I sat here and watched the various threads covering the future of the RyPN web site, the idea of a RyPN magazine, Flimsies, Bob Yarger's photos, and the departure of Ross Rowland from the interchange. What struck me is that all these topics are connected in some form or fashion. My thoughts go something like this.

I know moderating can be a hassle, but on one other site that I lurk on, the moderator keeps very close tabs on topic content. If the content drifts too far off the original topic, he chimes in and brings it back on track. If it does not come back to the original focus, he locks it.

As have others, I have suggested ideas on this site in the past. For what ever reason a majority of responses focus on why such an idea won't work. Or on what is wrong with the world in general. What about some more positive responses. The recent AFT discussion is a good example.

I am a fan of a hard copy magazine. Why? Well for one thing, the editor has control over the content. Stories with a positive flavor can be published and there is then very little immediate feedback. There is something to be said for that. As we have seen recently, if a story or topic is published as it is now on the RyPN web site, the feedback is immediate and control is lost. As we have seen lately, a discussion topic can quickly lead to 10 different sub topics.

Again, with a hard copy magazine, the positives of the AFT and what can be done to ensure it stays in AFT livery could have been written up. Research for that article would have included interviews with the museum and with Ross. Good, in depth research on a topic. It would then be presented in hard copy format but in a positive manner. Right now, that in-depth research is not done ahead of time and the discussion can turn ugly.

I do not post often and don't even read many of the posts anymore. Once it gets past a page or two of responses, you can be pretty much guaranteed the discussion has sunk to some unwelcome level. Or I look for key respondee names and just read their posts. I look for the names of the preservation leaders. I consider Ross to be one of them.

Keep in mind that "outsiders" I am sure stumble into this site. These are people who I believe the rail preservation community must go after. They have money, affluence, and some deep down hidden interest in trains of some sort. Again, I come back to my Wooden Boat magazine ideas. That community just seems to have its act together. I base that on my reading of the magazine and on various web sites. In the rail preservation community the best we have to offer is RyPN and even here we fight with each other non-stop, driving off the leaders of this community, and just making a lousy impression on those who may have an interest and money.

And before anyone mentions it, no I'm not talking about ARM or TRAIN. They have the wrong focus in my opinion. I'm not trying to focus on museum and tourist lines here. The future is private money and ownership.

My bottom line thought? RyPN is our best hope to get our act together. If we sit here and destroy our best hope, then you are condemning any number of coaches, cabooses, 44 tonners, Alcos, Baldwins, etc to the scrap heap.

In other words, lets work together. Lets be positive. Lets think twice before posting. Lets help take RyPN to a new level, one that it deserves, and that we all need.

Thanks for your time,
J.R. May
Wall, NJ

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I agree with Kelly, if there were a sufficient audience out there to support preservation specialty magazines you would see Kalmbach and Carstens producing them.

MX

Kelly:
BTW, you are one of the authors who postings I read....

As to a magazine, all good points on the hard copy versus online only. Timeliness is great, but can be a problem as well. The G1MRA has both a newsletter (an outstanding one) and a yahoo site. They complement each other quite well. Long tech articles to me just work better in a magazine format. Asking for help or other updates do work best on line.

Please don't get me wrong. I like RyPN much as it is today. The question had been asked, what should change. I was trying to convey mostly that the real change I'd like to see is that it not drive people away. The question has also been discussed relative to the hard copy magazine idea. I'm a fan of hard copy, coupled with online discussion, much as G1MRA does. Please keep in mind, I am trying to hit a different audience. I feel a hard copy magazine does that better than a web site. This is based on current and past experience in this arena. Not trying to change RyPN. Think of it as broadening the range of people with an interest in rail preservation.

Anyway....

"Everyone, don’t be too thin skinned, think before you type, and never respond to drivel, and you can too."

I was trying to figure out a nice way to state this. You hit the nail on the head.

Thanks,
J.R.

Just out of curiosity, I checked to see who publishes Wooden Boat. I was surprised to see it was Wooden Boat Publications, Inc.

Further down, it gives a bit of history:

"Jon Wilson founded WoodenBoat in September 1974 with the publication of the first issue of WoodenBoat magazine featuring the schooner SILVER HEELS. Jon assembled the magazine from his (non-log) cabin in North Brooksville, Maine. All was accomplished without electricity or plumbing, and with his telephone nailed to a tree- half a mile down the road. Taking issue #1 to the Newport Sailboat Show, he sold 400 individual copies and signed up 200 subscribers. Targeted to boatbuilders, designers, and wooden boat owners, WoodenBoat is published six times each year, and now has a circulation of approximately 100,000."

100,000. That's a decent number. Not all of those subscribers are boat owners.

I just have a hunch that we are missing the boat here someplace. (pun intended).

J.R.

Unfortunately, you are missing THE critical detail:

You can buy a wooden boat and tow it home. You can park it at any marina with which you can pay the fees; you can build your own slip on waterfront property; at worst, you can pitch in at a maritime museum. When you're on it, you can sail wherever you please whenever you please, within certain limits, and you can pilot it. You have minimal standards and licensing with the Coast Guard and/or state licensing. In short, you own it, and it can be fun. All of the above applies equally (with variations) to automobiles or campers, and to a lesser extent to airplanes.

You can buy a locomotive or railroad car, and unless you truck it to your place ($$$$), you're pretty much stuck with leaving it on railroad trackage. It's almost impossible to find railroad trackage where you can let something sit at no cost, unless you just happen to be so lucky/wealthy as to own a railroad or place with an active siding. Wanna run it? Pay lots to bring it up to someone else's specs, get certification from the FRA and/or Amtrak, and approval from a host railroad, and the engineer's certification, and certification over that line. In short, you have to work hard to own a huge liability and money pit.

So much of what we, as humans, want to do revolves around self-pleasure and gratification--the liberty to do what we choose when we choose. Jay Leno, a multi-millionaire, spends his money on a huge collection of cars and motorcycles that he chooses to maintain in running, licensed condition so he can choose any car that suits his mood to drive to work. This is little different from the high-school shop teacher who keeps a Triumph TR3 to drive when the weather's nice just because he wants to. I know a chap that chooses to live a pauper's existence--milk crates as furniture, old computer, two-room apartment, etc.--because he wants to spend money on a snazzy car.

Because of its very nature, the railroad environment has such a heavy infrastructure requirement that it completely precludes ANY possibility of "free will" with regards to owning/operating rolling stock or trackage, unless you happen to be R.J. Corman, Jerry Jacobson, Andrew Muller, or the like. Even folks like Linn Moedinger, Doyle McCormack, the Biegerts/Xanterra, or Steve Sandberg will tell you what a chore it is to do what they do. And as long as railroading remains an enterprise where such restrictions are in place, heritage railroading as a hobby can never hope to catch up to boating, antique autos, quilting, bicycling, or other hobbies.

Is this an insurmountable obstacle? Can anyone propose a way to ease the ability of an interested person to participate, short of a nationalized rail network where anyone can apply to run anyplace any time? One idea I have is along the lines of the zoos' "Adopt-an-Animal" programs, where for a set fee you pay the approximate annual maintenance for an animal of your choosing, from a naked mole rat or carp to an elephant. Should we be more aggressive in pursuing participation beyond simply membership or grunt work?

Excuse the somewhat off-track nature of this post as it pertains a bit more to the overall scope of rail preservation. To expand on Alexander's words, I think the key to growing/expanding the rail preservation movement, is to almost make the rail-preservation part secondary in status.

Take for example, what I consider to be the gold-standard, IRM has been hugely successful in attracting a large and varied group of volunteers who might not necessarily all be considered true "hardcore" railway enthusiasts. There are probably a sizable bunch of people that are interested in history and preservation in general and are involved for the strong "social" aspects a large successful organization can provide. It seems that many groups suffer from a lack of emphasizing this social component.

Is that not the reason that many people join fraternal and volunteer organizations? Can there be a concerted effort to make some of the rail preservation groups less "cliquish" and a little more inviting to the public?

I am concerned about the future of rail preservation as witnessed at Reading Company Technical & Historical Society meetings. Though it's been a while since I've attended, I have yet to see any kind of meaningful influx of youth to carry on the hard-work and dedication of a steadily graying core of volunteers. Perhaps I'm off in my assessment of IRM, but they seem to have found the "winning" formula.

Being in the graphic design/marketing profession, I am almost tempted to say our field needs a "re-branding" makover to appeal to a wider and younger audience. How we go about that in a loosely-organized and often underfunded collective group is the $1M question.

Mike:
I think in some ways, you are hitting on my point. We need to get people interested beyond the usual crowd.

As to Alexander, no you can only tow home certain wooden boats. Small ones in particular. If you would buy a few issues of WB you would see what I mean. Yes, many are small, but a great many are large sail boats, 40 feet or so in size. With their deep keel and fragile state, they can cost a bundle to move, assuming they can be moved at all. You don't tow it every weekend behind your Jeep. And keeping such boats in a safe-to-use-state can be as expensive, if not more so, than any rail car and perhaps as much as a smaller steam locomotive. Millions are raised to build brand replicas in some cases.

Might be worth looking on You Tube also for the Caboose Train that runs in NH. They have created a "marina" for RR equipment up there. Very creative. Very successful from what I can see. And the equipment is used on regularly scheduled runs. Not only is the RR marina doable, its been done. But how many people know about it. And I mean outside the usual crowd here.

J.R.

Thank you!

To JR, regarding moderation: egad, no. And I'm not opposing it from an "I'm not on staff I'll get moderated" approach either. I'm against it from having *been* a moderator on a rail related forum a lot busier than this for about 2-3 years. It's a job I'll never take again, and I wouldn't wish on anybody.

I'd rather just agree for us to behave by a certain standard and if that standard isn't met, maybe stronger methods can be discussed. I should say though that someone else here last night posted somewhere how the disagreements and "flames" we have are tame compared to other rail boards, and he is so very right.

Just for the record, I *have* seen Wooden Boat, and yes, there's a difference between a small cabin cruiser and a skipjack/yacht.

But that doesn't affect the "free will" argument.

Regardless of the long-standing joke that a boat is a huge hole in the water into which one throws lots of money, beyond the financial obligations of maintenance and care, the requirements are minimal at best. If you want to take a boat you own out for a sail, you drive down to the dock, unhitch/haul anchor, and sail. Heck, you're still not even required to file a flight plan at the airport for a flight in a plane.

Just try and take a Fairmount track speeder out for a spin. Anywhere. Even if you KNOW there's no traffic. Even if you're a shareholder of the railroad. Even if the line's abandoned, you could be subject to arrest. And the Fairmount is the railroad equivalent of a kayak, canoe, or dinghy. Now try and take your caboose for a ride. The Plymouth. The 0-4-0T. The Pacific. The business car.

In a sense, the railroad infrastructure mandates a fundamentally "socialistic" or "communistic" mentality. You can't do it alone unless you have gobs of money. Once you depend upon a collective effort to make anything happen, a lot of the individual motivation and satisfaction that honestly drives a lot of people's desires disappear.

I could even make the argument, however specious and subject to challenge, that a lot of the differences that we see between the perceived relative "success" of British rail preservation projects and comparable American ones stems in enormous part from the vastly different philosophical approaches to the basic infrastructure and government--a nationalized British Rail for fifty-odd years, collective community efforts, etc.

Frankly, I don't have any answers to this. This is as fundamental as you can get, and I see no solution to easing this conundrum. But I would say that recognizing that this IS part of the overall problem is critical to making this an avocation that can survive to the 22nd century.

I would also connect the "Restoration Planning" thread
http://rypn.sunserver.com/forum/viewtop ... 20&t=24667
and the conspicuously thin response.

Hmmm. What's up with that?

I see this time and again with serious restoration or preservation questions - the people who know, who must be out there, aren't talking. That aspect of RyPN's goal to advance preservation isn't working.

Why? A great place to ask might be an ARM meeting. Of those I know in railway preservation, I see scant few here. Do they not know about RyPN? Do they not have computers? One answer might be - too much noise and clutter. So many articles that aren't about preservation that it's time-consuming to find the ones that are.

Even for the people who DO post, hollow discussions like the Ross Rowland lovefest are a colorful distraction, like someone plopping a People Magazine on top of your schematic... J41 goes to collector bus-- hey, what's up with Britney Spears? Easier to engage in light stuff than give a serious answer to a technical question.

This is a universal problem with Internet forums - "signal to noise ratio". Here are some ways of managing it. At one extreme, I'm on a social mail list with a policy of "no one gets kicked off for posting behavior, anything goes". It self-regulates somewhat, but readers also use filters - technical means to block messages from certain people or topics. USENET forums can also do that trick. I for one was indifferent to bobyar's photos but annoyed at their volume; filtering means you enjoy it while I ignore it.

Forums can't filter. What they CAN do is have multiple forums. This allows tighter rules for each forum, yet allows moderators to simply move forums rather than lock or censor them. Consider

Nuts-n-bolts restoration - steam
Nuts-n-bolts restoration - non-steam
Nostalgia
Preservation
Museum Management
General (catch-all for posts miscategorized but not violating rules)

See how that works? While I'm discussing pantograph pins, the bobyar post-storms and Ross Rowland love-fests roll on in forums elsewhere! The downside is if forums are too specialized, too few people read them and posts don't get answered - a "critical mass" does not occur.

I've talked about blogs as devices to attract new interest - but they also have some power in helping with getting above the noise. And then of course there are wiki's - the apocryphal example being Wikipedia... consensus editing creates very accurate and concise content.

I agree with the contention that we need a rebranding and we need to include a younger audience. There are two programs already in place that we can use that either doesn't cost a lot of money or actuallt pays for itself.

The first is the Boy Scout Merit Badge for railroading. Does your operation have a Merit Badge Counselor for railroading? Its pretty easy to become one, raise your hand and you’re it.

The second program is RailCamp. We partnered with the NRHS three years ago now and offer a teen version and an Adult Version. I’ve written about this and better yet so have the participants. Steve Barry even prints what the kids write. And even better there are scholarships available for the teens.

Is RailCamp worth the trouble? YES! The teens here rebuilt about 300 feet of track for us that I don’t know when we’d ever get around to rebuilding. This summer three of the teens are coming back to Ely to volunteer. I will be providing rooms; they are handling all other costs. And I will be working them hard while they’re here. (Actually like dogs, truth be told.)

IMHO every heritage railroad organization should be offering a RailCamp program.

I think there is a lot to be said for this approach. A print document is tangible. The web is still unstable - case in point the broken photo links. I am slowly going through my old copies of L & RP. This is always not possible on the web, as others have mentioned favorite websites disappear.



Again I agree, our prime demographic is still very much paper based. This will come to an end some time in the future, but right now - that is the way to go.

How about a section where organizations can post their progress on a restoration in text and photos? I know there have been a few but in a dedicated section, more organizations can get their programs recognized. I personally enjoyed following the restoration of an N5C out in the Pittsburgh area. That was on their own website but would be of great interest to the restoration community. There are a great many of us here that are volunteers or members of museums or historical organizations that look to a site like this for tips and ideas on how to make their groups function better and assist in their projects. And then there are the ones that are interested in history and look to this site for information. And last but not least, there are the ones that have nothing to do with any organization and use this site to pursue their own agendas by flaming others.

And don't forget that this is the "Railway Preservation News" an "Online magazine of railway history and preservation." Forget a printed version. Leave that to the publishers of paper magazines.

Later!
Mr. Ed

I agree with the need for multiple forums. I'd also invite a "photo of the week" page posted by Bob Yarger.

Have a look at http://www.steamboats.org as an example of a site using multiple forums.

Wesley