While this video may be geared for car museums, I believe we can learn a lot from it as well for the railway preservation museum. I am going to warn you that he is a bit brash with his attitude but unfortunately his thinking is true in a lot of cases. I’m not saying all rail non profits are of the old school thinking but a lot are. It’s something we do have to think about. Otherwise, we are not going to be around for the next generation if we are not relevant. I only post this video to help, not to put anybody down. If you would like to respond, please keep it constructive, not putting down an organization. I would hate to see this thread get locked over stupidity and hurt feelings.

https://youtu.be/lhbVcfuBxvA

To bring life to your museum you have to keep the younger generation interested but that is also a double edged sword per say. A lot of the younger generation has no connection to the stuff we see value in. Because it doesn't have computers or light up and there isn't a App for that. The hardest thing really is attracting volunteers who will work for nothing and enjoy it. Ive seen it for years happen in volunteer firefighting the young blood doesn't wanna just donate there time.
The other problem is that what we tresure as cool is boring to them they never rode a Pullman at 60 on a crack passenger train, or broke loose a 67 mustang fastback down the main drag. A museum has to stay inside its goals while attracting a customer base, a profit and new volunteers willing to pick up the torch.

This video was already discussed for three pages in mid September, here:

http://www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=43743&sid=86f97a6ea6a3f84b0ab03e373fff2200

I may have posted this before, but I grew up in the sixty's and the things I found interesting were the things from before my time. I still find the cars from the twenty's and thirty' interesting, and as far as trains I am not a diesel fan and prefer the steamers build before 1900. So I don't believe it has anything to do with what you grew up with, it is something else that drives your interests.
Mike N.

the above quote could be completed with...
...Because we have failed to establish one.

Why are railways fading from the collective memory of our country and why is our national passenger rail network falling apart? Because we haven’t been doing a good job of teaching their value.

The lessons we teach through our work have less to do with that though and more to do with what we pass on: a good work ethic, pride in a job well done, patience, grit, resilience. These are all life skills a young person near you will gain in working with you and learning- in addition to the skill of actually working on or restoring something.

Meanwhile, we have to be convinced that railways and public transportation are beneficial and can be part of a bright future for our world. How many of us actually believe that a comprehensive railway and public transportation network are actually appreciably better than driving somewhere in your private automobile when you want to, the way you want to? If you believe that, railway museums probably aren’t for you!

Meanwhile, in my own experience, when you go to museums operating steam locomotives you get the laundry list of reasons they are obsolete- but never the reasons they were worth saving. This does not make a good argument for their preservation. But their value resonated with me beyond those comments- they brought entire communities together for their operation and maintenance- to the point that nearly every family had a direct connection to the railway- and- indirectly a role in connecting and improving the commerce of our country and the world. The fact that they are relatively simple machines means they can operate in conditions which other machines would fail in and, despite the skill required, can often be repaired and kept operable with a smaller selection of tools than more complicated forms of locomotion. So- in short- tell us why something was worth saving- not why it is an anomaly that it was saved in the first place. They were saved because they changed our collective world and our lives for the better. And that is of value, even today.

Steve Piwowarski

What is interesting is talking to young volunteers and finding out that they volunteer at more than one museum. The young people that embrace older technology seem to jump in with both feet and enjoy helping whenever they can. And they don't shy away from hard work like track laying. The real question is what sparks our interest in the first place! Any psychologists reading this?
Mike N.

Well I guess being the resident 25 year old here means I should speak up instead of watching this conversation from the sidelines...



To be honest, I think your underestimating how many millennials and 'zoomers' (I guess that's what we are calling them now?) are interested in railroading and trains. Have you ever heard the term "NUMTOT"? Its a slang for millennials obsessed with public transit and advocating 'taking the train' over driving a car.

Yes our national rail passenger rail network honestly sucks. I keep saying it over and over again, but the great face of railfanning for my generation will be commuter rail. The US has seen a massive commuter rail boom over the last twenty years. I have grown up in the Utah area, and got to watch as commuter rail grew from nothing, to become a small electric streetcar system, then blowing up into a massive system that spans the entire Wasatch Front with train service from Ogden to Provo six days a week. I don't want to put him on the spot, but talking with some of my friends it sounds like Otto Vondrak understands this hence the steady uptick of modern commuter rail in R&R and Model Rail Craftsman. I really hope Bachmann's upcoming S70 LRV in HO scale is a success, since it could become the product to open up a new generation of railfans to scale modeling.

I know this might sound cringey too, but don't underestimate the impact Thomas and Friends had on us either... I know this sounds absurd but I took a railfan trip with some friends recently and during the final legs of a long drive between Virginia City Nevada and Baker City Oregon we eventually started discussing how the stories of the original Railway Series were all based on real events in British rail history. The term "Sparkle Sparkle Sparkle" from the terrible Thomas and the Magic Railway movie has become our new favorite group in-joke since the trip.

Our interests are diverse as a friend group too. As I already hinted at, a lot of us love commuter rail especially our local UTA Frontrunner. Some of us are into the modern Heritage Unit schemes. I love my local fallen flag railroad the Tooele Valley Railway even though it ceased to exist nearly 15 years before I was born. I channeled that interest into writing and presenting on the railroad, I wrote the Wikipedia articles for it and the International Smelting and Refining Co. and am now the Chair of the Tooele Valley Museum and Historic Park advisory board. Another one of my friends is a fanatic of all things late 1800's-early 1900's, he can identify lots of antiquated and old railroad equipment and practices easily since he has studied so much on it. All of us are 25 years old or younger.

I'm not saying it to brag, but I am saying it to make it clear there are young people who have connected with the hobby. There are young people who are interested in trains and rail history and want to see it preserved. Yes they might not be showing their interest by working for the railroad, or by building a 4x8 model railroad in their basement like the generations before them did; but don't dismiss the memes, hours spent on Train Simulator, or the popularity of video game mods such as the Railcraft mod for the popular Minecraft game. Remember, every phone has a camera these days and instant messaging. I can take photos trackside and in seconds send it to every single railfan friend I have to discuss and talk about our railfanning adventures. Imagine how busy our group chat was when UP 4014 came to Utah twice this year!

The problem is as the video suggested, not that young people haven't connected to the hobby; but have failed to connect to the museums. Stagnation is the enemy of longevity for any museum's futures. Part of why I am honestly excited to be with the Tooele Valley Museum right now is the new Museum Coordinator who handles day to day operation of the museum is basically spearheading change left and right. Our freight dock has been rebuilt, our collections sorted, display areas cleaned up, electrical work updated, groundskeeping refreshed, and vines and trees trimmed. One of the most exciting projects she had done was getting the local high school band kids out and digging up a stretch of rail leading to a MOW shed on our property that had been covered up previously by landscaping. After the rail was dug up, some pea-gravel donated to us was dumped over it simulating the look of fresh laid ballast. The project was done entirely with high school kids! The museum now two years since the coordinator started is more fresh and exciting than it has been in the 23 years prior I have been in the area, and I am excited to see how much further we can go.

There is a reason I keep bringing up a lot of the museums I have visited out of state this last year. The Nevada State Railroad Museum in both Boulder and Carson, the Virginia and Truckee, Nevada Northern and the Sumpter Valley. My friends and I were probably the youngest paying passengers on the Sumpter Valley's photo charter; but there were a handful of volunteers/workers on the railroad who seemed our age or maybe even younger than us. I have met and talked to plenty of young people at the two Nevada State Railroad Museums and on the Nevada Northern too. The steam crew I see normally operating on the Nevada Northern usually looks to be somewhere in their early 20's to mid 40's each time I am there. The V&T's fire crew provided by the WCRG frequently posts on Facebook, and when I returned home to Utah and posted photos of their speeder trailing V&T 29 they gladly shared my photos to their pages as well. All of these operations are doing something right to connect to young people from what I can see. Heck we were only visiting the Carson City museum for an hour or two, and in our time there the volunteers asked us to get our hands dirty just a little bit by asking us to move their McKeen Motor car on their Armstrong Turntable. Now I can go anywhere and tell people that in Carson City I got the chance to help operate a turntable with a vintage gas motor car riding it!

TL:DR, Give meaningful experiences, prevent stagnation, and form a welcoming atmosphere to your museum and the younger railfans will come and contribute...

I recently put together an entire presentation all about these issues but your one sentence summed it all up beautifully.

Here's a newsflash... if you let younger members / volunteers contribute and give them a place for their voice to be heard, they will tell you what will keep them interested.

If you keep telling them "can't be done" "that's not realistic" well... don't be surprised when they lose interest.