...according to Mr. Rowland


Then I come across this request on another website


So, ladies and gentlemen, the question once again arises...how do we do it?

sc 'doc' lewis

In the case of youngsters, I would encourage them to become acquainted with the various railroad historical societies by providing them with the names of their websites. This could help to cultivate youngsters interest in railroad preservation.

The other part of this equation is, of course, these societies and clubs need to be willing to become mentors for youngsters who express an interest in railway preservation. Some of these youngsters may experience a declining interest as time goes on, but the societies and clubs must be willing to make this investment in an effort to continue railway history preservation. -- Ray

Having a website may help get the word out and bring people in, but the public image of the historical societies is pretty much defined by their meetings, programs, and other activities.

So how does your group look to somebody who walks in the door?

Oops, seems like I have written this once or twice before....

To sound trite, I think we have to make this stuff look cool. Sure, cuttin' coal, replacing superheaters, laying on insulation, and the like aren't "cool" by nature, but they are worthy, necessary tasks.

So many my age (21+/-) loathe physical labor and shun anything they can't do or see on their iPod. This is unfortunate. (And www.765.org will have downloadable podcasts for the iPod soon...)

We have to engage and sustain the interest, and to make practical the application of century old techniques and skills and appreciation for machinery that doesn't play MP3s. (I think S.C. has used a similar illustration before.)

Sure, there is a need for new blood, but that raises these questions:

-How do you hook them?
-How do you reel them in?
-How do you keep them?

We've spoken before about a few successful programs, and
I'd say a successul program is an intense one like Ely and Steamtown's RailCamps. You get a taste of everything there is one week, you can weed out daisy-pickers, find out where strengths and weaknesses are, instill rules and practices, and go from there.

It is also extremely helpful to get people in charge to actively work to encourage greenhorns like myself and others.

As it's been said, we are often our own worst enemy. The fates of locomotives and museums and societys have been made by group in-fight, bickering, jealousy, lawsuits, and whathaveyou, so it's important that the politics of rail preservation do not interefere with attracting new people. We should learn from the past and especially from its oversights.

Kelly Lynch

Well, I'm sure I have some HO/OO passenger cars rattling around in my basement that the vagrant mouse population isn't doing their part to restore and keep good looking........ really hard to find Sawzalls that small, y'know..... so come on by, and you can have one. Do you want a British Pullman dining car, a circus train heavyweight observation, or a British Rail Mk.1?

Now, as for the REAL cars..........

I think we're all aware that a thirteen-year-old is at a flighty point in his life. This year it may be trains; next year, spaceships; next year video games; next year cars (and not mentioning the opposite sex, either)...........

But if this opportunity were before me, say as a hypothetical owner of one of the passenger cars used by the XY&Z RR or a Pullman day coach in a spare siding in town..........

"Son? You want me to give you a car? Well, here's what I'm going to do.... Here, we'll write up a contract. With your parents' permission, you will help me restore this car in any and every way you can. I'll give you projects you are fully capable of doing. I'll teach you about the car as we go--all the history, all the details, how passenger trains work. I'll give you wood-working projects you can do in your school shop for extra credit, and I'll pay you for the work, and then maybe some metalworking projects. You will graduate high school and plan to go to college on you own--scholarship, loans, whatever. You will come out of college with a degree that is somehow relevant to preserving this car--history, mechanical engineering, whatever. And when you come back to me with your hard-earned college degree and a business plan for the future of this car to show me that you will be a worthy custodian, I will GIVE you this car. I will legally deed it over to you. I will also write appropriate letters of recommendation to any colleges, employers, etc. and possibly, if you're interested, get you a job with a major rail operation like the Grand Canyon, Strasburg, or even Amtrak, BNSF, wherever.

Now, I understand that the odds are very good that you won't finish this plan. You may lose interest, you may change your mind when you see the reality of owning a railroad car, whatever. That's why I'm also going to make this same offer to a couple other youths like you--just to cover my bets, so to speak. There's even the possibility you may end up as a co-owner with one or more of them in the long run. We'll figure that out.

Furthermore, please realize that I may not live long enough, or I may have a change of circumstances that forces me to move the car, or lease it to an operator, or even sell it. If you stay with this project to that point, we will work out a means whereby you will have a say in the car's future proportionate to your investment at that point, plus an appropriate return if needed.

So........... what do you say? Would you like to help for a day and find out whether or not we will write up this contract?"


Of course, it's easy for me to sit here and suggest to others what to do with their properties. But for the life of me, I cannot think of a better way to come up with more "Young Guns of Steam," more future excursion line executives, etc.

Kelley,

I’m not sure I can give you a universal, all inclusive answer, but I can tell you how it worked for me.

-How do you hook them?

The hook was set when someone volunteered to get a member of the local railway museum to be the speaker at our model railroad club annual dinner. The speaker was Frank Jur, and he showed his charming Super 8 production, “The Union Report” narrated by Frank himself, about the trials and tribulations of building a railway museum. That was close to forty years ago.

My buddy and I were still in high school, junior members of the club, and I had just gotten a car. We resolved to go check this place out as soon as we amassed enough money for the oil… forget gas, that was cheap. Engine oil was the problem.

-How do you reel them in?

Not being the brightest bulbs in the pack, we didn’t wait for summer, but drove out to see the place in… February. There was a crew involved building track, which we joined. After we broke for lunch, someone tossed us the keys to the speeder, and told us to run down to the tool shed and bring back a couple kegs of spikes. Here, we’d known these guys less than a day, and had already been given more responsibility than the fogies at the model RR club ever offered. We went back for more punishment the next week.

-How do you keep them?

Over the years, there was never a lack of challenge. Volunteer to get something done, and it was yours to figure out how to accomplish. More responsibility than we were ready for? Maybe. We just had to grow into it. That spring I noticed that the recently moved depot building was lacking two sets of window casing; the windows in what would become the public rest rooms had been salvaged from another depot, and no one thought to take the exterior casing. I said, I can make that, and the guy doing the project entrusted me with a corner block for a sample. I took it back to a school shop teacher I was an aid for and sold him on letting me turn the rosettes on the lathe and make up the other parts. The Chicago Board of Ed. paid for the material, whether they knew it or not.

Now one might surmise that I came equipped with a skill set, and it’s true, I’d worked with my Dad for so long that at seventeen I was already a passable carpenter, but my buddy had led a sheltered life, growing up in an apartment and all that. However, at seventeen, a kid is like a sponge, just ready to soak up whatever he is exposed to. Within twenty years my buddy was running the museum Steam Dept. back when they used to actually run engines.

Of course, at some point, we both had to move on to build careers, families, lives. But the interest remains, deep down inside.

Is there something to be learned from this rambling? The key is responsibility. If you require your “junior auxiliaries” to wear hard hats, eye and ear protection, safety shoes, hand cuffs and a straight jacket, then refuse to let them out of the visitors center because they might get hurt, they’re not going to come back. They’ve spent their whole lives being coddled, told what not to do, told it’s too dangerous. What they’re really looking for is a chance to learn how to be adults, and then prove they are. Show them how to do something that they’re capable of doing, and let them do it. Ask them to do MORE than they think they are capable of doing, then help them achieve it.

The first person who responds that they’d love to, but their insurance company won’t allow it, gets the prize for identifying the real problem that must be dealt with.

I spent the weekend with the steam guys in Portland, OR, who got both the 4449 and 700 out and operating. There are young people in both of these crews, and they learn from the example of the leaders, such as Doyle McCormack. IMHO, Doyle should write a book on how to motivate young folks, as he is very good at it. Unlike the idiots that conduct "charm school" for corporate America.

Expanding on what's been said here already, I think it may be valueable to point out a few more good steps that could be taken to bring a few of the younger folk into the um, inner sactum of railway preservation...

I'd tend to think a big one is simply getting the word out. You'd be surprised how many potential people are out there that simply don't know such an opportunity exists. Very few volunteer programs (or companies looking to hire, for that matter) advertise these opportunities outside the railroad circles. A good example would be for a volunteer program (particuraly one working on equipment, but also track and the like) to go to a local high school, tech school, or college. Getting in touch with an administrator would be a good start, they're usually willing to help pass the word. Speaking from personal experience, anything that'll get us engineering students away from our graphing calculators and textbooks for some actual "hands-on" experience will prove extremely useful when put on a resume or discussed in a job interview. I'm sure the same applies with many other majors/career paths, particuraly one in the science fields.

Also, make your young volunteers feel welcome. As discussed in the recent "Young Guns of Steam" article in Trains Magazine, putting them on ballast shoveling duty for 7 years before letting them anywhere near your steam engine isn't going to accomplish the "let them prove themselves first" mentality that it might be meant to do.

Instead, teach him or her something. Obviously, rolling boiler tubes on their first time in the shop might be a little bit of a stretch, but make an effort to take said volunteer, walk him around your engine/car/depot/whatever and tell them a little about how something works. You'd be surprised how much some are willing to learn if the time is taken to teach it to them. Heck, even just explaing why needle scaling the boiler shell is important (and getting the old paint off to put new paint on is not a good answer) will make them feel that even the most mundane job they're doing has a real purpose behind it. Otherwise, these types of jobs tend to make volunteers, particuraly newcomers, feel that it was given to them "just to keep them busy and out of the way."

Hope everyone's enjoying a prosperous season so far,

I believe that there is an OSHA mandate that forbids anyone under the age of 18 from working with powered machinery.

Nonetheless, I think Tim is on to something. How about setting up a formal co-op program with a local technical college ? This could go a long way to developing some people with metalworking and woodworking skills.

Why not work with a local university to enlist the aid of students in the areas of documentation, interpretation and display of the entire spectrum of artifacts ?

The possibilities are endless.

As an aside, I was surprised to learn that the USS Intrepid has the luxury of choosing their volunteers. Must be nice...

Last but not least-how about making use of folks that have been sentenced to 'community service' ?

Dave

Yes, they are, Dave, and do not forget the Boy Scouts in all this. They do some community service projects, and while that might not include replacing ties or re-tubing a steam boiler, it certainly could extend to cleanup and even painting duties.

There are also Eagle Projects where one Scout has to develop a specific project with the museum, and then find a team of fellow Scouts to do it. They even have to arrange the funding on their own. We have had a number of those, from building picnic tables to a complete inventory and catalog of our museum.

Even the Cub Scouts can get into it. We used to have a troop come out to clean our train once a month. All that "cost" was a ticket to ride for the boys once in a while.

The good part about this is once the boys are on the property, some of them get "hooked" on being involved. It does not happen with all of them, of course, but once in a while some will come back even without a Scout project to do, and we have gotten interest from some of the fathers, even without their son's continuing involvement.

Bob Crowley
Corporate Secretary
East Carolina Chapter, NRHS
North Carolina Railroad Museum
New Hope Valley Railway

First off, I'd tell the kid to stay and school and buy him a dictionary!!!!

We have some younger "student" members at our Museum who volunteer in different ways. Our charter doesn't permit anyone under 18 without a parent or guardian also being a member... for the aforementioned insurance reasons, and because we dont' have a large enough member base to keep a watchful eye on everyone for safety's sake. Having the parent or guardian there also helps build the relationship between them as well as a sort of mentoring. Sometimes we learn from the young ones, too! It does, however take a certain kind of willing individual to do what we do. Not all "young guns" would work out... some would end up making more work for everyone else in the long run. So far, I think we've been lucky. There are many things that can be done under "mentor" supervision. Help with the painting, restoration, constant cleaning and maintenance, as well as assisting with the little things in the operation of the train. We let some of our little ones help with punching the tickets for the customers. It helps gives the kids a sense of accomplishiment and it shows the customers that we are in business to teach, whether it's from the member's end or the customer's end, as well as to have fun doing it. Sure, some of the younger members end up growing up and moving on. We have a member who up til about two years ago was gung-ho helping with everything in sight. Then he got his driver's license (the automobile really DOES kill the trains, eh?!) and went gaga for girlies, so he's lost for the next few years at least! ;^) Hopefully, since his dad is still an active member, as life settles down for him, he might come back around, but if not, he will always be out there as a mouthpiece for our Museum and anyone who wants to listen could very well be our next member!

I agree completely with the above posts, and it's imperitive to allow the younger members some responsibility so they can take pride in what they've done. Of course, a watchful eye is always a good idea, too- for safety's sake, but it's allowing the kids to find what they're good at that could make their decision for a career path down the road. And like I said, just 'cuz someone leaves doesn't mean they're gone forever. They could always reference riders and visitors, contacts, and even do some occasional word-of-mouth.

Keep safe and enjoy summer!