Having read and followed the Railroad Heritage Employment thread I wanted to tease out one of the underlying issues and set it up on its own--and that is, The Age Question, or, Are We Aging Ourselves Out Of Existance?

I'm of two minds about this one myself. First, a bit of personal disclosure: I'm 35 years old now, born in 1967. At least since the time I've been born, people have been predicting the immanent demise of the railfan/rail preservation movement. I beleive that when I was still in diapers, it was confidently predicted that with the demise of steam the charm would be gone from railroading and no one my age would have any interest. And yet here I am, and here's T.J. and Kurt Bell, and lots of other folks as well. To cite a few more hands-on examples:

1. At the B&O Museum, the Shop head (Dwayne McCoy), Master Metalworker (George Harwood), and paint shop foreman (Harold Dorsey) were all my age or younger--and these guys taught me my trainman's skills and everything I know about hands-on equipment restoration. There were always a good number of younger volunteers around the shops, too. Our passion was 1st-generation B&O diesels. We lavished the same loving attention on them that folks a generation ahead lavished on steam (though we all like steam fine too). Someday somebody will lavish the same attention on some beat-up 1995 Morrison Knudson wide-nose GP-40 rebild that THEY saw and rode behind as a kid. Or an SD-70MAC. Whatever.

2. At the Walkersville Southern where I worked as a trainman for three years, I'd say the median age was about 38--not young, but by no means geriatric. Trains were run essentially entirely by people who grew up well after the steam era.

OK, now that I have that disclaimer out of the way, here's the less optimistic side.

We do seem to start out with an enormous reservoir of interest and popularity among the younger set, but we seem to retain very few of those people into early adulthood. Though the situation is not yet dire, our age profile IS old compared to the society around us. In passing, I could add that it is also monolitically white and male, in a society in which white and male will soon be a minorty.

So what does this mean? I think it means that we don't need to panic, but we do need to be mindful of how to keep and encourage younger people.

I work in the corporate training industry in my professional life, and this is an issue I've seen training and HR managers confront in dozens of Fortune 500-size companies. The cultural shift between older generations before us on one hand, and my, T.J. and Kurt's generation (Gen X) and even more the one behind us (Gen Y) on the other hand, lies in the value younger people place on work as "learning experience."

Right or wrong, Gen Y in particular views both jobs and volunteer opportunities through the prism "what can I learn from this." Their expectation is that the experience will be 1. structured, 2. educational, and 3. fun. They are a little pampered (after all, mom and dad have been shuttling them from play date to soccer game to what have you from the time they were 3 y.o.) and they expect you to provide the same kind of structured, learning, engaging environment their schools have always bent over to show them, and increasingly their employers have bent over to show them.

You can like or not like this. You can complain about it and decry it as an unrealistic, even selfish attitude if you choose. I'm just saying it exists--it's a fact of the environment--and suggesting that no matter what you think of it, you might be wise to take it into your calculations.

So what can you do to attract these kids and satisfy their expections? First, you can market the job. "Advertise" to volunteers the same way you would advertise if you were recruiting employees to your business. Sell the benefits of the work, and explain "what's in it for me" to your perspective volunteers. You can sell it dozens of ways, but one tried and true approach is to contrast the abstract and "virtual" experience of a lot of today's professions with the "real" experience of restoring or operating the Big Stuff: "Tired of sitting in a cube all week? Come work with us... we'll give you 250 tons of Reality to get your hands on."

Second, structure the program. Meet with each volunteer as they start, and set out what they will learn and do over the first six weeks. This doesn't have to be a day-long orientation, but it should be a little structured. "We'd like to give you a taste of everything we do here so you can decide what you'd enjoy the most. In your first week we'd like you to help with some painting on old number 9, in the second week you'll work with the electrician rewiring the car shop, in the third week you'll be shadowing out metal shop forman and learning to fold tin in a metal brake.. yadda yadda."

Oh well, I could go on, but you get the idea. I guess what I'm trying to say is the INTEREST is still there. Despite the end of steam, the demise of interlocking towers and the neighborhood operator, and so on, it shows no sign of fading--and Thomas can only help.

What has changed is younger people's expectations of what they will get from a recreational/work experience. You can ignore this, but if you choose to, I gurantee your potential volunteer pool will flock to other activities which are savvier and more flexible about offering a structured opportunity. Your volunteers may all off be clearing hiking trails, or working at the airplane museum, or assisting the keepers at the zoo--becuase those groups offered a structured, educational program to get their new volunteers engaged, oriented and started.

In short, what we need here as in so many things is a more professional approach--a recognition that recruiting volunteers is essentially and HR and training function, no different than it is at a workplace--and following through on everything that that implies.


Durango Herald article
eledbetter@rypn.org

Thank you, that clarifies a lot of things I've been pondering. This is not a response to your posting, as it will take a while to digest, just a heartfelt "thank you"!
Steamcerely,
David Dewey (who is a *bit* older than you!)

djdewey@cncnet.com

You have made some good points here.

Let me go ahead and add another part of the scene as I see it.

History is an older persons interest. While there some of us who were interested in it through out our lives, most people take an interest in other things between 20 and 50.

Here at the NPS we could not do it without volunteers. The people who help run our programs have shown this gap for many years.

My point is that they do come back. For example we have a sailing ship that last carried cargo in 1930, There is no one left alive who actually sailed aboard he and only a handful who sailed aboard this class of Cape Horner at all. But the ship is still our most popular artifact. I think that steam will always be that way. Even younger folks from the X and Y generations seem to know that there is something special about steam even if they never got to ride it in revenue service.

Another point is that it may not be possible to run 4-8-4s and long passenger trains in another few years. No Maine Lines, Insurence etc. But there will always be I hope places that will have smaller engines and trains. Perhaps narrow gauge is one answer.

Staying with my maritime analogy a moment longer, there are a number of sail training ships that are
somewhat like the last generation of sailing cargo ships. There are a very small number of steam powered historic vessels. But people of all ages seek them out and ride them, and explore them and learn from them.

Yes we are zoo keepers for herds of dinasours, but the breeds are not extinct yet. They just need lots of special care and attention.

Ted

Here's a question that's a variation on the theme - are trains still interesting?

When I was young(er) we didn't have computers and the internet to engage us, but you could still go down to the depot and watch the local come in. Depot and local are gone now. So is the branch line that I saw from my front window as a child. The Southern steam excursions lead to a big increase in NRHS Chapters in the south, but the steam program is history now. Rail industry employment has declined for years - fewer people to talk to. The railroad today is more invisible than it's ever been.

Of course another generation said the same thing with the demise of steam.

Alan Maples

AMaples@aol.com

> Here's a question that's a variation on the
> theme - are trains still interesting?

Well, on the flip side there are towering double-stack land ships; huge coal trains powered by 4400 h.p. DPUs front, middle, and back; sleek Acela Expresses, futuristic looking HHP-8s, as many or more commuter trains flickering around than anytime since about 1960, and scads of new short lines whose (usually) friendly train crews you can get to know...

I think a young person standing by the tracks on BNSF's Aurora race-track, or UP's Nebraska triple track, or watching the commuter fleet on the former B&O in Maryland, still has plenty to see.

They'll get excited about the big (wow, an SD-80MAC!) and the rare (wow, that unit is still in Chessie paint!) and the friendly/familiar (I see MARC 66 is back on the Camden line!).

As long as massive trains do their magic (how does something so big follow a path so small like a train under a x-mas tree?) we'll be OK.

(PS--I should be getting your slides back to you this week Alan--many thanks for your patience!)

eledbetter@rypn.org

I like that "tired of sitting in a cube?" ad idea, although there are many frozen nights I wouldn't mind doing so rather than stumbling over jagged rocks in the dark. I'm glad there actually does seem to be somewhat of a youthful generation getting involved in preservation though I haven't seen many of them. I went to a video railroad show at the library the other night and was the only person there under 65 and without a cane or walker!

ryarger@rypn.org

> I like that "tired of sitting in a
> cube?" ad idea, although there are many
> frozen nights I wouldn't mind doing so
> rather than stumbling over jagged rocks in
> the dark. I'm glad there actually does seem
> to be somewhat of a youthful generation
> getting involved in preservation though I
> haven't seen many of them. I went to a video
> railroad show at the library the other night
> and was the only person there under 65 and
> without a cane or walker!

Well, I remember back at ARM/TRAIN in Spencer, I was in a seminar, and someone asked the question, how many of you are under the age of 20, and as far as I could see, 2 people raised their hands, Wil (the master mechanics helper here), and myself. It even worries me for the future of rail preservation when that happens, because I know many young people who want to get involved, and are getting involved to an extent, but have some other constraints on them right now. I'm going to be at Railcamp this coming week, and i'll be interested to see what some of their ideas of rail preservation are.

Hayes S.


cookiemonster@rrmail.com

Alan:

You pose an interesting question. This question is also pertinent for tourist railroads and museums in general. What we see at Stone is that people expect a higher level of professionalism in museum displays, more action, more interactive. They expect tourist railroads to WOW them, not just give them a ride. The bar is higher.

This goes back then to getting people interested. With everything else available to fill their time our youth does not normally search us out, we need to reach out, find them and WOW them just like a video game does. This is not impossible to do, but it does take a plan of action to happen.

The rail industry is that way in general. The American public does not know what we do, how we do it, or even why we are still an industry important to the welfare of North America. We need tio stop being a sealth industry to be properly included in how the government and the public looks at us. In my humble way I try to give the industry greater exposure by being a volunteer for Operation Lifesaver. Just in the past two months I made presentations to over 2,000 children. It is not enough, but hopefully it helps. I recommend that everyone finds their own way to reach out and educate the public. The youth will be interested if they know we exist and how we are unique and interesting.

Gary Landrio

Stone Consulting & Design
garylandrio@stoneconsulting.com

> Well, I remember back at ARM/TRAIN in
> Spencer, I was in a seminar, and someone
> asked the question, how many of you are
> under the age of 20, and as far as I could
> see, 2 people raised their hands, Wil (the
> master mechanics helper here), and myself.
> It even worries me for the future of rail
> preservation when that happens, because I
> know many young people who want to get
> involved, and are getting involved to an
> extent, but have some other constraints on
> them right now. I'm going to be at Railcamp
> this coming week, and i'll be interested to
> see what some of their ideas of rail
> preservation are.

> Hayes S.

It really is an issue. There is no doubt that there are fwewer young people interested in this today, either as a hobby or as a profession.

Railroad jobs are not nearly as attractive as they were 3 or 4 decades ago; back then, the railroad offered the highest pay and benefits in exchange for giving up a "normal" family and social life. Since then, the rails have regressed somewhat but the main factor is that the rest of the working world caught up and then blew right by. Railroad jobs are no longer the best paying, and the lifestyle is just as bad or worse than it always has been. Thus, there are far fewer people willing to make the necessary trade-offs today. They don't have to, as they have other, more attractive alternatives.

In the preservation/hobby field, I've said this before but the disturbing fact is that while the general population continues to grow, the membership in rail historical organizations has remained stagnant or even dropped, and as Hayes noted, the average age is getting higher all the time. I don't think it's so much that the old heads in this hobby actively discourage the younger ones (though some of that does go on), but that the younger ones have a lower threshold for how much perceived hassle they will put up with before losing interest and taking up a different avocation.

That said, there are some very smart and very persistent young people out there in the tourist/musuem scene. I can think of at least a dozen without trying hard, and I know there are more than that. You have to look for them, but they are there and they are going to be the leaders in the next decade. When they achieve those positions, they will be facing a larger human factor problem than we already do.

> I'm going to be at Railcamp
> this coming week, and i'll be interested to
> see what some of their ideas of rail
> preservation are.

> Hayes S.

I think Railcamp is a fantastic idea and I hope it leads to similar summer education programs elsewhere in the country. Seems to me there might be a real opportunity here for museums that can team up with the right agencies to offer properly structured summer children's activities.

Alan Maples


AMaples@aol.com

Please write a brief on it - I bet Erik will publish it.

Dave

irondave@bellsouth.net

Another aspect of the age question is why do certain factions of any given museum do anything they can to drive the so called "young people" away? This problem is just as serious as the lack of new interest and inability to recruit new memberships.

How do these individuals (we'll call them Warmongers here for the sake of disussion) expect to motivate anyone, including myself? I'm sure it boosts the ego of the warmongers to insult my intelligence, insult me, and generally discourage me from doing any work. They stand to gain nothing from me by being guilty of these actions. If the warmongers haven't realized it already, they must realize that the futures of "their" museums rest squarely in my hands, not theirs.

Granted, the attention span and willingness to do any work of today's young people is that of a gnat. The warmonger's hate of young people is blinding them and prevents them from seeing those that are willing to learn and work hard to achieve the goal that we are all after, a successful railway museum.

I can't say that any of those actions bother me too much but that may not be true in everyones case. My skin may be thicker and insults roll off my back easier than others, but what about those others? What if they are were just as willing to participate and work hard as myself? That is the question that you all must ask yourselves.

Regards,
pk

paul_krot@msn.com

An ever increasing percentage of our overall population are recent immigrants who may have limited exposure to US History not to mention railroad history. While I agree with the need to "WOW" the general public, we should not forget this other expanding population segment. Dependent on the location, perhaps an organization could choose to have some written material in a second language. A simple translation of existing material may attract additional and repeat patronage.

Without throwing any stones, the last volunteer that left our group asked me to remind the "warmongers" that the group needed volunteers, the volunteers did not need the group! Unfortunately people riding an obsession are usually not people persons.

Unfortunately, we do not have many young people attending the ARM and TRAIN meetings. I think there may be several reasons:

1. Ability to travel. Both of these meetings are held over a number of days during the traditional school year.

2. Cost of travel. The travel and lodging costs of these meetings take a few coins. This is one reason why attempts are made to move these meetings around the country so that people who cannot travel far (for time or money reasons) may have an opportunity to attend.

3. Other interests. The new Model Railroader has a piece by Tony Koester that while he was interested in railroads when between nine and 13 he did little railfanning and model railroading between the time he learned to drive and after he got married.

Some years ago we had an interesting program to help our younger members attend the ARM meetings. For several years we would select one to provide a travel stipend to. We would encourage members to donate to a fund what would pay the stipend. And to help control costs a hotel room share was also arranged. I hope if we have a need, we can do this again.

At the museum that I'm involved with I see a few teenagers and young adults involved. I wish we could get more involved but I see some realities. One of these is a reluctance of some of the adult members to accept them. Some of these people have a hard time putting together a program to encourage and deal with adult volunteers; now try to get these same people to deal anyone younger.

Another is the reality that for health and safety and medical treatment reasons there should be limitations as to what juveniles may do. Having a parent or guardian on the property with the juvenile mitigates some of these concerns.

Brian Norden

bnorden49@earthlink.net