Why do we think it important to build an accurate locomotive then build a “wooden” coach from recycled beer cans for it to pull…

Instead consider wooden laminated beams (i.e. glue lams) for the large frame members, mild steel in place of the wrought iron, veneers in place of solid lumber for the interior trim, but generally construct a car in the way it would have been at the time, using today’s equivalent materials…

We have the knowledge and technology to do this… We can even get the timbers for the frame if we want from Hull & Oakes in Oregon… they cut the timbers used to restore the USS Constitution, and reportedly offer timbers up to 85’ long (and have cut longer)…

This indirectly leads me to some things I have been thinking about recently. Perhaps this should be a new thread, but I have been wondering about the organizations that are engaged in preserving 19th century, and very early (pre-WWI) 20th century railroading. It seems like there is a lot of interest in mid-century railroading, and I can think of several reasons why, but I am frustrated by the similarities of a lot of museum's collections, and the dearth of earlier equipment. I appreciate that older equipment is very rare, but the stuff that is in captivity seems to be neglected. Some museums appear to either ignore their older pieces, or they have written their mission statements to exclude the stuff. The very serious railroad museum folks have encouraged organizations to limit their focus, and this is a good idea, but I worry that self-directed volunteers might always be more interested in the trains of their youth, and the rarer, older stuff is going to continue to rot, or get passed up by the collection committees. Perhaps this is more of an issue here on the west coast, but the private-non-profit museums are almost entirely focused on whatever was still around in the 1950s.

Anyway, I lost track of where I was going with this, but it seems as if a lot of really interesting railroad history, from when the industry was at its most vital, is getting passed up in favor of the appealing nostalgia of an era that folks themselves can remember. As a result, it is hard to even find equipment restored to represent the 1920s, when railroading was at its peak, let alone a train of open platform coaches from the 1880s.

Any thoughts?

The conservation / preservation ethic applied to the post industrial revolution technological history pretty much antedated the depression. Sure, a few older pieces were saved, some were replicated for the Iron Horse Fairs, etc, but our more recent ancestors were much more concerned about progress than backward looking - except for colonial era historic archecture, etc, since we were starting the era of America as a Superpower, when there were still frontiers to be conquered, and we had the resources and technology to conquer them. We were celebrating our political and national rather than technological heritage, besides the saving civilization in two world wars thing.......

Leaving my generation of preservationists to salvage what we could of what was disappearing in our childhoods, namely the little hidden industrial teakettles and modern diesel-displaced steam stuck in the city park, and the accdientally preserved movie industry antiques.

Now American industry is disappearing - will the younger people find it worthy of preservation?

dave