The September issue of Britain's Railway Magazine brought up an issue that probably applies in many instances here, but I have never seen the issue raised or addressed:

Supposing a preservationist volunteer has been active with the WY&Z Museum in Wisconsin. After twenty years of firing steamers, repairing track and coach windows, designing new exhibits, and leading tour groups to the point where he has his own set of keys to everything at the museum, he moves to Florida--his wife can't stand another Wisconsin winter, or he gets a job promotion, or he wants to be closer to his ailing parents. The AB&C excursion line is twenty miles away from his new home.

He applies to become a member of the AB&C Museum, hoping to apply his vast experience and knowledge to their benefit. AB&C gives him the bottom of the rung jobs because he's a "newbie". Never mind that he knows enough to correct all the mistakes they're making in their safety training class and in repairing that steamer; he has to "work up the ladder" first. He wishes them luck and heads elsewhere.

This is apparently an increasing problem with British museums and lines--many of which require very large staffs to operate even minimally--as the mobility of Britain's folks starts to catch up with the increasingly common American standard. You don't start an experienced signal box operator with mundane sweeping or cash register duties. But how does one line vouch a member to another? Railway Magazine was able to suggest a national clearing system to be administered by the British version of the Tourist Railway Association; however, the British are already much further along in having its tourist line industry as a cohesive movement.

Anyone have comments, observations, or experiences to relate?

England is a much smaller place with a much larger railway preservation industry than the US, and appears to be more culturally attuned to cooperative efforts.

I am not sure whether there is a national standards and practices / testing and qualification system like in Canada, where you need to pass an exam to get your "steam ticket" before you can be placed in charge of a boiler, or if qualifications testing apllies to other job categories.

Is it possible that there could be more international communication than between entities in the same country? By virtue of knowing people who know people I was booked on a fireman on two Australian railways, without my asking for it or knowing about it until i got there, and was welcomed into the enginehouses of a couple lines in the UK to look over coal to oil conversions, help hang rods on a Garrat, and generally have fun and get dirty. One driver insisted I ride the engine with him and drive a bit because he had been made welcome visiting a railroad museum in the US where I had worked. Probably such reciprocal visitor courtesy goes a long way towards sharing ideas and technology as well as people. Wouldn't it be great if we could do exchanges between operating preserved railways all over the world?

In the "old days" boomers were generally welcomed by home guards on the more remote stretches of the railroad system because they brought news about the latest and greatest developments in railroading that the home guards could apply to make their jobs easier, and tricks of the trade learned from all over. Now we have the internet to share information, if we choose to do so, so has the personal interaction imperative been lost in the process, and is this an effect of that change?

I think it would take a cultural revolution to do in volunteer operated nonprofits what is commonplace in for profit industry - value skills sets more than percieved investment in terms of filling positions.

dave

There are two issues here: one of competence, and another of human nature.

Competence is the simpler one to deal with. Competence can be discerned in a relatively straightforward manner if the "receiving organization" wants to confirm it. A "national clearing system" sounds like a whole lot of overhead that could be replaced with a couple of phone calls, and it leaves the thorniest problem unaddressed.

As for human nature: a seniority-based system ("everyone starts on floor-sweeping duty") makes sense if (a) jobs and talent are fungible (everyone can figure out how to do every job), (b) everyone aspires to the same job or jobs, and (c) there's a surplus of available people with the appropriate skills or aptitude ("if you don't like it, there's a dozen people who don't mind - there's the door").

A talent-based system (figure out what they're best at, and put them to doing it) will probably satisfy highly-skilled newcomers, and might even be best for the organization - but only if the existing workforce doesn't resent "being beat out of that promotion by someone from outside."

And therein lies the real problem. People do resent it, because whether you're getting paid or not, the work is the main reward. They resent it at "the job" when "the office brown-noser" or someone from outside gets "their" promotion or cool project. They may stick around for the paycheck, but sometimes they quit and go to a new job. Volunteers feel the same, but if you're not paying them, you've got even less leverage.

Other volunteer groups (for example, Red Cross or another service organization) deal with the same conundrum. They solve it by paying in the highly-skilled jobs, using volunteers for low-skilled work, and living with high turnover. That doesn't sound like a workable solution for most volunteer tourist lines.

If you find a solution, write a book - you'll be more famous than Steven Covey or Peter Drucker.

JAC

I've seen it happen a couple times with tourist railroads I have worked for...in one instance I had a just retired UP engineer who wanted to start volunterring his time as a runner. I had no problem with that,since I was the SLE and I think his experience would have been helpful to the rest of the organization ,myself included. however,the President declined saying that it would be detrimental to everyone else who was "waiting in the wings" True enough there are not a lot of slots for engineers,and those only came open when someone moved away or decided to do other things. I also wanted to keep the number of engineers down somewhat due to the experience factor and wanted to keep the ones I had proficient and keep them sharp. I believe this will always be a problem in volunteer based organizations and not sure if there is any real remedy to the problem.

Enginemen's jobs might indeed be a special case when there's a limited number of hours available and it's hard to maintain proficiency and promote long-time volunteers.

But in general itinerant help is an asset, not a problem. We don't get to run Pere Marquette 1225 often enough, and when we do we frequently get help from the staff of institutions with bigger full-time crews than we can hire. They bring a depth of experience that we can't develop quickly on our own with a limited schedule. Guys from the Huckleberry, the Western Maryland Scenic, the Henry Ford and other outfits who unaccountably don't get enough of this stuff on the clock have saved us some head-scratching, hard work and embarrassment in recent years.

Thanks,

I experienced a similar situation about 8-9 years ago.

Living in the greater Chicagoland area, and especially being of a traction preservation mind, there are 3 wonderful organizations within a 90 mile radius of Chicago to spend time and effort at (Names not necessary)

I spent a good amount of time at each of the three during my late teens and early 20's, before "retiring" to married life and more focus on model trains and personal collecting. After about 10 years of that, the itch to get back to the real thing bit again.

By coincidence, a very good friend at the time was also in a similar situation, a long time volunteer (although with much stronger diesel and steam background out west) who had gotten out and was looking to get back in.

Between the two of us, we decided to pool our efforts and find a place where our combined knowledge and experience would be of most value.
The group we ended up spending our time and efforts at is easily the smallest of the three major operations in the area.

What we found there was an open environment where they were simply happy to have a couple new warm bodies, knowledge and experience were just icing on the cake. Would we have found a similar experience at the other two museums ? I suspect yes, but I think the "warm-up" period might have taken far longer. In our case, we helped start on the restoration of a steeplecab locomotive, repairing a badly rotted wooden deck, within the first week and just continued from there out.

It often becomes a question of finding your comfort level in being a big fish in a small pond, or vice versus.

It's an interesting concept, having "credentials" to take with you, a resume of sorts. Of course the level of what's considered acceptable from place to place is a problem that would be hard to address without some form of standards.

I think the problem boils down to the term "volunteer" which means different things to different people. The volunteer feels it means that since he is volunteering his time, he gets to pick his job where on the opposite side of the coin, the management thinks the volunteer can be assigned any job they feel needs to be done. A good balance is needed to get anything done. True you do not want to assign mechanical duties to a woodworker. Not only will you irritate the volunteer, the results could be disastrous. But darn near everybody can sand and paint with a little instruction. But that isn't what most volunteers want to do. Probaly why so little gets done at so many facilities around the country. Sadly, not everybody gets to or is qualified to run a locomotive.

Later!
Mr. Ed
PTHT

I think it comes down to expectations raised and expectations unfulfilled.

If prospective volunteers are told up front that the buck stops with (insert epithet here) and what he says goes, so be it - they can stay and work under those conditions or not.

Clearly published priorities and standards and practices will answer a lot of day to day questions.

It's worth the time to create adequate documentation to assure a good understanding is reached before getting anybody involved if the venue is large enough to provide enough complexity to allow for questions to be raised.

dave