Next time you visit Strasburg RR, be sure to take their new daily shops tour. It is offered once a day at 12 noon for $10 per person. A reserved number of tickets are available at the station and the tour gathers at the enginehouse door. One of the mechanics will guide you through the enginehouse, the back shop and car shop. It is a super way of getting "behind the scenes" at Strasburg. We saw #89, Tom Thumb, Lafayette and Lyon in the back shop, and a Western Maryland coach and Reading business car being restored in the backshop. I highly recommend it!!!

This seems a great way to educate the public about the complexity and many difficulties of restoring and maintaining vintage rail equipment. The price seems a little steep for families. I suspect it is offered at lunchtime to avoid liability questions, but I think more than one tour per day might be easily filled. I'm sure there are many visitors among the general public who would like to venture beyond the "Keep Out" signs to learn what's going on inside.

> Next time you visit Strasburg RR, be sure to
> take their new daily shops tour. It is
> offered once a day at 12 noon for $10 per
> person. A reserved number of tickets are
> available at the station and the tour
> gathers at the enginehouse door. One of the
> mechanics will guide you through the
> enginehouse, the back shop and car shop. It
> is a super way of getting "behind the
> scenes" at Strasburg. We saw #89, Tom
> Thumb, Lafayette and Lyon in the back shop,
> and a Western Maryland coach and Reading
> business car being restored in the backshop.
> I highly recommend it!!!


ryarger@rypn.org

> The price seems a little steep
> for families.

And probably intentionally so, to avoid parents dropping their "little angels" off, unattended, at the shop, as they do at the mall or at the movies these days, while the adults go do something else, leaving the shop forces to look out for the kids.

And also to keep the smallest crumb crunchers, who won't get anything out of it anyway and can get themselves in harm's way in a split second, out.

> And probably intentionally so, to avoid
> parents dropping their "little
> angels" off, unattended, at the shop,
> as they do at the mall or at the movies
> these days, while the adults go do something
> else, leaving the shop forces to look out
> for the kids.

> And also to keep the smallest crumb
> crunchers, who won't get anything out of it
> anyway and can get themselves in harm's way
> in a split second, out.
Hmmmmm, aren't those "crumb crunchers" the reason they are cloning those Thomas'????? Today's "crumb crunchers" may, hopefully, be tomorrow's students of the steam locomotive. Don't sell them short, no pun intended.

drotarinoh@webtv.net

> Hmmmmm, aren't those "crumb
> crunchers" the reason they are cloning
> those Thomas'????? Today's "crumb
> crunchers" may, hopefully, be
> tomorrow's students of the steam locomotive.
> Don't sell them short, no pun intended.

Seeing Thomas is totally different from wandering around in a shop filled with stuff unrecognizable and incomprehensible to kids and in a lot of ways downright frightening to them. By the time they are 12 or or older, it might be worthwhile, but not one in thousand 3 or 4 year olds will get anything out of a shop tour.

You haven't lived until you've taken a serious tour of anything with brain-dead parents who have brought along their screaming, whining, wailing squirming toddlers with them.

TVRM offers a small shop tour to all our visitors as part of the admission. We have a viewing area in one corner of the shop that allows our guests to see most of the main shop building. This is a controlled visit and the guests are not allowed to wander all over the shop. The Back Shop Gang does enjoy talking with the visitors and answering their questions. We often ask which one of them brought the pizza. I think this is important PR work (well, maybe not the pizza part) and we've been quite successful at recruiting new volunteers from those who asked a lot of questions (note the lesson here).

The shop visit doesn't allow a view into the machine shop nor the wheel shop but I hope one day an overhead viewing gallery will allow both of those to happen.

Good luck to the Strasburg and the fine folks who are a part of it.

TVRM Shop Updates
aw90h@cs.com