A number of trolley museums and railroad museums operate jointly or nearby. It does not appear to always be a good fit with incompatable operations and goals. What has been your experiences and thoughts on how to make a successful partnership?

Ask Illinois Railway Museum. They’ve made it work quite well!

Illinois Rwy. Museum is one whole operation. Ask Rwys. to Yesterday in Pennsylvania, which shares a rail with the separate East Broad Top RR. They are different gauges, so only 1 rail is shared.

Oh I guess I didn’t understand the question being asked?

Some other operations that seem to compliment each other, but are separate groups would be -

Steamtown and the Electric City Trolley Museum in Scranton PA

Midwest Central Railroad and Midwestern Electric Railway - both on the grounds of the Old Threshers in Mount Pleasant Iowa.

Electric City uses "temporal separation" to keep the RR equipment out when it operates non-FRA trolleys. This is done by locking the turnouts leading onto the line. The Steamtown crew does not have a key.

The Delaware-Lackawanna operates freight service on the line at times when the trolley is not running. They are also locked out to allow the trolley to operate.

Phil Mulligan

Also ask the Minnesota Transportation Museum, which USED to be a combined railway museum, tourist railroad, depot museum, and trolley museum, with a marine division. A dozen or fifteen years ago they decided their multiple goals were incompatible, and they split into two or three separate organizations.

As a long time member of IRM (51 years this month) I think I can comment. Unlike MTM, IRM has always been centered on ONE campus. The collection actually has more than two divisions; the standard railroad equipment is the responsibility of either the Steam, Diesel, Passenger car, or Freight car departments, and while the electric (trolley) equipment is all the responsibility of one department, everybody recognizes That there are actually multiple collections: Railroad MU cars, Chicago "L" cars, Interurbans, and Streetcars. The streetcars could be further sub-divided into Chicago cars, and everybody else. The Chicago cars would be incompatible with everything else due to non-standard tram wheels, except this problem was addressed early on by re-wheeling the Chicago cars as they are restored. The incompatibility of the low floor streetcars has been addressed by providing a separate streetcar line that circles the campus. At the present time there is still about 100' of legacy shared track in the station area, but this will eventually be eliminated as the streetcar system is built out.

Organizationally, there has always been a certain amount of rivalry, but most members recognize that the whole of the museum is greater than the sum of its component parts, and functions like buildings and grounds maintenance, track maintenance, interpretative displays, and archives and libraries are shared by all. Without an adequate endowment members of all interests have always had a vested interest in admissions income, and the trolley guys recognize that steam operation is a powerful draw, while the railroad oriented guys are aware that the trolleys keep those admissions coming in through parts of the season where it would be uneconomical to run steam, and it works.

I ask bcause I know of several cases of an unhealthy rivalry. In one case the railroad gave minimal cooperation and refused to offer joint ticketing. Apparently it considered the trolley to be taking away revenue. In another case I was told that relations got so bad that the joint line was divided in two. I wonder if there is an inherent incompatabilty between the two.

The New York (trolley) Museum of Transportation in Industry, New York connects end to end with the Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum in Rush, New York. It is possible to transfer between trolley and train at the same single track platform, which is not really big enough for trolley and train at the same time. Language on the Railroad Museum's website makes it quite clear that they are separate operations, and no mention is made on either web site about any advantages of a joint visit.

The key issue of such a situation where two groups provide a joint operation is ultimately they are two separate organizations. While at some level both groups may share common interests/purpose (eg transportation preservation); the two groups each have their own distinct goals/boards/memberships etc. I assume that they must; because otherwise why have two 100% identical groups working together at the same sight; with twice the "bloat" (Two boards; two newsletters, two websites etc) - if both groups are so similar; merging seems like a good idea.

While many things may be shared (eg ticket revenue; advertising costs) not all opertunities or issues apply to both groups. Different boards may have different expectations of maintenance/restoration/training/membership/safety/ticket price etc. How much time do the boards talk about doing stuff; as opposed to what the other board thinks about stuff? How do they reconcile all these differences that likely impact various parts of a joint operation.

I am not saying that two museums cannot work together; consider many art museums loan pieces to each other or even hosting a steam engine for a weekend. It is different when two distinct groups act as ONE while facing the public as their normal mode of operation; its no longer a special event. Both groups work together to provide a single experience to the public. The public tends to be oblivious to the organizational structure; and the public likely identifies both operations as one.

While we are mostly non-profits; I think many groups assume that "non-profit" excuses us from thinking like a business. Basing a regular joint operation on just "a handshake" twenty years earlier is likely to run into issues as both groups change and mature over the course of twenty years. Approaching it from the start with a business sense; a written agreement etc could help to keep such an arrangement going for years. Of course, in the course of those twenty years, consider its also possible that what made it a good idea no longer applies and the groups may be better parting ways - like any business partnership.

Ultimately communication is the key to the success (or failure) of such a venture. When your communication suffers regularly then the likely hood of ongoing success seems unlikely. Such issues as not having access to a board, committing a board to a decision they had no knowledge of or just never writing anything down(he said vs she said) can all lead to issues (true for any single organization for that matter!).

Now of course I could be entirely wrong; there probably are some groups out there that have figured out how to make this work for them and I don't want to detract from their success - in fact I'd love to hear about it.

Dave (and yes a veteran of a Join Operation)

PS. The RGV/NYMT joint operation ceased several years ago; and both groups do their own thing now; thus the lack of any mention on either website.

I don't think it has anything to do with trolley vs. railroad. The situation is the same whenever you have two organizations sharing the same space. The fact there are two organizations to begin with means you have two different missions, two different preservation goals, and two different sets of values. If you didn't, you'd be one organization.

I'm not familiar with all the details, but I can think of the recent relocation of the Golden Gate Railroad Museum collection to the Niles Canyon Railway property in California. The initial move was done in the spirit of cooperation and preservation, but I believe the original idea was after a few years grace period, the GGRM collection and crew would eventually be merged in with PLA (parent of Niles Canyon) to form one large strong museum operation. For whatever reason, GGRM decided instead to move the collection to their own property, which I understand is still in progress.

-otto-

NYMT chose to end the joint operating agreement in 2015, even though the tracks still connect end to end. The trolley-to-train transfer and visit to two separate museums was certainly a draw, and quite unique among museum attractions! Train and trolley operations continue independent from each other.

-otto-

I don’t think so, several organizations make it work in different ways.

Are you looking to start a trolley operation?

I would be more willing to bet that this type of thing happens because of the ever-present string that runs through so much of the railroad preservation and fan world: people being a-holes.

So, important thing for your organization, if you care about it, don't be an a-hole.

Sandy Alexander on another thread reminded me of another steam/electric operation in PA.

The Pioneer Tunnel Coal Mine & Steam Train in Ashland PA is a 3' 6" gauge operation that operates a coal mining tour with a battery powered electric mine motor inside a mine under Mahanoy Mountain, and a steam 0-4-0T tour on the same line around the Mountain to where they loaded the raw coal into standard gauge Reading Company cars to take to a breaker for cleaning and sorting on size. Passengers ride in four-wheel mine "Jimmies" for both parts of the ride. The "Lokie" steam engine has a Wootten firebox and is fired on anthracite coal.

It has always been under single ownership both as a coal mine and now a tour train, so there's no rivalry between the steam group and the electric group. Pioneer Tunnel is owned and operated by Ashland Community Enterprises, a non-profit corporation established for this purpose with the further provision that profits will be used for community welfare, notably parks and playgrounds.

http://www.pioneertunnel.com/

Phil Mulligan

Agreed. Regarding organizations working together... we shouldn’t look at anyone as competitors but rather partners. The type of customer who wants to ride an old train, probably also wants to take a river boat cruise. So the river boat cruise is not your competition, it’s your partner. Work out a deal to advertise each other. Whoever is next door, they are your partner in attracting visitors to your site.