I am reproducing Aarne Frobom's classic treatise from the September 1989 Trains Magazine criticizing railroad museums without clear direction and purpose. Originally published in 1989 when a second wave of classic equipment was available for the asking, the warnings are as relevant today as they were forty years ago.
Trains Turntable: The McRailroad Museum
Recently the Big Boy restaurant chain agonized over abandoning its Big Boy mascot as being too fat to be fashionable. The plump Big Boy statues are still outside many of the restaurants, which is unfortunate for the railroad-museum business. For the surplus fiberglass figures could become the emblem of another chain spreading across the country: the generic railroad museum. These institutions are as alike as that cousin to Big Boy, McDonald's restaurants. The Big Boy could have his red-and-white checked overalls repainted into pinstripes, and could be made to hold up a long-necked oil can instead of a double-deck burger.
Is there a McRailroad museum in your town? Here's how to tell:
It's a yard of equipment, arranged in no particular pattern, with a building or box car full of displays. Some or all of these items will be there:
• An EMD F-unit or Alco S-1, less traction motors or engine, from a railroad that did not run through the museum's territory
• Lackawanna M.U. cars
• A fireless steam engine from a nearby factory
• A Plymouth four-wheel switcher, with stripped gears
• Chicago L cars
• A Pennsylvania GG1
• A Toronto PCC streetcar
• A heavyweight Pullman, with insufficient interior hardware and linen to assemble even one section
• A camp car made from an old Pullman or troop sleeper
• A Fairmont car on a 10-foot length of track
• Many, many cabooses, with more due next week.
The box car or depot will contain:
• A collection of brakeman's lanterns, uniform buttons, spikes, date nails, timetables, insulators, or depot-platform paving bricks
• A steam locomotive bell, whistle, or headlight
• One each crossbuck, order hoop, telegraph key, semaphore head, station sign, baggage wagon, and book of dispatcher's train sheets.
There is likely to be one of almost anything else, from a collection of turn-of-the-century wedding dresses to a 1952 Nash. There is a railroad museum with a German V-l buzz bomb on display next to the 2-8-0, so anything is possible. But there are some things that you won't find at the generic railroad museum.
You won't find an average day coach. The museum may have the railroad president's business car, but it won't have a coach in presentable shape. Thousands of people left from the depot on these cars over the years, but if examples are on the property at all, the interiors are stripped or have badly stained Amtrak blue-and-purple seats. Upholstery material does cost money these days.
There will be no explanation of who shipped what on local railroads. There won't be a map showing tourists or local visitors how the lines relate to the geography of the area. There won't be anything telling what the railroad is or what it does.
There will be freight cars, but which freight cars will be determined by what the carriers were willing to part with for free, not cars that tell the story of freight haulage in the area. There will be one hopelessly odd freight car, like a pickle vat car or wine tank car, that one now-deceased museum director took a liking to.
No one will say what it was like to work on the railroad. There will be engines and cabooses, but no one to tell what it was like to fire a steam engine over a hilly railroad. No one will tell what went on in the caboose; the Pullman won't have any explanation of who the porters were, and why, and what their life was like.
What can you do if you've got a generic railroad museum on your hands? The easiest way to avoid becoming a link in the chain of McRailroad museums is not to start one in the first place. In 1989, anyone considering starting a railroad museum needs to as if there are enough of the right artifacts remaining to coherently tell the story of some part of railroading. If not, then any new institution won't be an educational device, but will be a field full of unrelated hardware for the amusement of some rail fans and no one else.
If it's too late, and the L cars are already on the property, you may be able to salvage the situation by concentrating on the part of the "collection" that seem related, and unhesitatingly dumping the rest. And even badly mismatched stuff can be made more meaningful by explaining it to visitors. This doesn't just mean hanging labels on the cars. It means deciding what message you want visitors to walk away with, and then drawing on your talents as a teacher, historian, and entertainer to get the message across.
This is how a real museum begins. It isn't easy, but if you succeed, it means you're no longer a generic railroad museum and one't need the revolving status of the plump boy holding the oil can. —Aarne E. From
Aarne H. Frobom, 36, is a transportation planner for the State of Michigan and direct of a volunteer museum society. HE lives in East Lansing, Mich., with several tons of machinery — three bicycles and a 64-seat coach. His August 1988 "Trains Turntable" was on train scheduling.
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