David Dewey asked a question in another thread about what he thought was a wrong way to do rail preservation. I agree with him. Rather than expand on that theme and possibly "stealing" that thread, I thought I would start another thread and mention one of my peeves when trying to save a bit of rail history. If anyone, including David, wants to add something else, they are welcome to do it. One "rule" (which of course is unenforceable); one complaint per entry!

Here's mine:

A community does a nice job of preserving an old depot and then fails to even put a short section of track in front of it. Many people that wander by, look at it as just another old building without any understanding what it was originally used for.

Les

Hundreds of towns adopt a locomotive or a caboose, fix it up, place it prominently in town and never put a roof or fence around it. This is because of three dumb assumptions: 1) It's a tough, huge, locomotive, and nothing can hurt that; 2) Then town loves it's little caboose and nobody would break in and set it on fire!; 3) It belongs to the people and everyone should have easy access to the cab, the sides, the tender.

My two bits:

A railway museum gets a railway line donated to them for operation but does not ensure A. protection from NIMBYs and B. a connection to the outside rail network. Both ultimately result in the loss of said "preserved" rail line. (Yes, I am referring to the Stillwater & St. Paul Railroad, which is now the Brown's Creek State Trail, complete with a trail sign featuring NP 328 leading a train on the line. *Sigh* Yes, I know the Black Hills Central is landlocked, but they have a primo location and no NIMBYs, which has ensured its existence to this very day.)

"Preserving" a piece of rolling stock by acquiring it, placing it on a siding and then not touching it for decades. Taking apart a locomotive, distributing its parts around the property and not having any plan for putting it back together. Allowing an operational diesel locomotive to sit without running for so long that it would take a major overhaul to ever run again. Not putting a damn stack cover on the aforementioned diesel locomotives.

Oh darn, I violated the rules. That was several things. Oops!

OK here is one more. Never thinking about constructing a building to house even a portion of your collection.

Not having a business plan to generate continued funds to keep / repair / restore what you want to preserve.

Announce a preservation related conference or convention, include schedule time slots for clinics and seminars, and then don't announce what the subjects of the clinics or seminars will be. Just describe them as "Seminar - Bring your convention badge".

PC

Unfortunately Rick not all of us have that luxury and have to deal with realities of everyday life. The majority of railroad museums in this country are not Fortune 100 businesses with bombastic tv ads and connections to people in high places. I'm glad enough we can afford a tarp to enclose all of our hard earned work at the very least. What you've accomplished in your life is something only we can forever dream of, not in the near future. Perhaps instead of galavanting on how organizations with less than a roof could manage their collections we can ask how is it possible for them in the most cost effective way to preserve their integrity. Money is hard to come by these days, respect the working man for what he can do in the time that precedes us.

Cameron

How about paper items stored in basements that are prone to flooding, or even located in a flood plain? More than once in the news pieces of Trains Magazine in the past 25 years of reading each issue, I've heard about irreplaceable losses at museums and historical societies because of this decision.

Even a boxcar would be better than storing such fragile items in what amounts to a ticking time bomb. You get several feet higher up rather than below ground level, and even have the possibility of moving it to higher ground in the event of a high water situation if you're located in a flood prone area.

Relocate an engine right next to live rail, build a fence 6" away from one side so that no work could ever be done on that side (which is the side facing the local bus and train stations by the way), BUT leave the other three sides of the engine unfenced (because that is industry "best-practice"). As an added bonus, the engine also sits at the end dimly lit dead-end street in the skid row district...

Spend several million on the extensive rehab of an historic depot to the 9's, in a 'motel stop' town at the intersection of major interstates. Then only have it open to the public between noon and 4PM on weekends......

Fenced off sealed up totally innaccessible dead displays, never open to the public even one day of the year, i can name many.......................

Perhaps this does not fall under the topic category, by its related.......

Its easy to get stuff. Its exciting to get stuff. Its exciting to move stuff. But it sucks to do something with it once you have it.

So, to better fit the category, under the heading of how not to do preservation of any kind (trains ,planes, automobiles, boats, houses, etc) is to ignore the long term commitment when taking on a new item. Before accepting the donation, before moving it, be sure to have a long term plan in place.

The first issue I see is people not understand what they are preserving. For example, a large preservation effort did some interpretation signs done where they talked about the railroads early wood burners and the clear cutting of the local area. there is just one problem, the railroad did not own wood burners. The clear areas in the early photos were created by a large forest fire just a few years before. Creating history is very dangerous when people are able to call you out. But has been even scarier is the passionate defense of false history. Once these types of ideas get out they seem to grow like a weed and displace the real story.

Robby Peartree

Following on Robbies' issue of bad interpretive message... Get stuff but fail to put up signs to tell what it is and when you do, don't invest in good signage or in the time to create a good message.