I just received an article in the Columbus Dispatch regarding the Ohio Railway Museum in Worthington (north of Columbus) which reported that they had a broken trolley wire that damaged some equipment (but caused no personal injuries). The article implied that things are not going well there, and I was wondering if someone closer to the scene would have some information on the situation.

The Museum in question has been discussed here before--do a search using the button at upper right. Suffice it to say that, in the eyes of many, the Ohio Ry. Museum has long been somewhat enigmatic, being one of the few (only?) public rail museums/places of any decent size that failed to get itself listed in the Steam Passenger Service Directory for several years in a row.

I'll play Sloan: http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/lo ... racks.html

The problem is location, IMO.

I think ORM could be very successful, in that location, as a tiny streetcar operation like Vancouver or Seattle. Have 3 or 4 double-ended cars, and have 2 people show up every Saturday and Sunday, one to man the gift shop and the other to run the streetcar. Out-n-back, every 30 minutes or however long a visitor can amuse themselves with the other displays.

The problem is, if you look at ORM's history, they had big dreams of being OH, SO MUCH MORE. They wanted to be the all-singing, all-dancing, 3 engines in steam "Great American Railway Museum". If you look at the history of 1950's and 1960's railway preservation, it certainly looked like they were gonna be. They were running excursions, maintaining steam engines - they were side by side with Illinois (Electric) Railway Museum, California (now Western) Railway Museum, Orange Empire Trolley Museum and Seashore Trolley Museum.

Except they didn't buy land.

They didn't buy land because they already had land - their 2-acre-ish parcel at 990 Proprietor's Road.

The others had suffered for years with borrowed sites, and each bought around 25 acres of rural land, an hour's drive out of the city center. IRM and OERM later expanded to 60 acres. It was a monumental struggle for those museums but they did it.

With 50 years of hindsight, we now know that's the winning formula. All these outfits are wildly successful, and all the good equipment goes to them because they have the facilities to care for it, because they have the land on which to build.

ORM got whipsaw'ed on that. By owning land early, they were comfortable, and saw no reason to be looking 50 miles out for a cornfield along a fading branchline. Of course if they had, the story would be quite different. Think how that would have impacted the Trolleyville liquidation if there had been a vibrant ORM with 5 miles of trolley wire hung on their branchline.

It could still happen. Just not at 990 Proprietors Road.

I have heard several times (from railfans, read that any way you want) that in the 1960s or 70s ORM was offered the property of the then Midway Railroad Co., a coal hauling shortline located 20/25 miles south of downtown Columbus but that the entrenched management of ORM couldn't conceive that potential patrons would drive that far to visit their museum and thus declined the offer.

I've often wondered if this is a true report/impression of what happened. Perhaps someone in the know could comment. If true, it very well could be that ORM missed the train in this instance.

In any event, I'm sure the rest of the rail museum community only wishes them the best in attempting a comeback. We don't need any more failures.

This website tells the story of the golden years of ORM, 1948-1978:
http://www.columbusrailroads.com/orm.htm



I am not sure of the details, but it's my understanding that an internal rift happened within the group. The primary problem was the onset of suburbia around the museum, which was followed with the introduction of low-income housing across the street (!) One subset of the group, containing many if not most of the active restoration volunteers, sought to relocate. Another, mostly older group wished to stay. When the politics played out and the decision to stay was final, virtually all the work slowed to a crawl.

The move option I had heard about included an alignment (with or without track?) along an old interurban or electric freight railroad (Ohio Electric?) which had the line poles still standing in place.

I hope that when the time is right, the details of this demise are brought out to light, and that all the players in current museum melodramas across the U.S. take a close look at the ORM story. There might be implications for their own museum, even if it is not a very close parallel.

Owning a massive property surrounded by cornfields (or permanently preserved open space) and along a weedy branchline seems to be an optimal solution for this sort of train club museum. The reason, not often acknowledged here, is that the view of nature or openness is a silent partner to any successful train ride experience. This allows a momentary escape from the city life, which most people enjoy.

What this seems to be saying, if I'm reading this correctly, is "The best way to attract visitors to your urban-transit museum is to give them a thoroughly suburban or even ex-urban experience having little to nothing to do with actual city transit life/experience"...............

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

I have had things to say about the ORM in past threads and I will not repeat them here. Currently I work about a mile from the museum and my doctors office is now on the former site of Worthington Foods, next door to the museum. When I am by I make a point to stop and look through the fence. I have not observed any significant improvements at the site in the last several years. No sign of any new restorations or restoration barn (they had none last time I was on the property.) At the same time it does not look appreciably worse. The traction equipment is still mostly tarped over. The theme for the 2000's at the ORM seems to have been treading water - not getting better but not worse. I have been meaning to stop at the museum this summer when they are open but they are open so few hours and there is usually something else I have to do.

I think most organizations that follow this route have future plans (dreams?) to replicate the urban environment, also. I know that IRM has acquired some small town commercial buildings with this in mind. The end result would be something like the HUckleberry, where they (in this case the county) owns the land, track, and townscape, too.

The notable exception, in my opinion, is the loss of their barn. It appears that it was seriously deteriorated and needed to be taken down before it fell down, but still, its loss a few years back gives ORM the unusual (and dubious) distinction of having regressed from having some of its collection under cover to having none of it covered.

Thanks for all the updates. I visited ORM in 1977, which, judging from the reports, was just before things went downhill. The N&W 4-6-2 was still running, but as I recall, it may have needed help from an electric to finish its run. The members were justifiably proud of their Columbus streetcar that had been rescued from "chicken-coop" status and restored to operation. Also running that day was CTA 4449; quite a coincidence considering all the attention Southern Pacific 4449 was receiving at the time. Over the succeeding years, I heard and read various reports, most of them disheartening. Finally, in 2007 I was traveling through the area again and stopped by on a weekday for a quick look. I was rather alarmed to see police cars in the parking lot, thinking "Oh no! Some scrap metal thieves tried to rip off their trolley wire." This turned out not to be the case; the officers were investigating a burglary at an adjacent property and the crooks had made their escape through the Museum yard. A museum official was there, and he let me in for a few minutes of photos. The only car that appeared to be usable was the Illinois Terminal PCC, which I fear was involved in the recent wire failure. According to Preserved North American Electric Railway Cars, several of their cars are up for sale, and I think what is their most valuable car, Ohio Public Service Niles interurban #21, reportedly the only surviving intact Niles combine, is under a tarp.
We can only hope that ORM can recover from this occurrence and go back to being Central Ohio's place for electric railway operations in a state which has such a rich interurban and street railway heritage.

[quote="Dennis StorzekI think most organizations that follow this route have future plans (dreams?) to replicate the urban environment, also. I know that IRM has acquired some small town commercial buildings with this in mind. The end result would be something like the HUckleberry, where they (in this case the county) owns the land, track, and townscape, too.[/quote]

Why replicate what already exists in places that are also already full of people with the ability to spend money on you without having to find you? My city is about to hold another in a series of public meetings to continue to discuss the potential construction of a streetcar line to support older in town neighborhoods which may actually happen in a couple decades or so, but was needed about 10 years ago to prevent them from starting to decline in the first place. Please, just bring down some rail, wire and cars and start running them. Not only are we reinventing century old technology to carry people in the city now, but we are also reinventing cities along museum trackage out in nowhere? Can't we just put the two that already exist together?

dave

A friend, who was involved in the glory days, and "owns" a couple of those cars through sweat, commented to me today after reading the article that there is no chance of the current efforts working, the only question left is if the cars are saved.

I hope that perhaps JJJ can save 578 when the time comes, but I wonder if the community, after Trollyville, has the resources to do it again (and for cars that are in worse shape).

Bob Bunge

But cities are also filled with vermin, specifically politicians with their hand in your pocket, and ambulance chasing lawyers. Also real estate developers and other assorted hucksters. All of these people have waaaay more resources that the average trolley preservation society, and they are only your friend as long as you are useful to them.

In any "Olde Time Historical Trolley" development scenario, the goals of the preservationists are always going to be at cross purposes with those of everyone else. They're happy to have you, so long as your interests align, but just when you reach the point where you are happy with what you feel is a self sustaining historical operating display, THEY want to bring in the brand new Jap light rail cars, and put your historical trolleys out to pasture. Either that, or consume the artifacts by running them to death.

I'm reminded of years ago, when the developer of Olde Town Chicago or some-such in Bollingbrook inquired about the lease or loan of some of IRM's CSL collection (never seriously considered). That shopping development failed so many years ago that I doubt anyone even remembers it, but what would have been the fate of IRM's CSL collection if the deal would have been done? It's easy to get involved when everybody has money to throw around; really hard to extricate yourself unscathed when there is no money to move the cars back, or repair them.

For some reason, we are having this discussion in the ORM thread, when it really should have been in the Own Your Own Land thread. Oh, well.

Things cross over a lot, Dennis. BTW, vermin aren't limited to urban settings. There are more of them per square foot, but then there are more potential supporters per square foot as well, so.......?

dave

This line of discussion also overlaps the Urban Museums and Politics thread.

I was going to include the IRM-in-the-city scenario, but I recall it was Mayor Jane Byrne who wanted to have the CSL 144 operate on the industrial track in the then-starting-to-gentrify River North neighborhood. It would have connected to existing streetcar tracks and operate on the then-unrenovated Navy Pier, home to Chicagofest (the event the predated Taste of Chicago). Had all this happened, IRM may have lost control over one of its streetcars, but it might have led to actual implementation of the Central Area Circulator light rail. A physical presence of trolleys in the city could have changed the political dynamic. Regardless...

There is probably just a few successful "trolley museum club in the city" scenario, which does not rely on a scenic ride near nature, open water, or open space/parks. This would be in my mind Dallas' McKinney Avenue Transit Authority and the Fort Collins Municipal Railway. Both of these have close relationships with the city for their use of the streets. Others include the NYC Transit Museum and Market Street Railway which have operating agreements for older cars on existing systems. Space for acquiring and restoring equipment is extremely limited for any of these groups, so they have just a few, but very nice, pieces of equipment.

Ohio Railway Museum is a different type of museum. Though it had streetcars, it focused on interurbans and steam railroad equipment. This all-in-one "train club" museum equation tends to sprawl and is land-intensive if it continues to grow (which has been part of the formula for being interesting to a new generation of railfans). It also can get quite junky as it goes through its growth phases, triggering concern from urban land regulators.

The equation is a little different for the "Solitary Visionary" museum . Doyle McCormack comes to mind as an individual can afford to place his operation in a city. Then again, his equipment belongs to the city.

****

In response to ADM:

When I said:

"The view of nature or openness is a silent partner to any successful train ride experience. This allows a momentary escape from the city life, which most people enjoy."

I did not mean that having a ride in the country, or in amazing wilderness, or looking over open water/open space is better than an urban ride through a residential neighborhood or in a canyon of warehouses or skyscrapers. Just that if you are giving a train ride, and people are looking at ugly industrial sites or badly maintained backyards or other decrepit depictions, they probably won't be coming back in troves.

The "Scenic Railroad" formula is one which has been used for at least 130 years and is tried and true. Use it to your benefit. If you don't have much of it, you probably will need to piggyback on other attractors (bars, nightlife, nearby super-attractions) to draw in the crowds. Note that many, if not most, of the urban trolley operations occur at the waterfront.