Since a large percentage of railway preservation has been accomplished by hobbyists rather than professional historians, preservation efforts often reflect "provincial" rather than "cosmopolitan" attitudes. As a native of Southern California, I am less interested in GG-1's and NYC streamline Hudsons than I am in Pacific Electric Red Cars, SP Daylights and Santa Fe Warbonnets. The late Walter Abbenseth, to whom we are forever indebted for single-handedly saving several PE cars from the torch, had his photos and movies of railway action classified as "PE" and "foreign" (which meant anything that wasn't PE, even if it ran in California). One can also compare what railfans find fascinating versus what the general public likes to see and ride. One of the most unusual relics at Orange Empire is a double deck tram from Ireland. If it were offered today, the tram would probably be "outside the mission statement", but what was then the "Trolley Museum" acquired it back around 1960, before "mission statements" and "accession policies" were common. When asked what it's doing in Southern California, my usual answer is that a hundred and some years ago, there was an electric railway on Coronado Island (near San Diego) that used double-deckers. They were scrapped long ago, so this is a "stand-in" to illustrate the type. Back in the 1990's we ran it during Rail Festivals, and it was quite popular with the visitors. Since the weather is usually beautiful on Festival days, nearly all the passengers would be on the open-air upper deck. For a while we even had a member who would play her bagpipes during trips, lending a proper Celtic air to the ride.

I would call it "self-involvement".

Very typical. Americans look around and we see other states. Something which is happening "in foreign lands" is happening on the other side of the Hudson, Potomac, Mississippi, or Sierra. In other countries they look around and see... well... other countries.

For an American to leave America and be an expatriate, is considered a pretty big deal. It's nothing special among Europeans.

The incompatible couplers and brakes are a serious operating problem, though.

Trolleys come over because as long as it's 56.5" and 600VDC, you're all set. There are three Blackpool Boats out there, and a number of other foreign trolleys.

Myself, I want a TGV.


True. That's probably the best thing that happened to Euro preservation in the USA.


It's been proposed at the Western Railway Museum. Although right now, nothing in the WRM site plan calls for actually running streetcars in the street.


Boy, I know that sentiment. Do what I did! Move! Transit is NEVER going to come to you.

Seriously. I know you hear about new transit construction. But they don't care about serving your existing home. They care about serving the maximum number of homes and businesses possible, and that will never include low-density "designed for automobiles" sprawl suburbs. They restore routes through old railroad suburbs, or they build out to old industrial sites where New Urbanism communities can go up.

And it's not enough just to be on "the grid" of transit. You think San Francisco city proper is pretty stacked for transit, right? Try this exercise. A friend found her office was moving from downtown San Francisco to a remote ghetto/industrial area of SF, north of Candlestick park, at Ingalls and Quesada. (follow along at here.) Two buses come near - 23 and 44. Crime is too scary on Third street to consider disembarking or transferring there. As it happens, she had to move anyway and had resolved to live near transit. So - where to live?
a) North Beach, Powell and Union, near the dense 30, 45, 9x and cable car.
b) across the bay in Berkeley, 1 block from Ashby BART and a ton of east bay buses.
c) the very trendy Market/Castro, on five streetcar lines.
d) the hip 9th Ave. and Judah neighborhood (on the N-Judah).
e) Japantown, Fillmore and Geary, on the dense 38/2/3 lines.
f) suburban Burlingame, across the street from the CalTrain station.
Where'd you rather live?
Now plot out the commute to Ingalls and Quesada (or at least Keith and Palou). Bonus points if you could get to work with no transfers.

[quote="robertmacdowellBoy, I know that sentiment. Do what I did! Move! Transit is NEVER going to come to you.[/quote]

Actually, it is slated to serve about a block from my house, my neighborhood is a sort of dense form of sprawl built during the Eisenhower administration. Unfortunately it is also slated to start in about 25 years. I plan to be dead by then so it won't do me any good. If our friends in DC are truly interested in transit, they could streamline the process so we can just build the damn things rather than study them for decades before shovelling the first dirt.

dave

Actually, it is slated to serve about a block from my house, my neighborhood is a sort of dense form of sprawl built during the Eisenhower administration. Unfortunately it is also slated to start in about 25 years. I plan to be dead by then so it won't do me any good. If our friends in DC are truly interested in transit, they could streamline the process so we can just build the damn things rather than study them for decades before shovelling the first dirt.[/quote]

A friend of mine, legally blind and entitled to ride BART for 90% off, owned his house free and clear. Right across the street from the Livermore BART station. Whoops.

It's not a case of needing to do EIRs till the cows come home. It's a question of "where's the money?" There hasn't been much conviction to build rail transit in this country. When there is conviction (e.g. California), shovels fly. Sonoma County finally decided on north coast commuter rail, and they're already overhauling the needed tunnels to get to the ferry.

But you know, we have a job here. Our job is to show how it WAS done, and to show easily and cheaply it CAN BE done.

Regarding "proper environment": When Western Ry. Museum finishes their exacting restoration of Sacramento Northern interurban 1005, they will have the original SN main line from 1912 to run it on, with original rail and replicated overhead. They also have some SF Muni streetcars, which do look a bit "lost in the wilderness" on the main line. At Orange Empire, we have Pacific Electric 418, which was used in suburban service on SP and PE. When it first came to OERM, the area around the museum was quite rural, but in the succeeding years, suburbia has developed along our north main line, recreating the "ambience" of PE's Bellflower line. Although it's not used in regular service, we do have an "old time street" that the LARy narrow gauge streetcars use to reach the loop line, which crosses a street intersection complete with vintage traffic signals.
In the LARy carbarn, we have a map of Los Angeles from the 1930's showing the vast network of street railway lines. Many visitors look at this and lament a vanished era. I sometimes tell them that a similar system still exists, but you have to take a 15-hour plane ride to Melbourne, Australia to ride it.

At National Capital Trolley Museum we started collecting European cars in order to meet a contract deadline with our landlords at the Park & Planning Commission. In 1969, when Mr. Chalk still held onto the DC Transit historic collection, the Museum looked to Europe for serviceable cars. The five single truck cars were an instant hit with the public and served us well as stand-ins to demonstrate and interpret early electric street railway transportation in the States. With their handbrakes and varnished interiors, it was possible to illustrate features of cars long-gone from the scene. The two-car Vienna train took this to another level by interpreting the common use of similar street car trains in Washington, DC from 1898-1912.

We looked to Europe again to acquire an example of a post-US era PCC from The Hague, and again for replacements for two cars lost in the fire. And now we have the boat car, an English variation on the open car. I think the blended collection works for us because of our location in the Nation's Capital. And, as Erik noted, we make an effort to interpret the European cars as part of the overall development of street car. On the other hand, all of the traditional exhibits focus on street railways and the development of Washington, DC.

As far as a streetscape, our new campus is designed to serve as the beginning of such a project. We have stored the facade of a Little Tavern - a Washington, DC hamburger stand for future reconstruction. I know that other efforts are underway including the street at Orange Empire, the trolley bus line and diner at IRM, and the master plan at PTM to name a few.

Wesley

Alexander D. Mitchell IV wrote:
I can count a total of five British locos in North American rail preservation: Two LNER A4's, an 0-4-4T inspection loco Dunrobin in Canada, a L&SWR O4 0-4-4T, and SR "Schools" 4-4-0 Repton. The latter two were repatriated to Britain from Steamtown. Steamtown also had a French 1877 switcher, which last I heard was still around Susquehanna, Pa.

There are more. The A4 Dominion of Canada is kept company by a genuine 0-6-0T Terrier, the ex-London, Brighton & South Coast Waddon. There’s also the 0-6-0T Flying Duchess stored in Kentucky, and at least five little 0-4-0T locomotives from the Penrhyn Quarry Railway in storage in Indiana and Kentucky, plus a couple more in Canada. Also, don’t forget that the City of Winnipeg Hydro 4-4-0 No. 3 is of Scottish construction.

Truth be told, I love British steam (don’t tell anyone). In fact, you’ll probably see a two part (or maybe even three part…gasp!) series on UK steam preserved on this side of the pond in my Railfan & Railroad column in the next few years, which I’m sure will result in some screaming and gnashing of teeth. It’s a project I’ve been working on for several years.

Jeff Terry

Love those foreign locomotives. Back in the 80s China, I saw a 1937 Alco JF 2-8-2, many Lima & Baldwin KD6 & KD& 2-8-0s and the little gem 60 cm gauge Baldwin 0-10-0s in service. Wish one of those was preserved here. Plenty of spare Baldwin 2-8-2s sitting around in El Maiten Argentina, and don't even get me started about what is rotting away in Cuba.

I would think most of Joe Public would be very interested in a 0 Series Shinkansen but no one seems to think of these things.

Seriously guys, this isn't the Obama world apology tour. We aren't evil if we don't exhibit unrestrained xenophilia-which is also a disorder.

Given the amount of canine mothering that accompanies the hyperventilation that in the endless posts that suggest that if museum X doesn't cough up engine Y to museum Z, it should be (sued/boycotted/defunded/etc) because that particular engine would be on its "home rails", we should all understand the pecularity of interest that accompanies this advocation.

There's no insidious prejudice here, just an interest in what affected us (via our ancestors)-The closer the better.

If I could waive a magic wand and be given a choice between finding some lost NYC Hudson and a pedestrian CNJ Mikado, I'm taking the latter. Why? Because CNJ Mikes passed my grandfather as he worked on the that railroad, when he worked in the hot sun, and penetrating cold. Next up, an LV Mike or Wyoming, because he worked there for a bit and the two roads ran side by side. There's no defensible logic to my preferences-just an affinity of birth.

Then again, economics rules its ugly head. We've seen stuff scrapped because it couldn't be transported a couple hundred miles, let alone across an ocean. We just saw the "lost engines" be saved-but how many more sit, in need of TLC or asbestos mitigation. Its simply a matter of priority in the face of reality.

As for the QJ's, they seem to run, but those whistles have to go. They sound like two chalk slates mating. (waiting for cries of "sinophobe")

I do hope the French RTG turbo cars in that Indiana scrap yard find a home. (IRM perhaps??) Obviously they'd still be representing USA practice as much as overseas.

Steve

In thier current condition, they would be about as welcome as those 2 semi scrapped festering hulks of rail manure (that used to be Milwaukee Road Skytop lounges) that some lunatic hysterical organization tried to impose on us, with a pipedream plan of scrapping 2 other cars to provide the missing components.

Unless accompanied by a very substantial endowment for their loading, transport, unloading, track space,repair, restoration, etc, etc, etc, I don't see it happening (...And thats coming from an admitted turbine fan!)

Jeff

WRONG.

http://www.nrm.org.uk/exhibitions/shinkansen/start.asp


The above link gives you a whole website, with history, photos, movie clips, etc. dedicated to this one exhibit.

Okay, counting Waddon and the former National Coal Board loco disguised as a "Flying Duchess", we still only come up with five standard gauge UK locos, even including Canada. The narrow-gauge lokies I would count as anomalies that are only here because they are small "enough" to fit in a garage or backyard, or ship without special permit trucks, not because they are British heritage, "Thomas" marketing, or whatever.

However, someone suggested the British-outline replicas that were running at Busch Gardens years ago--what of them?

I find this thread to be interesting in a time when many museums are actually narrowing their horizons, and in most cases, getting accolades for doing so.

The current trend is towards "rationalizing" your collections, specializing in one specific region, subject or theme, and not trying to be the World Book Encyclopedia of Railroads.

In most cases I suspect the answer, as usual, comes down to money and resources. The vast majority of museums struggle to raise enough funds to rescue Ole Number 47 which is currently the Pigeon Perch Express at the local city park. Given the difficulty in moving an engine across town, why should anyone consider moving one from Zimbabwe?

In my opinion, this is nothing more than a sensible allocation of limited resources, not some personal affront to foreign railroads and locomotive builders.

If your museum has a reason to display and/or operate foreign power, then great. But for most of us there's no compelling reason to spend the extra cost and effort.