Any news on how their various efforts to resuscitate the organization are going?

You remember seeing photos of the boiler of N&W 475 outside the Strasburg's shop with big chalk lettering "DON'T ASK WHEN!"?

Well......... same thing applies here.

I know, from talks with my Chapter's National director that progress is underway, slowly but surely, with an upcoming board meeting and all that..... but please, let's not get like the pains in the posterior that ask about PRR 1361 every two weeks........

I didn't know it had died -- it's alive and well --- if you're a member, you should have received a copy of NRHS News recently and if you're a member of a chapter, you're National Director can update you on some changes that are coming from information sent in a recent issue of NRHS News Extra.

Next National Board meeting is in Greenville, SC in April -- this year's convention will be in Chat., Tn. and registrations are now being taken with ticket order forms to be sent out in the spring. (Where I live, it's been too cold and snowy to even think about going outside to watch trains).

Bob H

The NRHS still has over 18,000 members, and 170 or so chapters. Only about 60 or 70 national directors attend the board meetings and conventions. If you feel your membership isn't properly served by the national, talk to your ND first. Maybe it is time for him to step down, or possibly your chapter to take more action; I've seen it happen before.

The NRHS has relied for a very long time on volunteers to take on more and more duties, as the organization spread out into very different and kind of exciting areas. It isn't just a library, or a magazine publisher, or a railcamp business, or a convention event planner, or a media relations office or a membership services agency, but it does all of these things and more.

The membership renewals database is being contracted out to an agency that can handle the volume better than any one volunteer with a home computer. This should ease up the late renewals that have plagued us for more than a decade. That agency can also help with fresh ways to build membership, or expand the exposure of NRHS activities. I make no promises, since I don't know all the aspects of the contract. But, this is a step in the right direction, since few volunteers join a group for more office-type work. They want to take part, or help out, but not "go to work" for no pay.

2007 will be an interesting year, as we change this course. Going back to what Mr. Mitchell said, we don't want this thread to become another flame-fest. If you don't like the way something is handled, there are a number of ways to react... I would say posting a flame is the least productive way. Let's see if this discussion can bring on good solutions.

And, if you want to be part of the solution, please volunteer, whether on the local level, or the national level. The National has been asking for volunteers in the recent newsletters.

Er, well, actually............

One of the occasional complaints I have heard from either disgruntled members or former members of certain chapters is that the leadership of individual chapters is often a tightly-knit clique that's impossible to crack. If you don't happen to be among the chosen or anointed, you really don't stand a chance. These chapters are basically regarded as "President [name]'s Little Railfan Club" or "The Rail Station Museum Slide Show Club" and, by-laws and mission statements aside, even though they say they want "new blood" and volunteers, don't you dare try and rock the boat with new ideas, new ways of doing things, etc. The only way serious change happens in instances like this is when certain "top brass" die, and often such deaths derail the chapter in question seriously or even terminally--because the chapters in question have basically become "personality cults" rather than true rail societies.

I won't get into specifics here; there are always several sides to any such disagreements, and just with rail/traction museums that are both blessings and curses, many of these chapters, I'm sure, accomplish many good things.

But......... if there's any possible glimmer of self-recognition, you may want to think a) if this is indeed a problem and b) how to reckon with it......

Just to make it a little more convenient for discussion, here is the list of positions that the NRHS is trying to fill and has listed as needing volunteers:

Chapter Development Work (1 or more)
Library and Archive Advisors (1 or more)
Libraries Manager
Fundraising Manager
Organizational Membership Project (1 or more)
Office Systems Consultant
Office Volunteers - Responses (1 or more)
Office Volunteers - Dues Renewal (1 or more)
Library Volunteers (1 or more)
Newsletter Columnists (1 or more)

Possible additional help needed:

Project Engineer - Activities
Manual Writer
Chapter Operations Manual Project
DVD Film Locations Identification Project
Heritage Film Project
Liability Insurance Project

16 categories of work, probably 23 or more people needed.
A number of them have to be able to commute to Philadelphia.

Come again? :)

KL

Can anyone offer any additional information on why the library needs several volunteers for a service that is listed on the website as only being open for researchers one day a week, this in addition to all the jobs listed separately relating to film archives? Is there some enormous cataloging project going on or is this a result of a backlog of work that accumulated over a period of years?

Interesting that mostly these appear to be BRASS HAT positions and nothing is needed ? ? ? in the way of rail preservation of equipment, anywhere in the organization.

Bob Kutella

Not to be argumentative, but the National NRHS as a rule doesn't get actively involved in actual rolling stock/equipment preservation. That's always been the job of individual chapters, such as the Roanoke (many passenger cars), Washington DC (Pullman Dover Harbor), Philly and Lancaster (one Reading FP7 apiece), and other chapters. The NRHS is getting involved in grants towards specific projects, but it's not as if the national staff needs a steam locomotive mechanic or passenger car foreman...........

I would make the case that the NRHS should be much more about the dissemination and coordination of information and archives than the preservation of rolling stock; therefore the volunteers requested are a perfect fit for such a mission statement.

I stopped up in the Philly offices for a day a while back, in part to coordinate archive listings, arrange swaps of duplicate material, etc.

Have you any idea just how much stuff--from pure jewels to cr*p--gets donated to them in a year?

Furthermore, the ONLY way a resource (be it a track plan, a blueprint, an employee timetable, a public timetable, a slide, a photo, a book, a diary, or a video) is going to be of any use to someone in the future is if it can be found in the future. This means filing and cataloging. In the case of an average public library, the average book (depending on the system in use and the cost of labor) cost several dollars' worth of prep materials and cataloging overhead just to add to the shelf. (I've heard from fifty cents to seven dollars--depends on accounting, volunteers, etc.)

Look through your own photo collection. How many of your slides or photos are properly captioned to be of use to future researchers? The favorite game around the Maryland Rail Heritage Library these days seems to be "Show Sandy a photo and see if he can identify the subject for us". And it's becoming disgusting how often I'm able to. I should replace Dave Ingles at Kalmbach, I swear.

How about your timetable collection? Your book collection? Same problems.

Only open one day a week? Well, maybe if there were enough volunteers to properly staff the place, they could be open more often. There might be more people using the services if they were open more often. This is a chicken-and-egg debate that I've been having with a lot of such volunteer archives lately.

I volunteer with the Md. Rail Heritage Library whenever possible--earning a living tends to interfere a lot these days. How about you?

That is an excellent description and explains why the library advisors are critical, if you are getting buried in an assortment of stuff ranging from gems to junk, you need to make a timely decision what has historical value relating to the mission of the organization, what potentially has historical or financial value but does not relate to the mission, and what is definitely junk and should go in the junk.

I do volunteer work on an archive of historical documents too, but a bunch of equipment with EMD 16-645E3C's, CAT 3400's, and nine aspect cab signals tend to interfere with it a lot.