A problem I see is that almost every railroad museum is specialized in what they are about. "we only care about equipment used on Penn Central" "we only cover B&O railroad." How much great equipment that could be used to teach Joe Public about trains is passed up because "it doesn't fit our collection". While a good stainless steel coach with AC and tons of available parts on the market that would be great for an excursion gets passed up a rotted 1940's car with no AC and will cost a ton to restore and run gets saved. Most people come for a train ride not to "experience Union Pacific passenger travel in the 1930."

Now what will Joe Public be more impressed with this

or this

This is Railway PRESERVATION News. That ultra modern example is no doubt in current revenue service and needs no restoration or preservation at this time.

Railroad museums exsist to educate people while also restoring and/or preserving the tools, equipment, ways/methods, and overall history of railroading. Museums MUST have a focus, otherwise, they can get WAY out of hand. For instance, the Railroad Museum of New England focuses on the railroad history of New England. A Union Pacific Big Boy, while extremely impressive and relevant to RR history, has no place in a collection of equipment focused on railroading in New England! Mystic Seaport is another fine example. They focus on the maritime history of the 19th century. They have been extremely successful and have come to be regarded as authority in their area of focus.

People know what they're looking for when they visit a museum. Vintage equipment makes a museum collection. The modern climate controlled equipment you speak of is what makes AMTRAK. If that's what Joe Public wants, (I doubt you speak for all) then they can purchase a ticket and make use of their services.

There exist railroad museums without such a specific focus. Among them are the National Museum of Transport, the National Railway Museum in Green Bay, and the (oddly named) National Railroad Museum in Hamlet, NC. There are other rail museums I could argue have a broad focus: Travel Town in L.A., Gold Coast in Florida, Seashore in Maine (trolleys).......

The state rail museums of California, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania do a pretty darn good job of presenting any form of railroading within their borders, and a few other calling themselves "state museums" (Virginia, Nevada) do pretty well as well.

The problem you run into is that without at least some degree of focus and specialization, the places that try to cover everything well often end up not doing anything really well.



And what is more relevant in the grand scheme of things: Supertrain or The Waltons? The Lamborghini or the Corvette? The Hudson or the Ford Model A?

There's always compromise between attracting attention and admissions and advancing a cultural mission. Most libraries got multiple copies of the Harry Potter books as they were released, and sold most of the copies used after a year or two. Aquariums have to install the dolphin show and shark tank to get visitors past the marine ecology and biology exhibits.

And the B&O Railroad Museum uses former rebuilt PRR stainless sleepers from MARC commuter service and military-surplus flat cars to haul passengers behind a non-B&O switcher in gaudy red paint. The AC works (when needed0, and they reduce wear and tear on the real artifacts.

How about a better comparison.

As noted, a museum should have a collections policy and a focus for its mission. At NCTM our stated mission is "to preserve and interpret this history of street railways for the Nations Capital." Our collections policy includes wording that allows us to fill in blanks in the Washington collection with other examples. So while Washington DC never had single-truck Birneys, we could acquire a Birney from elsewhere to interpret the history of the Birney car and its impact on electric railways in general. And an early decision to acquire the European trams is now justified by the fact that Washington DC is host to many embassies. Even with a fairly broad collections policy, we have turned down a number of "good" cars and a few rusty cars because they don't fit into the mission and broad collections policy.



And that in a small way is why we bought another Toronto PCC when the Lakeshore museum closed. It is a second car of that type that can be used ("consumed") on the demonstration railway.

There have been many discussions here about many museums who are far too broad and directionless in focus, collecting anything under the sun, leading to disorganized scrap heaps in the back lot, (and pointless things like PRR GG1's in Cooperstown, NY)..in those discussions, the complaint was that museums need to focus better, have a much narrower concentration, perhaps concentrate on just one, or a few, railroads local to that museum...now we have a complaint that museums should widen the focus! ;)
cant please everyone I guess..

(and can a moderator please fix the subject line? I thought this was going to a thread about poor spelling! ;)

Scot

Ummm. Can I get clarification on something? In your opening statement, you state that museums are too specialized. Not debating that, however aren't you the President of the F40PH Preservation Society? Isn't that about as specialized as it gets....even more so than a group dedicated to PC or Conrail or Reading coaches?
Russ

Years ago I heard a full-time museum person -- at that time he was Executive Director of Montana Historical Society, later he was head of the Missouri Historical Society and President of AASLH -- talk to a room of movers-and shakers of a local history railroad museum for which he had just completed a MAP visit.

He spoke about developing a mission statement (this was also in his report). He had this generic statement about mission statements, "Don't try to be the upper mid-west museum of everything in the world."

Sometimes I wish there was a bouncer around here who checked references...

Originally, the Western Railway Museum was called the "California Railroad Museum" and was a general railroad museum.

When CSRM opened in Sacramento, it became evident that we could not do as good a job at being a general railroad museum as CSRM would do, given their public funding.

After considerable discussion, the Board decided to specialize in electric railways, which actually is the original focus of the Bay Area Electric Railroad Association. This focus has worked well for us and for CSRM, which does very little with electric railways. The two museums actually complement each other.

Specialization has helped WRM, CSRM, and the Western Pacific Railroad Museum in Portola. All three museums have traded artifacts in ways which enhance each others' collections.

The equipment I posted in the first photo is a turboliner. Amtrak is trying to get rid of these things even though they are fresh from a complete rebuild and then stored on a siding. The reason Amtrak is not running them is lack of standard parts and legal problems, yet I doubt any railroad (at least in the eastern hemisphere) has inquired about them to Amtrak. "Ummm. Can I get clarification on something? In your opening statement, you state that museums are too specialized. Not debating that, however aren't you the President of the F40PH Preservation Society? Isn't that about as specialized as it gets....even more so than a group dedicated to PC or Conrail or Reading coaches?" Part of the reason for doing this is because of the problem I mentioned, no organization wanted or could help with this because it didn't fit into there operations. I also left open the mission statement so we could get other rolling stock if need be. I can already see the day coming where people are scrambling to save the rusted hulk of an AEM7 because no one thought to preserve one when they were being retired.

An adherence to "bona fides" and "credentials" could have easily run off, among a great many other folks, the early David P. Morgan, Ross Rowland, Robert Soule, Richard Jensen, Mark Smith, Mike Schafer, Bennett Levin, and many others. We probably would have been left with the Claytors, Jim Bistline, Jim Boyd, William Moedinger, and a few others with railroad experience first......

And some of the most experienced and knowledgeable people I know in this industry don't exactly have exemplary spelling or grammar skills. I've learned not to hold that against them. (Man, if I had only kept that letter I got decades ago from someone now registered on this forum and pretty high up on the pay scale, responding to my corrections to his massively erroneous news submission to a rail enthusiast magazine....)

For the sake of clarification:

RCD, it seems to me that you're not so concerned that there's a small number of museums that collect railway equipment regardless of area-of-origin. Rather, you're more concerned that, in our frenzy to preserve every last basket case from the beginning of time until around 1950(?), that we're completely overlooking the "modern" era and forgetting to preserve items such as Turboliners, AEM7's, and other fairly recent but retired/on the verge of disappearing equipment. Is that the issue here?

If so, I remember a fairly recent thread on this forum discussing which museums do this already, how it should be done, and how others are planning for it. I think that the topic of how BART trains will be preserved was heavily discussed in that thread.

Again, the problem here isn't so much "there are no railroad museums" as it is "there are no museums that tell the whole story of the railroad, up to the present day, and preserve equipment from all eras"?

If I'm wrong in my understanding here, please advise me.

Well, here's my thoughts on Rowan's original comparision:
One (the Reading Company coach) was so common that it proved easy to save a handful. The other (the RTL-III) is so rare, and with limited facilities avalible to a preservation group, stands very little chance of finding it's way to a museum. Next thing you know, your soda can is made out of an RTL-III. Saving one turboliner set isn't the problem, but finding the space for a whole turboliner set is.

I do hope a rebuilt Turboliner train finds a home somewhere. As a museum piece it would be representative of of nothing. But it's still pretty cool and could sort of vaguely represent modern equipment.

If you really want to preserve an Amtrak Turboliner you get the French set (power car and two coaches) which are presumably still in the scrap yard in Indiana.

Steve