One problem I have with railroad museums (as well as some other types of museums) is that the story they choose to tell often tramples other stories. Specifically, just about all railroad museums want to tell the "experience of the rails", yet very few - maybe none - really want to tell the stories of the engineers that designed the machines. Will[/quote]

I'd LOVE to see a museum telling the story of evolution of locomotive development from a human engineering rather than nuts-and-bolts POV, but none exist. The Kennesaw, GA museum could have done with the Glover collection since it was a small, narrowly focused, and (until their archives were dumped out of the second floor windows and hauled to the landfill) very well documented builder. That chance was lost. Don't know of any other opportunities - maybe Crown Metal Products?

If you try to tell all stories you tell no story, so there must be some sort of focus.

dave

A few people who worked for locomotive builders interviewed some of the accessible designers at EMD and ALCO (including ALCO management retirees back in the 1960s) on their own, so at least a little information relating to locomotive design and development has been saved and might eventually see publication.

RMPA has hosted presentations relating to locomotive design several times at their Members Day events over the last few years.

PC

This problem is widespread over essentially all of industrial history. There are very few instances where a company's engineering library was saved - one of the best I can think of is that of RCA's radio tube division. For every win like the RCA Dowd archive, there are 999 losses. This is why it is very important to keep the historic fabric of the engineering intact. The physical objects and paper are what we have left, and each can only tell some of the story - both are needed. The best way to keep the fabric intact is to minimize the changes over time, and document, document, and document.

Making alterations in order to get a machine running destroys the fabric. Essentially, an non-reverseable alteration without full documentation takes away from the story we can tell. Forever - entropy is harsh. And from what I see from most railroad museums, they seem to be all in favor of entropy, as long as they can get their locomotive moving again.



I disagree. You can tell all the stories, with each to some degree. The audience will pick what they will listen to, according to their interests.

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Will

Some of the best preserved engineering collections I have encountered in the railroad equipment business were entirely the result of managers at companies who on their own initiative chose to save files when an office or department was being disbanded, rather than following the directive from corporate management to dispose of them. In some cases they probably risked being fired for doing so.

Another valuable source of locomotive related information is sales department collections, which frequently include product application studies, recommendations for shops and facilities, and competitive product performance studies that match up one manufacturer's product against another's.

PC

Case in point my search for electrical wiring diagrams for GG1's. I've come up empty. And I believe it is NOT a coincidence that the previously discussed ideas of reviving a GG1 involve significant amounts of modification. People want to rip out what's there, primarily because they don't know what's there. If they did know what was there, they'd simply use it.

Similarly my gripes about an interurban used as a diesel-hauled coach. They want to remote the diesel from it, and add heaters. Hey! The apparatus is already there! Just needs plugging into. But it's so poorly documented that the easier path involves an axe.

On the other hand, the Western Railway Museum has an excellent archive and an uncanny ability to collect documentation. When you're working from copies of original documents, work goes MUCH easier. But even so, documents are often wrong and the builders on the shop floor worked around it.

But there are two types of problems. One is simply not having the knowledge (GG1 diagrams). The other is one person having it and the other person needing it. For this reason I'm a very big fan of cross-pollination among museums. I.E. active volunteer from museum X spends a few work sessions at museum Y and mingle and share techniques.

But another way to do that is the Internet. You've heard me rant about "free software/open source" approach to preservation documentation, i.e. share everything aggressively and freely. This is why I say that.

Two books by Andrew Young, Trolley to the Past and Veteran and Vintage Transit are useful studies of the trolley car side of railway preservation. Mr. Young notes how some museums have progressed from what another writer called "Twelve inches to the foot model railroad clubs" to serious historical organizations. I've been involved with a museum for over forty years, and it was quite a while before terms like accession, provenance and historic fabric entered my vocabulary. It took my "home museum" some time to go from a sun-baked collection of retired streetcars to a widely-respected repository of railway history. We had a number of cases of "restoration" projects that started with big plans and quietly "died". We also acquired exhibits that never would have fit into our present collections policy. There are definite parallels between a museum and a person "maturing". I think we will always have a certain amount of tension between the concerns about "consuming the historic fabric" by operating the cars and locomotives, and "these cars are on wheels for a reason--motion is part of their nature." A prospective visitor was asking, "When I go to your museum, where will I find [diesel locomotive he was especially curious about]?" And I said, "Could be any one of a number of locations. It's on wheels, and it runs quite well. You can ask the dispatcher when you get there." We had one member who had come from a midwestern museum that at the time was a static display, and he would comment on how having cars and trains running makes the proverbial "world of difference".

To see how this is done, go to bitsavers.org. There are nearly a million and a half scanned pages of old computer documentation from the 1950s thru the 1980s. There are quite a lot of people interested in computer history that send in new finds to be scanned then shared on this site (and the mirrors). Currently, I am working on sending the Computer History Museum six pallets of tapes and documents from a Control Data mainframe computer dealer, and these will eventually make their way onto bitsavers.

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Will

Since the GG1 keeps coming up in these discussions, perhaps it is worth commenting that there are still a number of railroad retirees out there who had extensive experience in keeping the GG1 locomotives operating in their later years. If anyone were to develop a serious effort to restore a GG1 in the next decade or so, it is still likely that the necessary information and some suitably experienced people to provide guidance could be located.

PC

speaking of the USS Slater, the vessel is one of only Destroyer Escorts in the United States. And they have an online newsletter that I follow every month. News of who is visiting, what the restoration crew is working on, and what cermonies have been held abord.

At the Western railway Museum our first Interurban restoration was a car body that had parts from a CCT (A third rail line) line car. The trucks had third rail brackets which the car body never had.

A few years ago the Shop took the trucks apart and removed the brackets. This ment a lot of heavy work with truck parts that are always big and heavy.

Conversly, the Sacramento Northern 1005 ran on the former Northern Electric rails north of Sacramento so the third rail brackets are going back on the car even though the museum does not have any third rails. And the line was 600/1200 volts so the change over switch was there way back when. today at the museum we only have 600 volts. But the switch was there in the day and it is back there now.

As regards to paint; sometimes the museum has used high tech custom made paint. But for the most part the lettering that goes on top of it is hand painted and in many cases it is authentic gold leaf. That takes extra time and skill but we are serious about doing the way they did in the past. That is what historic preservation is all about.

Now I will add a question to this discussion. The two dozen or so street railway museums across the country always seem to do operational restorations. There are a huge number of car bodies out there that can tell a story of a given line or commenities electric railway years. how about doing a cosmetic restoration on some of them?

I want to applaud the work that the Hicks family is doing on Indiana Railroad #202 at IRM. They are going way beyond just a coat of paint; they have replaces missing glass, repaired doors and restored missing brass sashes. The Illinois Railway Museum will soon have a good looking car with a story to tell even if it never moves.

At the WRM we have a Pacific Electric "Blimp" that still has an interior installed in the 1940s not 1911 when the car was built. I think it should be cleaned up and shown to visitors. Don't worry about the under side of the car. Another car has the same sort of deal at Seashore Trolley Museum. Isn't it better to have two more examples of cars from the largest Interurban telling a story instead of waiting nearly forever to find the money and parts for an operational restoration?

i will get off my soap box.

Ted Miles

The PE car at Seashore is 680, one of eight "Hollywood" cars that were sold to Portland Traction in the early 1950's. After electric operation ceased in Portland in 1958, this car was bought by a private party, and stored near (as I recall) Woodburn OR, along with the body of an SP "Red Electric" interurban. The SP car is now in storage at Orange Empire, and the 680, which had become Portland Traction 4022, went to Seashore around 1992, where it is stored under a tarp. It's on trucks, but I've been told it has no motors. It probably still has the center doors plated over for one-man operation in Portland, meaning a decision would have to be made whether it should be cleaned and painted as PT 4022, backdated to PE 5069, or taken back to PE 680 post-1940 or pre-1940. Even making it suitable for static display as PT 4022 would take quite a bit of work and material--the Oregon climate was not kind to the car body. It would certainly be a welcome sight for visitors from the West Coast to the "Mother Church of electric railway preservation", but I think the shop forces at Seashore have their hands full right now. One Southern California relic that is visible to visitors is LATL 521, a Huntington Standard streetcar that is rendered inoperable by having narrow gauge trucks in a standard gauge museum.

Bob,

you are quite right. And it was was Ben Minnick that moved both of the car bodies out of Woodland , Oregon.

I am not saying that a cosmetic restoration is not a lot of work; just that a cosmetic restoration can show a piece of the history or a line that may not already be available.

The Orange Empire Railway Museum already has several examples of Pacific Electric cars that are operational. So why not do an SP "Red Car" from Portland instead of another PE one?

In fact the OERM is the only museum that has cars from all the Southern Pacific electric divisions. I hope that some day they all get displayed. Including the Northwestern Pacific car PE #498 I think it is.

Ted Miles

Followup on PE cars: PE 498 is from the SP Oakland-Alameda-Berkeley lines; it runs, but is out of service for body work. PE 418 is also an O-A-B hand-me-down; it has been restored and runs on our railway several times a month. PE 314 is our relic of the NWP third-rail powered operation; it runs but (among other things) needs new windows and is presently stored in Barn 7 (we did have it on display in June for PE weekend. PE1299 is former Portland trailer car 477 heavily modified by PE in the 1930's into a business car/parlor car. It can run as a trailer propelled by either 418 or (with an adapter coupler) by one of our diesel locomotives; we even have an SP diesel with the appropriate paint job for showing how PE could use the car for inspections of de-electrified lines; its airprakes work, but it needs repairs to its electric systems. The stripped body of SP Portland trailer 485, after years of open storage near Woodburn OR, is now at OERM; the years in Oregon's moist climate have taken their toll, and it would probably take a 55-gallon drum of RustOleum to make it presentable; at least some of its stained-glass upper sash have survived. In somewhat better condition, and back on its own trucks, is RPO PE 1406, ex SP 772; presently in a very incorrect blue paint job, a souvenir of its service as a junkyard office, and stored in Barn 7.
Also in the "chicken coop" category are Visalia Electric Niles trailers 1045 and 1046, Fresno stepless "dragon" 51 and Fresno double-truck Birney 83 (ex PE 152). (Fresno 83 is presently on regauged Toronto trucks and is in Barn 7). An SP property that is not represented at OERM is the Peninsular Railway; its Jewett interurbans went to PE, but none survived. Two of their earlier interurbans survive at Western Ry. Museum, and Jewett streetcar 73 is part of VTA's presently inactive historic fleet in San Jose; ironically, PR 73 is from the same group as the PE 160-class, the last of which were scrapped in 1940.