Would anyone on this board know of a source for the annual attendance figures for the RR museums across the USA?? I'm sure they can be compiled by the laborious process of reviewing each institutions IRS filing, but thought maybe there's an easier way?
Any help will be most appreciated. Thank you, Ross Rowland

For a variety of reasons, I am guessing that a lot of organizations do not publish this data. And I suppose the figures can be couched in a variety of ways depending on what message is trying to be sent.

In our case, we have paid attendance, a significant number of free visits by those who are members, free through the gate such as small children, discounts, free for special events (Mother's Day, Father's Day), free for exhibitors such as old cars (about 2000 individuals in one day for the event last year), charters, comps, etc. And if counting riders, the number can be much higher since we offer multiple rides on different equipment (as many as 9 trains on some days) with all rides included in general admission. Also hard to track early season and late season visitors who do not need a ticket if no train rides are operating that day.

Bob Kutella

Thanks Bob for the above advice. Isn't there an umbrella organization(ARM??) that is supposed to represent the RR museum community?
If that exists perhaps they would be a source for the annual #'s? I'll keep looking and will appreciate any leads.
Thank you, Ross Rowland

Yes, the Association of Railway Museums represents the railroad museum community. However, they do not have any paid staff--all ARM officers work full-time at some other job and volunteer to run ARM. To my knowledge they do not have the resources to collect or compile these kinds of statistics. They have their hands full organizing the annual meeting and representing the railroad museum community before stakeholders like IMLS.

Your best bet is to contact the museums directly. The second best bet is to work backwards and guesstimate from the gate revenues listed in the organizations' Form 990s. I do not think you will find an easy one-stop source for the numbers you seek.

Thanks Erik for that info. Whats the best way to contact ARM? I'll begin contacting the individual museums with a request for their #'s and will persue the IRS route as well. I'll give ARM a go but I'm sure you're right. Thanks, Ross

Go to

http://www.railwaymuseums.org/

and click contacts and you can get contact info for all the current officers. Start with the President, currently Paul Hammond at CSRM Foundation. The President basically fields all incoming inquiries personally as part of the job.

Please also remember that not every railroad museum belongs to the ARM. These range from operations-only sites that don't properly have a museum display (for example, the East Broad Top technically doesn't have a museum, but the Railways to Yesteryear operation across the street does) to operations too small to bother joining (a lot of NRHS chapter station museums and local historical society operations in depots) to places that simply might not want to join for whatever reason.

For the purposes of your data gathering, you might want to more narowly define your definition of "railway museum" and "visitors".

Erik-

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the other issue with ARM was, for many years at least, having a piece of rolling stock or equipment was required to be a member. I know that this was a big topic at the joint ARM/ TRAIN at Spencer, NC in 2001, and I know that a push was made to eliminate this as a requirement. Does anybody know if this was ever done?
At the time we did not have a piece of equipment; we do now, just have never joined. We are AAM mebers though ;- )

TJ Gaffney

Last I heard that motion was tabled for further study. As best I know you still currently have to own one piece of rolling stock to join ARM.

As always, thanks for the info Erik.

TJ

Also, organizations which do not qualify for full membership can join as Institutional Affiliates--

"Institutional Affiliate is for non-profit museums, historical societies, and similar organizations with railroad artifacts that do not qualify for Full Membership. Dues are $60 per year."

http://www.railwaymuseums.org/MembershipTypes.htm

By way of an update to the list, here's what I've been able to determine to date.
1.Neither the ARM nor any other organization compile annual attendance figures for Americas RR museums.
2. I am in the process of contacting each museum and asking for thier 2003 attendance figures.
3.For those that don't/won't share thier #'s with me, I will use thier IRS filings to back out thier gate #'s
4. When I've gotten the above done I'll put my findings here for all to share.

I'd guess it's going to take a while so please be patient.
Thanks, Ross Rowland

I'm truly curious, Ross. What do you expect to gain by this?

In another thread, Ross was talking of differences in attendance figures between facilities that only offer static displays, versus those that also have live steam train rides. I can only assume (there's that nasty word), based on his comments, that he's compiling attendance figures to see if there's any correlation between the two, and if it has any significant impact on the number of visitors a museum has.

Even with the raw data, it's going to be a bear to sort and classify various museums according to size, population density, geographic location (including climate), and any other number of factors that can influence those figures. I agree with Ross on the point that having a tourist operation will probably result in some sort of increase. The difficult part, because no two museums are alike, will be figuring out how much positive influence it will generate.

At the very least, figuring out the yearly total number of visits to RR museums nationwide is worth the effort alone. I applaud him for his efforts.

Ross,
I'm curious, why do you want the information?
Thanks,
Mark Bassett
NN Ry
Ely NV