Well, Thanks to everyone here I learned about Steamtown in PA and took the boys up to go see it. The wife and baby went to the mall, somebody was thinking about saving marriages when they put that walkway in.

We were very impressed by the roundhouse setup, great looking inside and out. We got to see the turntable in action and them put one of the locomotives away.
The equipment outside is in good to very bad condition. Their deadline is almost rotted completely away. What they need to do is decide what they want to keep and what must go. Mostly the passenger cars are in my opinion are gone. They are not worth the time and money to completely re-build. Some of the passenger cars the only thing that can be saved is the chassis. The engines if you look at the pics are in need of some serious work. But like we always talk about here is the money.

Here is the link to the pics.

http://community.webshots.com/album/564199706YhmwUi?vhost=community

You would have to wonder how successful say, Disneyworld would be, if the star attractions were kept in such lousy external condition. If you primary goal is to display and operate a spectrum of steam powered railroad equipment, shelter and paint, at the least, would be necessitated.
I am not carping about the administration of Steamtown, nor am I trying to stir the embers of issues put to bed months back, but seriously, who wants to take their family to a rusty scrapyard on holiday?

Steamtown's a fantastically nice "stage" with not much of a "show" going on. At least you got to see operating steam. I visited two years ago, and while steam was advertised to be operating on the day I attended (on the website) all the locos were cold when I got there. Needless to say, I was disappointed.

Well all we can do is go and visit and donate some money. Also I e-mailed my Senator about Steamtown saying they need some money to fix things up. We will see.
Another note, I did take some pics of the K-4 in the roundhouse. They don't have much left of it. The boiler and drive wheels and the tender. I talked to them, the workers, about it and they glad to see it go. They told me that a contractor was working on it not them. The deal was that the contractor got the bay and use of the equipment at Steamtown.

The best part of Steamtown isn't even part of Steamtown. It's the Electric City Trolley Museum next door. First class exhibits & a nice 9 mile trolley ride with true interurban flavor.

Be careful about donating money. There are places at Steamtown (and at Moscow if you take the excursions that run there) that are specifically for the restoration of the B&M locomotive. That money goes to the Lackawanna & Wyoming Valley RHS which is overseeing the project and is handling the TEA money. Depending on where you give the money may end up back in Washington, DC and not necessarily at Steamtown.

Anyone interested in reading an in-depth article on Steamtown should go to www.concorde-spirit-tours.com/steamtown.htm

The very critical detailed article is written by well known author and consumer advocate Donald Pevsner. Perhaps it will lead to some positive changes???

Hope springs eternal!!

Ross Rowland

I'm sorry, but that report isn't worth the paper it wasn't printed on. Nothing but an opinion disguised as an article.

Take this sentence: Indeed, a lot of the 88,000-odd annual visitors (CY2007 number) to the site describe the overall collection as a "junkyard", or equivalent sentiments. This is an accurate assessment.

Where is the source to back up this, or any of the other information? (and no.. wikipedia doesn't count!) This report would get an F in any introductory college or high school course.

Yes Steamtown has lots of issues... but that piece of fluff does nothing to help the situation.

You can disagree with the article as you will, but what I took away from it in addition to his very critical opinion of the place as it's now being operated, was his summary opinion near the end that the only hope for real change was to outsource at least the excursion and locomotive restoration activities to a private sector operator.

This is something I've been advocating for many moons without success. Perhaps if he gets this article run in the NYTimes, (as he has a number of his previous works), it will get a wide enough audience to act as the spark that ignites the long overdue fire of change???

One can hope!

Ross Rowland

There are so many things incorrect in this "story" that it has zero credibility. The stuff about forcing out the Delaware Lackawanna Railroad and threatening the CEO of Norfolk Southern because he didn't have a steam locomotive on his return trip would be laughable if it weren't so twisted. Readers should also realize this guy has had similar attacks against UP for the "shortcomings" he found in their steam program. For those of us who have to work with NS, Amtrak and the various commuter agencies in the northeast, his antics trying to run a trip from Hoboken to Binghamton and back lost us many friends at these agencies even now several years after the fact.

There are so many things that are just plain wrong or miss-represented in this article I would not have enough time to refute it. Using this "article" as a point of reference would damage the credibility of anyone quoting it, in my opinion.

As an aside, it's nice to see Ross back on the board.

Dave Crosby

Steamtown observer, Are you with Steamtown? Reason I'm asking I'm in the military at McGuire AFB, NJ and I'm working with a squadron that likes to help out, plus being the boss I can always pursued some of the folks to volunteer, so we are kicking the idea around about going to Steamtown and help on some weekend. I know its only one day but we can get some stuff done with some of my troops.

Without commenting on the merits of the currently-pending litigation between the R&LHS and Saint Louis County over the 952, I can say that the "article" by Mr. Pevsner does prove one thing, the total lack of civics knowledge we have in the United States these days. His contention that St. Louis County "ignored" mandates passsed by other state legislators is laughable at best. It also shows a horrible misunderstanding of how certain concepts as federalism, state comity, etc., work. To call the "article" a puff piece is an insult to puff pieces everywhere.

Welcome back Mr. Rowland. I see you've decided to continue posting on this board even though your demands for certain posters on this forum to be banished went largely ignored. Glad to see you have decided that you can play with others in the sandbox, for now.

Having been involved with the some of the Steamtown staff in past projects, as well as the D-L/GVT, I can, without any reservation whatsoever, say that this fellow's assessment of the situation is jaded, at best. There are several falsehoods stated and implied and he further shows a lack of knowledge regarding railroad operations in general.

There are, however, legitimate points that are brought up about a seeming lack of proactive thinking with regard to management at Steamtown. I would agree that the administrative and maintenance functions are a bit staff heavy, though they do indeed need to fill the curator vacancy. The previous curator was eminently capable and very well versed in historic preservation principles and accepted practices. Not being intimately familiar with steam locomotives or railroads is not necessarily a shortcoming for this type of job, though a willingness to learn about your collection is. That indeed describes the previous curator. She did an excellent job and helped a great deal with rationalizing the collection to a more manageable size and cohesive focus. I know more collections management was desired, but the NPS structure and lack of funding prevented some of this from occurring before she retired.

As far as the business of dealing with NS & CP, that does take some political posturing some times, but can usually be accomplished by working in a cooperative manor, rather than a threatening one - honey goes a lot further than vinegar. I know - I worked for NS and have dealt with CP and NS on business matters before. I am not sure of the arrangements with GVT, but GVT has always been good to work with, so, again, getting the right people together on the same page would go a long way to helping the situation, IMO. One thing that would be very benficial to Steamtown's position is having a very clearly defined and comprehensive operating plan/proposal that would be used to work with all of the railroads involved - I get the feeling that isn't the case.

Steamtown has some very qualified people on their staff who have been relegated to positions with little or no authority for political reasons or are not willing to make their voices heard for political reasons. Unfortunately, the reality of the NPS is that, as a government agency, it is inherently political. However, our National Park Service has some of the highest standards for preservation, conservation, and interpretation in the world and the core of the Steamtown site is very well done. It is, however, time to look at revamping things a bit and taking a more progressive approach to fulfilling the mission of preservation that Steamtown has. As many of you feel, I think some sort of privately run concession would go a long way toward helping the situation. Perhaps not for the static museum/interpretative components, but a contract operator for the operating and restoration components would be a hugely benficial move - for the site and the taxpayers. I have NO problem having a National Historic Site dedicated to steam era railroading - indeed, I fully support it, but it does need some new life breathed into it to completely and fully support its mission.

As a matter related to this discussion, is there a model for something like this in either the NPS or various state's parks agencies to study for comparison? I do know that Stone Mountain in Georgia is state owned, but is contracted to Silver Dollar City Theme Parks (Dollywood, et al) for operation. I am also aware that park hotels and cabins/cottages are run by concessionaires at many parks. How does that process work? What standards are there for the contractors?

An aside to this: I do know that the Steamtown gift shop operation was taken over by the NPS gift shop concessionaire from the non-profit support group - and frankly, it sucks relative to what used to be there. I never left Steamtown without spending at least $100 on books and related stuff, but the last time I was there, it was not stocked nearly as well as it had been.

Just my 2 cents...

Best,
Michael Brown
Roswell, GA

I don't know any specific details, but Yosemite National Park has had concessionaires for years.

http://www.yosemite.org/visitor/frequent-concession.htm