nor will it be the last, that a "historic site" designation has fallen to the wayside by advancing history, and the forgetfulness or apathy of subsequent generations. Think of all the "oldest house in towns" or one-room schoolhouses or stations or log cabins that were enthusiastically saved two or five generations ago, but now lie largely forgotten save for an annual troop-through by a school field trip. Not only in the U.S. and Canada, but in Britain and Germany and France and Greece and Japan, where one can hardly throw a stone in any direction without it landing on the site of some battle, atrocity, religious site, cemetery, or other shard of history.

Epic locations like Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Independence Hall, Gettysburg, Kitty Hawk, and the Alamo will always hold some prominence in the bigger historical picture and public imagination, even if the United States should break up onto twenty separate republics or something. Below that certain vaunted level of prominence or spectacle, however, any historic site is dependent upon its supporters or defenders not only keeping the site and its history and reason for being in the public eye, but defending and promoting the cause for why it deserves prominence. That's rather easy to do with Edison's lab, Ford's garage or factory, or Promontory Point. It's harder to do, in the 21st century, with the site of a historic fort which now has a Victorian mansion on it, for one of three labs where a guy discovered oxygen, or a one-room schoolhouse even in an area where the Amish still use them.

Steamtown NHS has, from its inception, had to struggle with the syndrome that it's, as I believe Jack White of the Smithsonian once said, "a second-rate collection in a third-rate location." The parochial, fractious and localized nature of rail preservation as it has evolved--"how DARE Strasburg offer to restore and operate OUR LIRR loco!"--has been our own worst enemy. Pennsylvania railfan groups have not supported Steamtown because "it isn't Pennsy" or whatever excuse they can conjure; New Jersey groups that could have made it a home for some of the erstwhile URHS collection won't do so because it's not New Jersey........ and a prominent attention-grabbing member of this forum chose to repeatedly bash and denigrate Steamtown for years, with the exact same "nattering" negativity he now decries coming from others about other projects or his own (failed) proposals.

This is not politics exclusively. That's an excuse.

"We have met the enemy, and it is us." -- Pogo, by Walt Kelly.

You remember "Pogo"? Wow, you are old!

Apparently, having read Greek and Roman literature, the Bible, Beowulf, Shakespeare, the Canterbury Tales, and the Declaration of Independence, and having listened extensively to Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Wagner, et al as well, I'm over 2,500 years old.......

You don't look a day over 1,900 years!

I must be a relative youngster. My wife says I lie about my age. She says no one would know as much as I do about American and railroad history unless they'd lived through it. She says I'm not really 58 years old, but more like 158 years old!

Word is no Baldwin 26 this year.

Found more "mistakes".

When/where did you hear this?

People who know it, but cannot say it themselves.

And what is your status/affiliation with the group, can you at least give us that? Otherwise it's a faceless/nameless/positionless person giving us "inside" information, who only has six posts on the forum overall. You can hopefully understand our caution/skepticism at taking and believing this information.

Amen

I don't really get the reasoning behind that, since most of the people involved with the project have been reasonably forthcoming on prior setbacks or issues with the little lokie. Just saying.

Otto Maddock = Automatic. An interesting pseudonym that does not contain an L or S.

Wesley