You know, as soon as I read this, I thought "damned if you do, damned if you don't".

Scranton is basically two hours by car from the NYC metro area--less, if the cops aren't looking. It's basically a quick jump off of major interstate highways.

Can you imagine what places like the Nevada Northern, the EBT, the Cumbres & Toltec, etc. would do for such positioning? It ain't downtown Sacramento, Orlando, or Chicago, but in all seriousness I have trouble trying to conceive a "better" (i.e. both accessible and historic, with enough room and buildings) location anywhere in the Northeast. Even Strasburg is "out of the way" by comparison.

And you can even stop by the Dunder-Mifflin office there! (a reference to NBC-TV's "The Office", for those clueless to the reference....)

Come to think of it, prominent locations in high-traffic tourist areas apparently haven't done enough for the likes of the B&O Museum, the Maine NG RR Museum, and other very urban/accessible operations.............

It's odd. You'd think their location would be perfect. Close to NYC, I-81, the Poconos, but they aren't getting the traffic. Is it just lack of awareness? If all Scranton has going for it is "The Office", well, that is just sad.

I live in a town of 10,000. Nearby is the county seat of ~30 odd thousand. Yet, many here do not want to go into the big city. I know you city dwellers are shaking your heads, but who is the target for Steamtown? Families with discretionary income and transportation? Are they mostly found outside the core urban areas? And what else is nearby? Usually there's compromise. Strasburg hast he outlets and the amish nearby. B&O has the aquarium and inner harbor. Scranton has what?

Complete pain in the rear to go from the inner harbor to B&O, unless you drive. To far to walk a family with kids, downtown traffic flow is nasty for out of towners and there is TOO much to do at the harbor. Still would LOVE to see a combo membership package between the Aquarium, Science Museum and B&O. I have a B&O membership this year. The kids are bored of the events at B&O, so we'll be switching to either the Science Museum or the Aquarium and I'll pay the daily for steams days. The membership has been a real deal for the museum, BTW. I've spent more in the gift shop for the kids because we go there more often then I've likely saved through the membership.

Bob

Ummmm....... the Poconos? Not the Lackawanna 4-8-4's, but the mountains and resorts?

By weird coincidence, I ran into TWO folks who were taking their families up to "the Poconos" in the past week: an elderly neighbor taking a niece and grand-niece, and a retired man taking his wife. I would say you disregard that tourism draw at your own peril.

The Montage Mountain to which the Electric City trolley operation runs or is supposed to run? A minor-league ski resort.

I concede that Scranton has much to lend itself to nomination for "armpit of America" status. But it's not quite as bad as the stereotypes. (It couldn't be.)

A great location, as four major interstates all intersect there: I-81, I-84, I-380 and I-476. It is usually faster to use I-81 and I-84 than I-95 to get between New England and the southeast. I-476 (northeast extension of the PA Turnpike) is an easy way out of Philadelphia, while I-380 connects to the New York City metro area.

--
Chris Webster
http://www.speakeasy.org/~cwebster

Scranton is really a better place today than it was 10 years ago. While I wish the mall did not replace all those neat buildings along Lackawanna Ave., the remaining building are slowly being revitalized. I was there recently on a Friday night and there is frankly a nice amount of stuff going on. There was a pretty big wedding going on at the Radisson (the Lackawanna station) and somehow it really looked good having a well dressed wedding party walk up the steps from their limos. There is a new Irish Pub in the floor of the new parking garage next to the new Hilton that was hopping as well. Having the Triple-A Yankees team at the ballpark has really boosted attendance (Scranton and the Poconos has always been Yankee territory - Philly fans are more south). There are a lot of interesting places to eat in town - you just need to have the locals point them out to you.

From our small impact we have seen from our conventions and trips, people are willing to come and spend money. We hope that when we are able to offer dinner in the diner on a regular basis we will be another reason for people to come to Scranton.

Darm, Br. Mitchell beat me to "The Office" reference... which has to be the best thing to happen to Scranton in years. (I work for an NBC affiliate, BTW) If Steamtown could only get "The Office" to film an episode there...

I would tend to agree with Eldiner that Scranron has improved over recent years. However, the basic problem remains that it is not a recreational destination and although easy to reach by a confluence of great highways is not thought of as a place to go when most folks are planning an "entertainment" outing.

There's little question that a significant part of the success of most, if not all, of the heavy hauling tourist railways is their location either in or close to a major tourism area or in a spectacularly scenic area, and they are able to "feed off" if you will, a percentage of the large numbers of folks who came there to be entertained.

Unfortunatly that doesn't apply to Scranton and most likely never will.

However, the paltry current attendance could certainly be improved by putting more "life" into the place and hopefully someday that will occur??

IMHO-Ross Rowland

Totally off topic but Dunder Mifflin did have a 'conference' in Scranton within the last year or so. Several cast members from the show came to Scranton for a meet and greet. Downtown Scranton had Dunder Mifflin signs on some of the store fronts and on the pedestrian bridge, over the street, at the Mall at Steamtown.

And as another "Office" aside, the cast has referenced "Steamtown Mall" at least once--I believe as a lunch destination. Though in the episode where Michael climbs on the roof to "threaten" suicide (don't ask), the cameras atop the building showed painfully obvious Southern California scenery, including a nearby UP yard.......

Well, at least it's not the episode of "CHiPs" where Ponch and Jon were chasing some desperados through TravelTown in Griffith Park............

Hello, all:
Why is it we let these threads become tangled in our own ideas of what Steamtown should be rather than what it promises to be? Even the oldest National Parks are still working toward some goal, and they've been at it for over 130 years. Steamtown's goal is to be the living embodiment of an early 20th Century railroad yard, and it does this more days than not. The NPS has a new funding program to improve the appearance of all its parks by 2016, and Steamtown is getting a huge piece of those funds. I don't know much about how it will all shake out in the next 8 years, but the bureaucracy some of us decry as holding back progress, has actually created the "scopes of work" the park will need to contract out these improvements. It sounds easy enough to "paint the big boy." Yet when you get down to it, you need to "stabilize the big boy, take her off display, safeguard the workers from ongoing rail traffic one track away, repair the window frames, seal off the access for wasps and squirrels to build nests." And that's only a portion of what I can think about.

Consider your comparisons of Steamtown to a National Park rather than a tourist railroad, and you will see how well it measures up. More about the Centennial initiative at www.nps.gov/2016.

Nothing could be clearer than the need for Steamtown to rid itself of the rusting, rotting wrecks that it will never rehabilitate. I remember a program several years ago devoted to donating some items to museums and the like, but that seems not to have happened. Can anyone fill me in on why so much derelict stuff is still around?

There appears to be a great deal more criticism leveled at government owned museums such as CSRM and Steamtown, than the privately owned museums that have had just as much stuff out in the rain for decades. I have my opinions about why this is, and it is disappointing to see railroad equipment rust away, but I don't see the knee-jerk reactions and criticisms helping any.

Meanwhile, few other railroad museums have better exhibits, or even do much of anything to skillfully reach the public on the subjects of railroad history, technology, and culture. I have seen a lot of photos tacked to folding display dividers, and while I find these exhibits to be charming, they don't really do much of the non-fan.

So what I am trying to say, is yes, these museums have let a lot of stuff rust away, just like most other groups, but at the same time, they are amongst the only museums that reasonably fulfill their missions as museums, and not just collections.

I think it's people's personal political views that fill them with enmity at the mention of CSRM or Steamtown.

1) On what grounds, other than that they haven't been rehabilitated yet, do you state that they will "never rehabilitate" the items to which you refer? It's possible that the program referenced by Brother Tim O'M will address at least some of those issues.

2) Shall we apply the same "rusting, rotting wrecks that [they] will never rehabilitate" standard to, among others, the B&O Railroad Museum, Virginia Museum of Transportation, RR Museum of Pa., Illinois Railway Museum, California State Railroad Museum, Gold Coast RR Museum, Whitewater Valley, Tennessee Valley Railway Museum, Cass Scenic, Cumbres & Toltec, Durango & Silverton, East Broad Top, and dozens of operations I'm not mentioning just for space reasons? Just because someone else suggested that "D-Day" for railroad preservation, does that mean we have to rush at full throttle to embrace that concept as a fatal truism?

I think we can all rattle off examples of "hopeless basket cases" that at the very least were/are being cosmetically restored, if not restored to mainline operation. For twenty years, I told folks to forget that the West Va. Northern 2-8-0's at Madley, Pa. existed and just give up on them. Thankfully, John Smith and Co. completely ignored me, and now they're at Elkins.

I will grant that the conditions and particulars of the specific Steamtown locos/collection make things more problematic than a more narrowly focused collection in a different location. But still......

Bottom line, people expect something at a rail museum to MOVE. That's what trains are for: moving. I never understood this academic attitude that keeps trains sitting still. I understand the financial aspects of it - but something eventually has to turn a wheel.

At a place with Steamtown, I have a feeling people are expecting to see something in steam moving.