Several recent discussions (including the one on "railfans") have touched on the subject of educating the public on railroad history.

So here is a question to consider:

If Richard M. Dilworth was alive today, would you dare to invite him to give a talk on locomotive design at your museum and invite the public to attend?

Or would the idea be relegated to a committee and endlessly debated as to whether the speaker might be too technically oriented to be understood by modern visitors?

Or would his presentation have to be repackaged by a specialty consulting outfit to interpret the message so it could be suitable for the general public?

I am just wondering because some very good people in the preservation field have told me on occasion that the general public nowadays cannot even comprehend the most basic training materials that are routinely used in railroad education (even 1940s materials). So would you dare to provide them with access to a person who actually influenced the way railroads look and operate?

Just something to think about. You views invited and appreciated.

PC

"If Richard M. Dilworth was alive today, would you dare to invite him to give a talk on locomotive design at your museum and invite the public to attend?"


I must be missing something here. Dare? I would say "dare not?

I wouldn't hesitate for a moment. Wouldn't hesitate to invite Boss Ket either, if he were alive.

The better question is "what would you have him speak about?" And here I would pull a leaf from my experience in grad school.

If I recall correctly, Dilworth was a plain-speaking person -- admittedly, you might need to be sure he toned his talk down for the women and kids, but I think he could do that. So you have him do a public talk, not, perhaps about the development of successful diesel locomotives, but on subjects of interest to him, insights he has had, his philosophy of design, and so forth.

Then you have a separate talk with more technical discussions, handouts, an agenda of questions previously considered and researched ... etc. For the people who have a particular interest in EMD, or dieselization, or even wondering if Sloan had a conspiracy to take over the locomotive market.

You advertise both. Two different audiences, two different messages, either one standing without the other, but both together giving far more insight than either one would alone.

Imagine Lewis Thomas at a biomedical conference. What would his keynote speech be like? Then what would his participation in one of the sessions be?

How many of our museums host lectures for the public in the first place? That's the problem, not whether the content is too technical.

When my son was in high school we lived in an academic community. His physics teacher invited Edward Teller to come in and speek to the class. After the talk Mr. Teller was not very happy, and scolded the students. He said here I am, the father of the hydrogen bomb, you do not have any questions for me?

The problem was that Edward Teller was so far beyond a class of high school physics students that they had no idea what he was talking about or his importance in history. Bringing Mr Dilworth in to speak at a railway museum would make since only if there was going to be an group who could understand what he was talking about and appreciate his significance with the topic.

Many years ago, when ARM was still volunteer directed, there were many great speakers. Topics of importance to the group presented by greats in the fields. I have not seen much of this in Railway Preservation since the decline of ARM.

In my area we have quite a few groups that host programs, including one museum that has them on a weekly basis throughout the year. It depends on availability of a good meeting location, availability of enough speakers in the area, and staff or volunteers willing to do the organizing and promote the events. One local group that has hosted many railroad industry speakers does not hold meetings in the summer, due to other activities at their meeting location. The part-year schedule seems to work well for them with no adverse effect on attendance, they seem to get a very consistent turnout month to month for the portion of the year that they have programs. They have had some very technical programs and that also does not seem to hurt the turnout.

And the Amherst Railway Society (which is not a museum, and not part of any national organization) seems very successful and issues a very impressive amount of grants each year for various historical and preservation projects. Their meetings are held only part-year since they meet at a facility that is not available in the summer. Their organization and success with their activities might provide some valuable guidance for other groups to follow, if anybody is interested in doing so.

PC

Two issues: programming needs to be geared to things the public wants to know about; and does the speaked know how to present technical information inways that ordinary people from other walks of life can understand (and hopefully be captivated by.)

Hell, I'm working on kicking design ideas around now with some brilliant people with such reservoirs of specialized knowledge in their brains that they don't have a clue the rest of us don't know what they are talking about half the time.......even the terminology is foreign to many of us who do have some lesser amount of expertise in the field, mostly obsolete.........can't imagine what a sort of interested accountant or pharmacist might experience in such a presentation.

I think for a railroad museum a John White style overview of locomotive development with lots of pretty pictures and very little engineeringspeak would be of public interest - but would Dick Dilworth be the right presenter?

dave

At NCTM we have hosted lecture programs as special events for many years. Topics have included the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Segregation on Public Transit, Early Development of Metro, the proposed H Street streetcar, and panel discussions by historians. None of these has been wildly successful when attendance is considered. But we continue to plan lecture events in support of our mission and in an effort to broaden program offerings.

One a related note - one of my rules when someone suggests a speaker is to ask "have you heard her/him speak on this subject?" This was after an experience in a previous job when we invited a well-known artist to provide a commencement address. The gentleman was quite personable in small crowds, but we learned the hard way that he was not a public speaker. And in hindsight no one on the staff had ever heard the person speak to an audience in a more traditional setting.

Wesley

I think you could do both. Why does Dilworth have to speak at an event? Why couldn't you interview him, keep a copy of the interview in your archives? Then, when it comes time to build a display ("Development of the Modern Diesel") you incorporate more accessible snippets of the interview as part of the multimedia presentation?

Doing interviews of people who were prominent in the development of motive power during the 1930s and 1940s would have been a memorable activity for our national historical societies.

PC

Max Ephraim Jr. was around until comparatively recently (2001). Did he ever give such talks?

Steve

I wonder if any museum or railroad history organization ever made an effort to invite him? Does anyone know of any times Max was invited to speak at a museum or railroad historical group, and whether he accepted or not?

For those who may not be familiar with Max, he was the project engineer on the BL2 and GP7 and worked on many other EMD locomotive design projects, particularly while Gene Kettering was Chief Engineer at EMD. Max later became Chief Engineer of Electro-Motive.

And he was very approachable and willing to talk about his experiences at EMD.

PC

Max Ephraim, Jr. held membership in a number of professional organizations-most notably the ASME Railroad Division.

If memory serves, he was the Chair of the RR Div. for a number of years...thus holding sway over Division output such as conferences and published technical papers.

It is fair to say that he was the product of an EMD organization-which no longer exists.
At the current EMD, most of the institutional knowledge that predates the 60 Series long since walked out the door.

DPK

> ... would Dick Dilworth be the right presenter?

Those who did not know him directly can get an idea of his nature and character, since the Online Archive has put up a copy of 'The Dilworth Story' here:

http://www.archive.org/stream/dilworths ... p_djvu.txt

(click the little 'See other formats' button at upper left and select PDF to download the actual page images instead of the bug-ridden OCR text...)

They discuss a bit about his speaking skills and tendencies as early as the introduction... pro and con.

I don't have any hesitation in thinking he could have delivered a speech to a non-technical audience. It might be appropriate for museum personnel to have worked with him on that speech before he delivered it...

I don't see the need to "dumb down" anyone's presentations. It would be a shame to say that we can't host intensely technical and arcane presentations that at the very least should be of interest to our memberships. I think it comes down to getting the word out to the right people in the railfan community, and to people that might be interested at local universities and historical organizations.

The lecture organizers could make an effort to invite people to speak on a range of topics at different levels of expertise and accurately advertise them for what they are.

In California, I know that the state museum has speakers from time to time. They are usually tied into their temporary exhibitions. I am not aware of lectures being advertised and open to the public at any of the other rail museums in this state. A number of them have occasional presentations at their "club" meetings, but they are not advertised to their visitors.