Over the last few years there have been a few times when I got surveys issued by museums and historical organizations to try to gauge their members interests. The problem with all these surveys is the same, they look at the current members of their own organizations, not the people interested in trains, railroading, railfanning, and preservation as a segment of the general public.

We have in my area several hobby shops that have done a pretty good job of surveying their regular rail hobby customers, including modelers, railfans, and those who buy the rail related magazines. What they are finding is not at all like the situation in Ely, Nevada. Typically in this area of the country, the preference is 85% diesel, 15% steam, and the steam interest continues to decline. To some extent this reflects that dieselization happened in this area almost sixty years ago. Curiously this preference falls far short of what I am finding on the local commuter rail operations, where the interests of employees are more like 98% diesel, and highly technical. You show these people an NRHS RailCamp flyer with pictures of steam locomotives and they just laugh. This is one reason why, in an area of 8 million people, the steam oriented local NRHS chapter can seldom turn out more than twenty people for a meeting and the youngest folks that attend are around 60. The people I work with in the industry take a look at the focus of NRHS and some of the museums, and see nothing that interests them.

Sorry if this seems blunt, but you can't even blame EMD for this one, ALCO diesels killed steam around here, and that was a long time ago. The next generation? They're working on the railroad.