Hi,
In live steam circles, many of these people who machine museum piece locomotives and cars do not understand track, roadbed, or wood vs steel for building.
This is why I wrote my book "Civil Engineering for Outdoor Railroads Volume 1". It has been very successful. I am hoping to have "Civil Engineering for Outdoor Railroads Volume 2 Bridges" out this year.
I recall one argument at a museum that kept going on for about 3-weeks or more about railroad and highway degree of curvature. They were arguing over a 1500 foot radius and wasted the time on an unimportant point. They knew enough that there was a difference but not enough nor where to look to find out if it was or wasn't significant.
In CE Vol 1, I show that for degree of curvature less than about 3.75 degrees, there is NO difference in radius to two decimal places.
A 0.1% difference is not reached until a 600 foot radius (about a 9 degree) curve.
A 1.0% difference is reached about a 28 degree (200 foot radius) curve.
Many educated people do not know enough about some topics to even know what questions to start asking.
That is what I've tried to provide - a resource to help the problem for live steamers and non-professional railroaders.
Since railroads are not the focus of today's life as automobiles or computers, not much is taught about it in school other than a fast overview.
I love laughing at the dumb questions that come up, but I also would like to help out teaching people.
I do put my money where my mouth is. The local city has just been incorporated. They want me to form a Railroad Museum. They want a family oriented attraction that will keep people coming back. I have proposed a railroad-learning-center approach with some historical displays and an operating train. However, I am also proposing an N-scale layout, an HO scale layout, a G scale layout and a 7.5" gauge track. I hope to convince the city that holding classes in module building will help teach people about carpentry, electronics, painting, track building, and model building. I also want to try to work out with a local high school or junior college a joint class on building live steam equipment including pattern making and metal work.
I seem to have gotten up on my soap box. sorry about that.
Doug vV

Humor, eh? I was in the cab of our Alco S1 on the A&SV one afternoon after we ran around the train for the return trip. As usual, folks were taking turns coming inside to see where all the magic happens. One gal steps in, looks around wide-eyed with a couple of oohs and ahhs. She then points to the door which leads into the engine compartment and asks me very seriously, "Is that where the wood goes?"

Sometimes we gave visitors rides in the caboose. At one point, the train made a backup move across a deck bridge (no sides) and the caboose was on the point. As the visitor always wanted to come out onto the end platform, we always gestured towards the brake wheel and said "Sure! Come on out, but you gotta steer across the bridge!" Nobody would take up the offer......the conductor always "steered" until somebody might figure out they had been the butt of the joke. Then, they began to ask how flanges work.

Um, actually, Ron, steam engines are external combustion engines. Reminds me though, did you ever see the blank looks on a lot of folk's faces when your docent is attempting to explain how the valves and cylinders work on a locomotive? I think one of the best exhibits a RR museum could have would be a cutaway working model, or at least a running video that explains how steam moves the wheels.
Fred

"Are we going across the bridge of flowers?"
It was plane as day there were no tracks going to the bridge. I sometimes wonder what these people do for a living.
"What trolley do we get on?" The only other near by pice of RR equipment is a caboose (Oh and also the last car on a train is not automatically a caboose). and then people tend to be surprised that Yes the trolley sitting there does move we didn't just string up all that wire for fun and giggles, After all do they think we push it out of the car barn? Also no that is not a steering wheel.
That thing can't pull the caboose it is to small (referring to our trackmobile) I explained how a locomotive is small compared to the mass of a train and I got "Well that is different". The guy still didn't believe the track mobile when it started pulling us along "That thing can't pull us it's to small" as we are moving along. And last but not least people who try to charter our trolley for there weddings to take people from point A to point B, we would be more then willing to do that if they build the tracks and string up the wire between those two points otherwise no. Don't worry though I always am professional and polite when these things come up.
And last but not least before I was a volunteer at the SFTM and was just a visitor I saw a kid (probably 8-12) Jump on a moving freight train (SFTM is right next to the Pan Am Railway) and said kids mom just rolled her eyes.

Also cut aways do jack. The best way (and the way I learned) was a CGI anamation on Popular Mechanics train video. otherwise it is just a gumbled mess of pipes and bolts

The Museum of Transportation in St. Louis has diesel-electrics as well as straight electrics and even one gas-turbine-mechanical locomotive, in addition to its steam locos. I was usually standing in front of a GE U28C diesel which has had its hoods removed and is partly a cut-away when I mentioned the internal combustion engine, although I have also used the term in front of a steamer when making a comparison to its external combustion nature. The point is that the term is becoming so uncommonly used that I might as well be speaking a foreign language as far as many people are concerned.

I recall hearing (in the 1970s) the chatter on the scanner frequencies of Southern Railway an argument between the dispatcher and the engineer about putting eight cars in a siding. Basically, the engineer said that the eight cars would not fit and the dispatcher believed his charts that said eight cars.

Both were right. The charts were for 40-50' car lengths.

The cars the engineer had were some TTX 79 footers and all the other cars were over 50' in length.

Finally the Engineer did as he was told and there were 2.5 or 3.5 cars standing in a field - no rails.

Its been so long, I do not recall the exact details but this is the gist of it.

Doug vV

The several comments about people not know measurements, etc. prompt me to submit this for your consideration.

I was in line at a sandwich shop and the patron next to me told be about a visit to another one of these chain stores:

Patron: I'll have a 12-inch sandwich.

Sandwich Artist: I'm sorry, we only have 6-inch and foot-long sandwiches.

I was in a training class for using a piece of test equipment for testing electronic PC boards. The instructor (assistant salesman) was not getting any response. He asked how much memory was in 64K. Thinking he was serious, I responded with the correct answer of 65,536 bytes. He told me "Wrong. There's 64 thousand bytes". All us engineers in the class looked at each other like "and he's teaching the class???" All the electronics repair techs in the room were nodding their heads like it was the most profound statement they had ever heard.
After that, I tuned out the instructor and read the manual.
1K in computer memory is actually 1028 bytes - 2 raised to the 16th power.
Doug vV

There seems to be a pattern emerging from this thread. We've reached a state of technology in this country where people don't have to think about how something works any more, they just use the device. Plug your blu-ray player in and put a disc in it, and it works. Push the destination button on your GPS, and it'll get you there (usually).

I've always felt that the educational system is letting us down, because they don't teach common sense 101 and basic math and mechanical skills. No wonder velcro straps on shoes are so popular, the concept of how to tie a shoe requires too much thought and effort. Arthritic and the elderly are exempt from the previous statement.

To stay on subject, though, most people are actually curious and want to learn. This excludes the stupid ones, that is why they are stupid. Railroad museums tend to attract people interested in railroads and railroad history. If we all learn how to educate and entertain our visitors, we'll have done our job and also be able to pay our bills.

And now for MY stupid people trick: Boat launch ramp on the great lakes. Parade of ski boats being launched and retrieved. My wife and I settle down at a nearby picnic table with sandwiches and drinks. Steady procession of studly macho hat-on-backwards types launching and retrieving. A typical entertaining afternoon usually yields:

1. 1 or 2 guys that learn that a power boat squats when you throttle up to run up on the trailer. $tainless steel props are scrap once they bottom out on the concrete ramp.

2. Failure to launch: miss a strap, and the boat stays with the trailer. Some trailers float, some boats sink.

3. Launch the boat AND the vehicle. Happens at least once a weekend when Joe sixpack lets the wife or kid back the vehicle up while he handles the boat.

4. Several other variations and combinations of the above, including lessons on how easy it is for an unsecured boat to come off a roller-type trailer while on a ramp. (Inertia 101)

Fred

All the technology we have is all throw-away. So you really don't need many mechanical skills anymore, because if something breaks, you throw it away or have someone specially trained to fix the over-complicated, over-computericated thing. I'd like to see some of the naysayers here do repairs to an ES44AC when the time comes and they are in museums. A lot on those engines can't be fixed with a wrench.

To be fair, I've seen way too many youtube videos of rail museum/tourist groups performing actions that leave me wondering if they should be trusted with anything bigger than a Lionel. Stepping between knuckles 3' apart, for example?

And what's wrong with velcro shoes? The pair I'm wearing have lasted me the last 4 years...

The GPS comment reminds me of the two automobiles that were distroyed by trains within months of each other up somewhere near New York City. The one fellow survived. He said that his GPS told him to turn and he did - right onto the railroad tracks and got the car caught.
Wasn't he watching the road? Was he watching the GPS screen only?
Now that is stupid.
Doug vV

I noticed that confusion this morning. Just goes to show I should not post late at night (or is it early in the morning?)

Doug

Our frame of reference determines whether we're stupid or not. Smart people can look stupid when they meet something just a little bit outside what they're used to. I love these stories because they mean maybe we're having some success at our museums in expanding people's horizons. Plus they're funny. Here's one from the earliest days of the PM 1225 project, which I've used as a preface to explaining how an injector works.

One day the MSU Railroad Club's beginner steam-engine restorers got inside the university's power plant, a sizable coal-burning steam plant. Everything we knew about steam came from the locomotive, so one of us asked the power-plant engineers whether its boiler used injectors or force pumps. The operator pointed to the feed pump, and asked, what's an injector? Our guy tried to explain it, but didn't succeed, and was told with great conviction, "you can't use boiler pressure to force water in against the boiler pressure." Since then we've learned to make reference to the conservation of energy and potential vs. kinetic energy, and have more success at explaining injectors, at least to people who know physics.

I do feel we're fighting a widening pool of ignorance of the basics. Last month I was in a toy-train store buying parts to revive a 1948 Lionel train, and waited while the clerk helped a customer whose train didn't run. The customer was 30-something, and probably prosperous and expert in some field. The repairman said, "It's probably something simple like a stuck brush," only to be asked,
"What's a brush?"

I didn't feel superior, just sad. Of course, I've begun getting computer advice from my 13-year-old son, so I've got no cause to feel superior.

Aarne Frobom
Snipe Hunt Woods, Michigan