Suppose you can't build both at the same time -- carbarn (out of the weather car storage), or shop (maintenance bay)? What did your museum do?

Did your carbarn end up turning into an ersatz shop for lack of a real one? How well did that work?

Did your shop end up getting parked full of equipment every night for lack of a barn? How well did that work?

Did/would building a carbarn first slow down maintenance needs enough to make it worthwhile?

A third course would be to build a carbarn with one pit and a small work area surrounding it, that could serve both purposes, but of course the shop function not as well as plain storage. Prioritizing either is dependent on your particulars.

dave

From a preservation standpoint, I would suggest building the carbarn first. At least then, assuming you plan on making it a public access building, you can show your visitors that you are making the first step toward restoration by getting the equipment/artifacts out of the weather.

From my experience, knowing we were about to spend large sums of money on restoration, I felt it was most important to have a place to store and exhibit our display equipment once it was finished, with the north end of the shed designated as the restoration area. Since we have not been able to acquire any additional property and rail as of yet, the equipment had to be positioned and worked on in place. Not the best of situations, but at least some of the display is under a shed. I am currently looking at possibility of putting up a 100-foot long single track shop shed, which would make life easier, but we have been able to make do with the shed structure we put up for the display building. We are a static exhibit museum only, so operation and having to move equipment around is not too much of an issue right now.

Way back in 1966 we built the car barn first. When the second barn went up in 1971 it was essential a twin of the first building but modified with a concrete floor and pit on one of the tracks.

Build the barn first and get the stuff out of the weather.

Wesley

At the Western Railway Museum the buildings went up as follows:

Car Barn One

Shop building

Car Barn Two

Visitor Center

Car Barn Three

Now it is time to upgrade the first pole barn with a steel structure and fire supression.

Ted Miles

And now it seems you're getting a "do-over", thanks to a highway project slated for right where your buildings are. Anything you're doing different from lessons learned?

you are asking the what came first , the chicken or the egg question. Think of it this way, If you have the equipment outside deteriorating, what will you have to work on in the future? From My 35 year experience of museum volunteering suggest you get the equipment under cover. You can alway in the car barn until you build the shop.

I am not going to go against the conventional group thinking here. Build a barn first. Having equipment out of the weather may stop 90% or more of the continuing deterioration.

IRM has put up over a nine 'barns' but maybe not only one building as a dedicated shop area without stored pieces.

But with some planning the first building can be added to for more storage on tracks, added to sideways for shop facilities, and floors paved over. If you really think ahead, allow for footing and foundations for heavier machinery and installation of lifting aids.

With a simple barn, well over 50% of routine maintenance and repairs can take place without much additional investment. Potentially, that first barn could become the dedicated shop when a visitor center/display hall takes over that function.

Bob Kutella

I agree with all the above but you should spend some time and money first on: 10 year plan, 5 year plan and immediate needs. Yes money and space are important but where do you plan to go after that shop/storage is built?
A plus of doing it this way is you will have a "Visionary plan of Operations" you can plug into grant requests and requests for donations.

I will cite our example…

We are in urban California, which is highly regulated. We are just now building our first building, a storage barn, not a shop, no public access… those functions would add considerably to the cost. Access = ADA and other issues, Shop = ventilation, drainage, storage, flammable work, and such, and again other issues.

We need the building to get the collection under cover. We can drag a car outside to work on it.

So it is a storage building, ONLY.

For many small museum groups the first building is the BIG thing… the group works to get to that goal. Reaching that goal raises the group to the next level and makes larger projects possible.

In a modern regulated world, it’s a big jump from a car at $100,000 to a building at $400,000. But once the first building is done, it’s a lesser leap to the second.

Each of our groups work from plateau to plateau. Understanding that it is a jump whenever you need to reach the next one makes the jump easier.

We have realized that we have gobs of parts, rather than cars on trucks that also need indoor storage from batteries to old steam generators. In a few years the decades of weather will reclaim the steam generators and they will never restorable again. Has anyone out there built a building just for storing parts?

This is the "second plateau" for museum development -- replacement of a structure.

In WRM's case, there have been significant changes in applicable codes and laws (such as the ADA) , which make "upgrading" the present structure impossible if it is to be used as an exhibit building. It will have to be replaced.

Which raises the question of what we will do with the equipment currently stored in that building while it is being replaced. Do we park it outside, with the obvious security and preservation issues (to say nothing of the operational nightmare of blocking our track with parked cars), or do we build a fourth building first, and use it as "surge space" to house some of the displaced equipment during the replacement of the existing building?

Also, our current boarding area is adjacent to the building which must be demolished, and will be unusable during construction. Maybe we will also have to build our proposed boarding tracks next to the visitor center before starting on the new building.

It's an interesting problem, and we will certainly have to have a detailed plan, and complete financing, in place before anything happens.

Stay tuned ...

I worked on and contributed heavily to a 25 year development plan for IRM, completed within the last five years. Such parts storage was deemed essential, and we platted a building of about 10K-12K sq ft with 20 foot clear indoors, pallet racks, etc. The space was to be divided among five categories of railway equipment for each dept to manage.

When said and done it was only a first step, and we suspect it would fill quickly, and so far no time or MONEY to implement the concept.

Bob Kutella

Yes, the Seashore Trolley Museum has its Parts Warehouse (or "Paahts Weh-house") which is a new steel-framed building with a concrete floor, complete with forklift and heavy-duty Home Depot-style shelving. It's an extremely impressive structure especially considering that so few museums dedicate much time/money/consideration to effective parts storage.

Several museums have used 40' containers as an alternative; IRM has something like 45 of them lined up at the back of the campus for parts storage.

There are companies that will bring a container to you. You fill it and when ready they come and pick it up and store it at their location. Long term or seasonal storage answer? I really do not know the answer to that question but it seems it would be safer, cheaper and quicker. If you have your own containers then you have to have: insurance, access, security, heavy duty forklift to stack/unstack and etc.