Almost every railroad museume has at least one car or locomotive that has deteriorated but has anyone ever thought to make an exhibit out of it? These can be used as tools to teach the public why things detorate while rust is something most people understand what about the chemestry? What about how hot and cold weather causes the steel of a car to expand and contract at a different rate than the paint causeing it to chip, or water getting in cracks freezing and expanding the cracks, or UV light degradeing the plastic in the saftey glass causeing the windows to fog? Railroad museumes are there to educate the public not just play with trains.

I have seen them cut up to expose the interior workings. They look great then - very educational. But a "rust bucket"???? Not sure that would play well with the visitors.

Actually I believe that this would be a great educational piece. Based off the same idea view-able progression of restoration and what it took to get that far would be educational. The piece could have rounded costs so that the public could see what it took to take it from a rust bucket to a presentable locomotive.

At NSRM we sometimes stuff an unrestored car into the museum when we have taken another out. Sort of a place holder. It is generally very well received. I believe the public understands that we have unrestored stuff and to put one into an exhibit hall changes the context sufficiently to be interesting. I wish we did that more often. And as long as we are on the subject I believe museums should change stuff regularly. It keeps us alive.

The issue with the un-restrored or basket case object is explaining its significance...
It challenges what the public expects in a formal museum setting. This is true of many well researched but unexpected objects (like green Baldwin locomotives)

That being said, some of the most significant preserved objects are basket cases... In a perfect world, we might stabilize a significant but deteriorated car or locomotive, and build a replica, preserving the original "fabric" while presenting nice, pretty car, to show what it once looked like... Of course we don't have the resources to do that... In most cases we don't really have the resources for good signage.

So, when presenting the un-restored, you need:
1) signage and or interpretive panels
2) docents, well trained, to explain
3) An accepted understanding of what it is and why it is so important that
you are showing it "as is"... aka an interpretive message...

Randy

Bingo! Randy.

Restoration is not preservation--and some pieces are too precious/significant to alter. A piece restored to a particular point in time (beautiful as it may be) limits the visitors' contact with that piece to only that particular time. In many cases, the story of a piece's transit through time is the best part of its story. A well presented piece (showing signs of different uses and eras) allows the visitors' contact with several points in its life.

Too, only showing the restored pieces, and hiding the basket pieces, limits the visitors' experience at our museums. Every piece has a story. Perhaps a car's story is not the best use we can make of some cars, but until we get around to making a rider car out of it, lets show it off. People can walk past the pieces that don't interest them, but if we make them interesting and they see there are more things than they can see in a single visit, they can come back.

There's a place for both - but what I find more troublesome is a sense that everything must be restored and held in a standard of cleanliness and polish that would have lasted about 10 minutes in "real life." How many switchers, industrial and logging locomotives now working in museums are as clean and polished as the high wheelers that hauled the limited back in the 1920s?

I'd rather see us do a better job of recreating everyday appearance and style of operation to the extent that is practically feasible. Our job is to tell stories by being a time machine - the more realistic we can create a representation the better the depth and quality of the story we let our visitors experience through our work.

The basket case or in process exhibit tells another story - a technical story about how we create the pieces we use to set our stage. This is of great interest to people like us, but only of passing interest to many people, those who just want to drive their cars but don't care how their cars work so long as they get them where they want to go, and who are dependent on others to keep them going. That's most of the people who come to our places.

I give Car Barn Three tours at the Western Railway Museum frequently. The barn contains cars that are permanently static, cars that are un restored, cars that are restored and operational... the whole nine yards.

Sometimes I report truthfully that this the way the museum got them and there is not time or money to make them all shiny again.

As an operating museum, the visitors are just fascinated when the 16 foot barn doors open and a car moves in or out.

I find that visitors just soak up information as fast as I can give it to them. You would not believe the interest showed a Model A Ford Club that visited recently. They know about restoration.

Ted Miles

Many serious, professional museums display unrestored artifacts, and in fact, would never dream of restoring them because their present condition tell a story of creation, use, abuse, and sometimes abandonment.

Several factors are at work for this strategy to be appropriate.
[list=]The distressed nature of the object is in some way relevant to its story
Restoration would destroy original fabric/finish/patina that gives value to the object (you would not restore a collectible toy train, would you?)
These objects are treated following a conservation plan developed by an expert
They are artfully displayed and lit
There is interpretive media that explain the object and its preservation strategy[/list]

I understand a yard full of unrestored equipment can be a source of shame and loathing in our community, but unrestored objects (even rusty rail equipment) can be beautiful, especially if presented properly.

No one wonders about this approach when it comes to architectural ruins, ancient pottery, or objects of national significance, such as the "Star Spangled Banner" at the Smithsonian, but there are some good examples of mass-produced and industrial-era objects treated in this way.

Tenement Museum in New York

Mullin Automotive Museum
Nimitz Museum


I am confident that many of our rusted-out wrecks would look great presented in a similar manner as long as it was done properly.

While far from being a wreck, I think some of us would feel this SP SD45T-2R is not in an presentable state, but it looks great inside the California State Railroad Museum's roundhouse. Pretty much exactly the way I remember most SP engines through the late 80s and 90s.

It is a long, difficult, road to go from deteriorated to operational, or merely cosmetically presentable. Sometimes the "Some of our collection was in this condition when we got them, and this is the eventual goal for display", could be the pivotal point for donations. In a perfect world, they never would have sustained such terrible neglect in the first place, but in many cases, that neglect is our reason for being involved.

I've seen some steamers cut back to being only playground equipment, just maintained like a playground slide. I'm not particularly pleased with that interpretation, though it serves a need and fills a child's passions. We've all seen the tattered, rusted hulks, hidden from public view. I'm not sure they show anything but the effects of weather and abuse. Cut-aways are instructive, but at the cost of a locomotive. Cosmetic restorations show us what she might have looked like if polished everyday. Then there's operational. Taken as a continuum, they tell the story of railroad preservation.
Perhaps we should be talking about stabilizing collections and restoration as funding becomes available?

or post a sign stating "this is why we need your donations and volunteer help"

For Steamtown's Baldwin 26 exhibit, we are taking 6 or 7 parts salvaged from this 0-6-0 to show the level of deterioration of some pieces. This will help to explain why things needed replacement, but perhaps for the only time in this engine's existence. We are grinding off the sharp edges so it can be touchable, especially for the blind, but not paint the parts to make them look nice. I will post photos when this exhibit is in place.

WW&F did something similar with #9's original boiler. It is constantly used as a teaching tool. I have heard that #10's condemned boiler may become a "sliced" exhibit. It makes good sense in the modern world, where steam propulsion has become so rare.

I don't claim to be a typical museum visitor. After a half dozen trips to the Air & Space Museum in DC, after moving to the area 25 years ago, I started to make annual trips to the now closed down Garber facility where they did restorations and stopped going to the actual museum. It was there I was able to understand the amount of work (and also touch some pieces you would never be able to touch once in the musuem) that goes into the high quality restorations.

But my favorite, all time NASM display was a German FW-190, at Garber, that sat for a number of years, for some reason, partly restored and with a very neat display showing the different eastern front paint jobs they had uncovered during the work (think summer, winter, summer). Last I saw it, the plane was stuffed and mounted in better than new condition at Dulles.

So my question, any railroad museums purposefully display a piece of equipment partly restored (I'm thinking box car divided into four "sections," before restore, paint partly stripped, primed, and final paint) as a tool showing the amount of work and to encourage donations?

Bob

a boxcar id big enough that you could do two different sides...one original, rusty, and the other restored as new.