The other day I happened to be in the area to a rather prominent Midwest railroad museum named after a certain fallen flag road that I have not been to in about 7 or 8 years.

I was actually dumbfounded walking the grounds at the condition of the place. Piles of rusted freight car parts scattered about, or sitting where they literally rotted off the car. Large pieces of rusted out sheet metal laying right in the middle of the walking path, roofing flapping in the wind, the list goes on. Not one piece of equipment was locked, or even had a "no climbing" sign, thus every single family seen that day was exploring everything, top to bottom, inside and out. I popped my head in a piece of equipment right after a 4 or 5 year old got off of it and was amazed the kid did not go through the floor!

I did not notice any changes to the equipment since my last visit. Not a touch of fresh paint, no restoration work happening of any kind.

Now, I can understand the last bit (to an extent at least..), especially how this year is going, but in my opinion it is totally inexcusable to have your museum grounds in the kind of shape that I saw. The only thing missing was the drums of mystery fluid.

So my question is this - Since we all saw that melt down at Noblesville spurred on by grounds that were blatantly not being taken care of, what has your group been doing to actively "clean up" and make your museum/organization not only look better, but be more safer for visitors?

It seems to me that very few organizations have a clear vision of what they are trying to actually do. It becomes a collection of rusty old trains that will “someday be restored.”

With good leadership, any organization could be freshly painted and presentable with a 5 year plan.

Without adequate manpower and money all the five year plans will come to nothing. The first element of any plan should be to get young members.

Putting all of the restoration issues aside, it does not cost alot of money or manpower at the end of the day to get a few boxes of trash bags, or even a small dumpster just to do a good cleanup.

If an organization is not already looking for new members of all ages, that’s a big problem in itself.

But all of the money and all of the young members won’t do anything without a vision, plan, and proper leadership.

I think this is the problem. “Leadership”? The 3 rail layout runs like a dream, so who cares about the equipment outside. The wooden steps to get on a caboose are so wobbly that I almost fell off. The whole place is a lawsuit waiting to happen. The Mohawk headlight lights up, so the outside collection must be fine.

The sorry fact of the matter is THERE IS TOO MUCH STUFF "SAVED". Not everything old is significant. Just because a certain piece of equipment wore a paint scheme that the fans thought was special thirty years ago doesn't mean anybody cares now. I take as an example the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas that closed maybe ten, twelve years ago; just because he was popular at a certain point in time doesn't mean his was music for the ages, and as his fans died off, they were left with no reason for being. And so it will go with railway museums. Those who remember riding the great interurban systems are mostly all dead. Same with pre-war heavyweight trains. Those with memories of the great streetcar systems will follow shortly. If your museum doesn't tell the story of the development of these technologies and WHY IT WAS IMPORTANT TO OUR COUNTRY, or to SOCIETY AS A WHOLE, your museum will someday follow.

Well, you can have more stuff than you need and more stuff than you should have and still have a presentable museum. I think most history museums and art museums have artifacts in archives and storage for example.

A good museum should have a way to archive, store, and protect for future use.

Most history and art museums have professional curators and not someone who's a volunteer and thinks they are all-powerful as a department head and chooses to block projects because of personal feelings and vendettas instead of the good of the museum . You need a good general manager and a board of directors that listens and supports the general manager, to do well at a volunteer organization.

Yes exactly.

You need a vision and good leadership.

One thing I see often is a vision that far exceeds the resources and capabilities of the organization that wrote it. If you are pressed to do a dollars worth of work, don't write a hundred dollar vision. Write a buck and a half vision and work it through before gradually increasing, but only if your scope is so small it isn't covering its costs. Better to do a small job well then parts of a big one that can't be finished at all.

At the Hockiing Valley Scenic at Nelsonville, Ohio we have two full time workers. We restore and maintain our fleet. We have volunteers helping.We have cars on display at the depot. You are not allowed at the shop. Any thing beyond repair is scrapped. We also operate the only standard gauge steam in Ohio. It runs every other weekend.

The most important lesson from Noblesville is that the organization needs to own the property where the museum resides as well as the right-of-way for any excursion activity. The WW&F in Maine comes to mind as a fine example.

The political lesson from ITM, as well as the late West Virginia Northern, is don't make enemies of the local political infrastructure and town fathers. That was a huge factor in the demise of both operations, and I also think its a major part of the difficulties with the Catskill Mountain Railroad, and certainly hasn't helped the Adirondack Railroad (although a determined interest group willing to tell whatever lies they need to to win has been the larger problem). Any operation that depends on the goodwill of their community has to be sensitive to which way the winds are blowing.

I agree somewhat to the points about the place looking trashy and in many cases it could be improved with some effort. But it is also pretty easy to sit back in your chair and critique how others should run their railroad or do what ever with their equipment. Think all points made are valid. Now for a counter point for the folks that don't like to see rusty parts laying around.

As a museum especially an all volunteer museum where money is scarce and BS abounds it is easy to criticize or critique. As a mechanical person I see rusty parts as parts that are no longer made and in a perfect world would be on industrial shelving, inventoried and out of sight. As of now I live on earth and it has some limitations that are indeed fixable but in the realm of reality it takes time, money and man power to make happen. Seems to always be two points of view here with either side not wanting to or being able to recognize the other view. To the person who is not mechanical these parts need to be dumped the sooner the better. To those who turn wrenches and are not afraid of heavy repairs {wood coaches or steam locos either one} The parts are irreplaceable or patterns of irreplaceable parts. I have a few times been pleasantly proved wrong about scrapping a pc of equipment base on "eye sore" assessment. Thankfully nobody including me decided to burn or scrap these eyesores in the name of "cleaning the place up". The wheels of progress turn slowly for most museums. At Mid Continent there has been an ongoing move to clean the place up from the shop buildings to the depot area and around the display buildings. Hurray it needed it. But from the shop building south is where the parts and some of the cars/locomotives awaiting restoration are stored. To an untrained eye it is where the eyesores are kept. At Mid Continent in the last couple of years there has been much headway with new buildings for car storage and parts storage. There have been many instances of lost parts, stolen parts and tools and deterioration of equipment do to outside storage. Huge progress thanks to a number of donors who made this possible. But it has taken this long to happen. This is planet earth folks it sometimes takes this long. Hind sight is 20/20 for all of us. Some people lament too much was saved? No doubt. But other lament that some stuff was lost forever? No doubt this is a fact. Just saying it is real easy to say what a museum should do and another to make it happen. Leadership is a rare rare commodity. While the business end needs good leadership, the boots on the ground need leadership too so the whole organization heads into the same direction. Leadership is more than making decisions and giving orders. Almost anybody can do that.

Parts storage. Mid Continent recently was donated the funds to build a storage building/warehouse dedicated to parts storage. Obviously we needed it years ago. Thanks to the donor it is now a reality. It has taken 57 years since moving on the property for this to happen. Better late than never. This will kill two birds, one the parts are out of sight of those who want a city park type atmosphere and the parts are saved from further deterioration. To some the clean up effect is most important. To me the saving of the parts is the brass ring. Both perspectives win this time.

The answer to the dilemma of how a museum looks? Volunteer and send money. Take the reins and start the push for a large building to house your valuable parts or "to be restored" equipment. Learn to use and appreciate your volunteers. Work to get the organization to cooperate within. I think often the design of hierarchy or chain of command is a often the problem. From vision to execution is a long walk. It takes an unusually good leadership to pull it all off. It also takes membership to follow good leadership and the combined effort to turn the Titanic sized organization around. But without money it is a hard road. In the case of MC they have been blessed by a number of donors who have saved the place in many respects. My gratitude to them.

Paramount to own your property, #1 priority. It allows you to hang on if perfection takes longer to achieve than the vision allows for.

Regards, John.