I'm going to yank this thread away from the Convention thread below simply because I think that particular "shouting past one another" thread is doing nothing productive.

So, assuming that the current NRHS formula is condemned to go to heck in a handbasket with no respite in sight.

What would you do differently?

One hint as to the possible future of the NRHS:
At the national convention of home beer brewers I was at last year, let's look at some potential reasons why said convention drew more attendees than the NRHS convention this year in Ohio:

1) Homebrewing is an activity in which a person can exhibit in grand style their personal accomplishments, be it by the bottle or by the keg. Most hobbies, be it knitting or stock car racing or model railroading, allow a high degree of personal accomplishment and exhibition. I can't remember the last time I saw that in an NRHS convention, save for slide shows. I have personally held side tours for NRHS conventions, and because they were "side tours", the attendance was barely in double digits.

2) The equivalent of the "big excursion" is the "club show" where homebrew clubs from around the nation pour samples of their members' best beers. One of the most prolific--and best--clubs was a group that had only "gathered" online, and was physically coming together for the first time at the convention. This club, to demonstrate their "online" presence, poured beers out of taps drilled into obsolete computer cases, and passed out cards listing their websites and online forums.

Can any of you envision a "TrainOrders" or "Railroad.Net" or "RyPN" or "Trains.com" or "Railfan & Railroad.com" Chapter of the NRHS? I didn't think so. And it's the loss of the NRHS.

There are an enormous number of other factors to be considered. For example, when was the last time some young pup off the street could walk up to the moral equivalent of Strasburg, the Grand Canyon, the RR Museum of Pa., IRM, Travel Town, etc., and just volunteer without being put through the moral equivalent of a Spanish Inquisition or initiation to do something productive and useful?


Say that you were put in charge to lead the NRHS into the 21st century. What would you do differently? Assume that there are the same factors that will remain beyond your control--high insurance, uncooperative main line railroads, a shortage of passenger stock, etc.

There has often been and continues to be so much pressure put on chapters, excursion hosts, and the NRHS as a whole to make the big excursion a the highlight of a convention (Come for the train ride, stay for the slideshow).

As others have pointed out, if the event itself is left open for detractors, whether justified or not, the entire convention as a whole seems to leave particpants left wanting. In the old days many steam operators depended on their own excursions alone to make a profit and in this case, the NRHS may be having similiar difficulty making a "draw" by not being able create excursions like those of days gone by. In other words, the "beer" formula has been changed and replaced with "lite beer" or " near beer."



It seems to be that conventions, either put on by the National society or by chapters, should be a culmination of the year's events. It shouldn't be a week where everybody rushes to do one thing, but a week where concerned and involved members can come together and not only "foam," but exchange ideas, stories, photos, historical info, whathaveyou. There could be celebrations of the progress, debates on the hinderances, celebration of the arts, engaging, contextual history lessons. This isn't to say that it doesn't already happen, but like I said, the focus seems to be mostly on those darn train trips.

Unfortunately, many detractors see the acronym NRHS and shudder. Why is this? Why are so many people and organizations still allowing politics, whether collectively or respectively, to interfere with our common interests? I spoke with the NRHS President about doing some sort of convention for steam operators, mechanics, young guns, CMOs, and the like and he mentioned that we could very well lose participants soley because the NRHS or "so and so" might be involved. There are far too many elitists both inside and outside of the NRHS. Everybody gets their bibs in a twist over something these days. (Whilst working during the convention I experienced my own brand of elitism where the volunteers on the steam department were shirked by certain leaders of the days trips. What a lousy way to treat your brethern, especially the ones that helped make the day possible!)

What I'd like to see is some true community. I want NRHS forums and networking with the NRHS and museums, societies and organizations beyond conventions. I want to see a renewed public relations front that can help rejuvinate the current crop, invigorate the General Public, and enlist some new people. The NRHS' RailCamp is one of the most unique and potentially ground breaking opportunities for organizations to help bring up new people (young and old!) and I think it can only get better for the RailCamp program from here on out, provided the program is continually refined.

After meeting many of the people involved with the NRHS, I am heartened by their desire to evolve and their earnest efforts to shake things up. Two ranking members both told me they got to where they were because they were unhappy with things and it was their dissenting opinion that allowed them to flex some fresh muscles and start creating change and, among all things, be promoted to positions where they could do just that.

So, to summarize:

1) The Convention should be a culmination of the past year, not merely an intensive week long deal where the major focus is train trips and choo-choos. It should also be a reflection. What can we do better? What needs to be done? Look what we've accomplished, etc. Perhaps forums on "how do we get young peopple involved" could be created. Perhaps gatherings like the steam operator meeting idea I had could be brought to fruition. We have these conventions, so lets use 'em to their fullest potential!

2) Network, work together, and throw out the bickering. This goes for people on both sides of the fence. We gotta work together. What better way than through a national organization? Even if you're some railpunk who hates the NRHS it's still your responsibility to try and better the organization (be a dissinter, offer constructive criticism). If you leave the ship in peril, it will most certainly sink without much help. This is our NATIONAL organization. It represents all of us, especially those of us who want change. Those in the NRHS need to work together just like steam operators, museums, etc need to work together as well.

3) Support NRHS creations like RailCamp. See if your local museum or society (comparable to IRM, NNRY, Steamtown, etc) can handle or is willing to handle the cirriculum. The knucklehead elitist who will send fresh blood to do the dirtiest work and share none of the knowledge should be taken out back and lashed with a coal shovel.

4.) Public relations. I told a friend of mine that if all basebfall fans looked and acted like railfans, baseball would not be popular. We need to make this stuff look cool and engage people. We know it's cool, we can count every rivet and fire the locomotive until our hands bleed, but if nobody else cares, our accomplishments don't go much farther than the footplate.

I know I'll be doing my damndest in any arena I can in the future to help the NRHS, RailCamp, and more. I'm really looking forward to the future.

Very truly,
Kelly Lynch

Edit: While this is a lengthy post, it has occured to me that perhaps these are the types of steps or "guidelines" that not only the NRHS could adapt, but other rail preservation/historical groups as well. After all, the times they are a changin'.

As a supporter of the NRHS, especially our local chapter in Altoona, I would love to see the NRHS become the leader it should be in "this industry". However, in researching my reply to Mr. Mitchell's questions, i realized I haven't been provided enough information by the NRHS itself to intelligently respond.

First and foremost, although I could simply be overlooking it, I couldn't find a specific "Creed", "Vision Statement", or "Mission Statement" for the NRHS on their website. The "History" section makes vague references to the purpose behind establishing the organization and the bylaws are far from specific.

If the organization itself doesn't know who or what it is, how is a prospective member supposed to make a decision about joining? Did I miss this information somewhere?

Thanks

It is difficult to follow up that excellent and very thoughtful posting by Kelly, which hit a lot of points that are also my concerns with the organization, and Scott's research project was very enlightening and somehow what he found is not too much of a surprise.

Alexander, given the pre-conditions that you mentioned at the end of your question (all of which I tend to strongly agree with) I would judge that the day of the colossal fantrips is coming to an end and the only logical mission for the NRHS (given its name) is to be a central national organization promoting the study, sharing, and dissemination of information relating to railroad history. Wow, what a radical concept that is!

The only problem with that mission is that other groups that do not have the words NATIONAL RAILWAY HISTORICAL in their names have been doing an excellent job of executing this same function, so if you are going to continue to exist you are going to have to take back the playing field by doing the job better than they do. If excellence is not going to be your goal, you might as well hang an “out of business” sign on the door and go home and watch videotapes from the NRHS library.

I would like to skip over the National Convention for a moment, which is an event for people who already are members, and talk first about the local chapter monthly meetings, because they are the “public face” of the organization. Here is a list covering some of my concerns, many of them are reasons I have wandered in and out of membership in various NRHS chapters over the years:

1. I believe that every meeting should be run as if members of the general public are present (even if you don’t think they are) because you never know when somebody new will walk in and you want their first impression to be a positive one.

2. The business meeting should be streamlined to the greatest degree possible. Adopt bylaws to allow the president to read all the reports. Put a specific time limit on discussion, if it runs over it gets pushed back (with the same time limit) to the next meeting. There are far too many NRHS chapters where the business portion of the meeting turns out to be most of the evening.

3. Put a time limit on unscheduled announcements. If necessary enforce it with an minute timer. You have two minutes for your announcement, if you aren't able to spit it out in that much time then come back next meeting and you can have two more minutes to try it again from the beginning.

4. Get the clowns off the stage. Have a code of conduct for member behavior during meetings and enforce it.

5. Make it absolutely clear that during programs and presentations the speaker is in charge, and be sure that the members and the speaker understand this. Make it clear to guest speakers that the members are expected to behave during presentations and that they should feel free to stop the program or decline to participate in debates that they consider a distraction. Also make it clear to speakers that they should feel free to require questions to be held until the end of the presentation, and if they decide to do so, the officers will make sure it is enforced.

6. Publish a detailed description of programs well in advance of the meeting rather than waiting until the last thirty days when a mailing may be delayed or missed altogether. Maintain a website and have the group activity schedule displayed prominently. In both your print and internet communications, have the groups events displayed prominently on the home page, don’t hide them in the back.

7. If your group has some financial resources, provide some compensation for travel expenses to your speakers so that you can draw in qualified presenters from longer distances to help improve the quality of your activities.

8. Schedule presenters who have long travel distances in the good weather months. Use local presenters who have shorter travel distances in the winter.

9. Make it clear to members that presenting a program is a privilege and not a right, and if they want to show their work the group expects it to be in a reasonably organized presentation that has some value as a program. This is after all supposed to be a historical society.

10. If you are going to have members slide nights, impose a time limit on presenters as well as a limit on the number of slide that can be shown in one segment. A cheap oven timer works great for enforcing this. Members slide nights are frequently the most extended and boring activity a group sponsors.

11. Don’t show commercially available videotapes as a meeting program. Given the price of gasoline right now who in their right mind wants to burn up a tank a gas to go see a commercially produced videotape they could buy for half as much money?

12. Maintain an archive of your activities and presenters, including detailed descriptions of the programs. Get this posted on a website. This helps the program chairpersons in other groups identify programs and presenters who they might like to invite to their meetings, it also gets your group more internet search engine “hits” which helps let the general public know that you exist.

13. Make the public aware of your activities. Provide meeting notices to the local news media, and consider posting them at the local library or leaving flyers in local restaurants if they will let you do so.

14. Cooperate with local museums and announce their needs and activities, and encourage your members to support them and participate as volunteers.

With regard to the National Convention, here are just a few comments:

1. If the focus of the organization is shifting back to railroad history, then you need to do the best possible job of promoting and presenting it.

2. If programs and presentations are going to take the place of the fantrips that have become too expensive to operate any more, then you need to be able to draw in qualified presenters from longer distances in order to provide a high overall quality of programs. You should consequently consider charging a small individual fee for attending presentations, and use these funds to compensate the presenters for their travel expense.

3. Programs and presentations need to run on time. Presenters need to be made aware of exactly how much time they have for their presentation, and need to be told that the time estimate they are giving for the program should include a reasonable “buffer” for questions, whether during the program or afterwards.

4. Attendees at presentations should be made aware that it is the presenter’s choice whether they want to take questions during the program or afterwards, and if they prefer to do questions afterwards then that’s the way it is and there will be no exceptions.

5. There are some groups that do events with parallel presentations and if you have enough meeting space available and a sufficient number of qualified presenters this can allow some flexibility in scheduling and lets you get more presentations into a meeting. The disadvantage is that if two programs are presented at the same time that you would like to see, you are going to miss one of them.

6. Presentation time should be set aside for representatives of local museums, so that they can come in near the start of the event and provide a preview of their organizations prior to any group trips to the location.

7. Discover the diesel locomotive! Other groups have already noticed that they exist. Maybe this is a trend?

8. Doing bus tours of railroad facilities may not be a fantrip, but in many cases it is cheaper and easier to organize, it helps to keep the group together and under control, and on a hot summer day it is usually a lot more comfortable than an open window railroad coach.

Those are my suggestions, take them or leave them as you see fit. Sorry to be so blunt in some of the observations, the frustration with this outfit is probably evident.

I'm grateful for the many thought provoking comments above. I think Mr. Cessnas remarks are particularly important and on point. I too have visited the NRHS site and too can't find a mission statement nor any figures on membership #'s etc.
I agree that it's in all our interests to lend the NRHS a hand in reverseing its fortunes and to begin growing vs. shrinking as it's evidently now doing(where does one get reliable membership #'s for say the latest decade??) as it is the only outfit with true national reach.
I hope someone in authority within the NRHS leadership will join this discussion soon.
Ross Rowland

And this is often the bane of such discussions. The right people don't know they're happening or don't care, but I can assure you based on personal experiences with the authority of late within the NRHS that they are aware of the shortcomings we've mentioned and desire for change, and in my efforts to work with the NRHS, I will pass along the constructive comments from myself and others. Everybody has something invested in this.

Kelly Lynch

One of the fellows I used to work with on Delphi Internet started a virtual chapter of whatever the stamp collector's version of the NRHS is. He got a great response, and I think it's still going strong.

I naturally thought "well if he can do it, I can do it..." but I was never even able to figure out who to approach with the idea. All my inquiries went nowhere, usually since the folks didn't know how to go about presenting the question.

I would still be interested, if any at the NRHS is willing to talk to me about it. So far I've not really had any positive responses.

Railcamp is an excellent activity and there is no reason that there can't be Railcamps going on in a dozen or more locaions throughout the country. The modelers have a great thing going with model railroad month every November. Here in the Delaware Valley there are about a hundred model railroaders who open up for the public. Some local modelers put together a guide complete with maps and schedule and people spend all of November visiting model railroads. This is a fantastic means to bring young people into the hobby. The NRHS needs to look to the model train side of things for a good example (model).

What a great idea! Introduce kids to hands on accomplishment, move in a positive direction, diffuse potential vandalism. I like it.

The future of NRHS is what it's members make it....nothing more, nothing less.

I challenge the belly achers on this forum (and elsewhere) to get off their duffs and offer to help... at the chapter or national level. After all with the exception of one paid employee NRHS is an all volunteer organization that will never accomplish more or less than what it's members do.

Because of the volunteer nature of the organization NRHS's leaders often have to put their NRHS work aside for work related or family type issues.

If NRHS were to go with an all paid staff, it's dues would probably be an order of magnitude higher than what they are now.

There's a help wanted list on NRHS.com, take a look at it, some of you might actually find some interesting assignments.

Bob H

Bob,

I looked at the list the other day when I was on NRHS.com. Nobody can do any of those positions justice without first an explanation by the NRHS of what the NRHS wants to be. Are you aware of a more detailed mission or vision statement describing the direction in which the organization wishes to proceed? What is it they want to be known for? What role in the preservation/history industry do they want to fill?

For instance, we in Altoona used to have a section of our mission statement that talked about being a repository of records for academic research on railroad history - blueprints, etc. We recently removed that statement knowing that, while important, we were never going to have the resources to do it justice. Instead, we are opening a conversation with the Penn State University history department to discuss their potential role in curating our collection and serving as the organization to fill that "research" role.

Those are the types of decisions that the NRHS are going to have to examine and have reflected in an updated mission statement so that it can move forward with asking for and receiving the assistance from the "belly-achers" on this board and elsewhere.

We hosted a Spring Directors meeting in Altoona 2 years ago in conjunction with the 150th Birthday of Horseshoe Curve. I know those who attended are passionate about what they do. We (the Railroaders Memorial Museum) have a great relationship with the local chapter. On any given Saturday you will find many of their members working on rolling stock in our yard or during the school year serving as docents in the Museum for school groups.

Let's first quantify who/what the NRHS wants to be and move on from there.

Firstly, the Grand Canyon is a for profit/revenue railroad so volunteering does not happen regardless of age or experience. That out of the way, the statement is true......sadly. I would not have had a start in the industry were it not for the "adults" at the Southeastern Railway Museum (circa 1992) putting up with me and my overly eager thirst for knowledge, and putting me to work. At the age of 13 I was put to work helping lay track on what was virtually my first day there. Was it a test to see if I was serious about working there?...who knows. The youth of 15 years ago is somewhat different than the youth of today and this makes it a bit harder to find youngsters that are either interested or, for those that are, mature enough to work in an industrial enviornment. To work in such an enviornment does of course require a large amount of responsibility on a personal level........something that is expected less in life with every passing day. But still, you could start them near anywhere....after all, nothing says they have to start off in the shop or as part of the operating crew.
So far as the comments by whomever as to the problems associated with attempting to put together a steam gathering in association with the NRHS.....sound similar to the issues outlined in my post that got the Saluda thread locked? It is a problem(it being ego) in our rhelm and it will ultimately hold back the full potential of what could be realized in US rail preservation.

There were 24 RailCampers this year who attended the session at Steamtown and 12 at the one in Ely, Nevada. That's 36 who made it into the program and I know there are quite a few more who a) simpy didn't make the cut because the maximum capacity had been met or b) didn't know such an opportunity existed. While I feel there may have been more "railfan" oriented campers than "railroad operation/preservation" campers present, it does illustrate that the required maturity and discipline for this type of work is in need of bolstering and cultivating.

While I agree there are many differences in the youth of day versus those of yesteryear, there are enough young people to influence in our craft -- perhaps it may just take more of a push in the right direction than in the past. Whereas my father learned from his grandfather, and his friends learned from other railroaders, the youth of today are given programs like RailCamp instead to help prioritize and streamline the learning process. In the same token, volunteer programs in certain museums and organizations are realizing the ready need to place skills, knowledge, and tools in the hands of the green and are thankfully wasting no time.

Also, one of the goals of RailCamp is to create a new crowd of NRHS members for the future (each particpant gets a free membership). Perhaps being weened on such a program can help already instill a more organized, structured, and informative base for the future of rail preservation.

Kelly Lynch

in brief, I agree with your estimation of the "indoctrination" of new potential volunteers in many circumstances. I also, however, wish to add that there are places where a volunteer is welcome for whatever time and expertise they bring. In some locations we welcome folks with or without skills and invite them to participate as much or as little as they wish.

There seems to be an ongoing assumption in the discussion that young people today have relatively little interest in railroads or heavy industry. I would like to assure you all that is not the case. There is no shortage of young people who are interested in the railroad industry, I work with some of them. They handle very responsible duties, work hard, and do a good job. Of course the equipment they are working on has EMD 16-645E3C engines, CAT 3412 HEP sets, Quantum event recorders, PHW nine aspect cab signals, etc. because it is on a railroad that runs hundreds of trains a day.

So why don't these young people in the railroad industry take a more active interest in museums and the NRHS? Real simple guys, they live in a diesel world and they see that you aren't very interested in diesels!

When was the last time on a fantrip with a diesel that you finished up the event by opening up all the hood doors on the locomotive and gave the participants a detailed item by item tour of all the machinery?

PC