For as long as I can remember (Yea, I know I'm a geezer and lunch yesterday ain't that long ago), it has been commonly accepted that a rail museum or historic site that offers some sort of ride or interactive experience with operational equipment has had higher attendance that that of an equivalent strictly "static" site. It would be both interesting and usefull to have some data to confirm or disprove that theory. In particular, the input from an organization that started out as a static museum and added an operating component would be particularly pertinent. I'm fully aware that other demographics can have a major impact. What I'm looking for is general paid attendance information for a museum (I realize that some organizations consider that information proprietary, a reasonable "ballpark" figure is OK if you can share it), and do you have an operating component as a part of of your organization or a marketing partner, either adjacent or within close proximity (less than 10 miles, maybe?). Other data, such as ridership on the operating component and visitor demographics such as distance traveled, would be great also. Steam, diesel, or trolley isn't important and big or small doesn't matter, the goal is estimating a general percentage of impact range, not an exact statistical model. The other question that's more subjective than objective, is do you think the operating component has had a positive or negative impact on the overall fundraising capabilities of the static museum. If you're not comfortable sharing your information openly in this forum, please PM me if you can. I will keep all responses and opinions so shared confidential. Thanks much for any input you can share.

Regards,

Go to an amusement park and compare the lines at the Fun House or Hall of Mirrors with the lines at the roller coaster or miniature train. Even when the price per ride is higher, the "action" attractions seem to have longer lines.

bingo, get some action going. I don't think theres been any "scientific" studies but its pretty obvious. Come take a ride on XXX.

I think a museum needs all the combinations, static, undone-unfinished, inprogress and operating.

Then and now statistics can be very misleading because type of visitors has changed dramatically.

Thirty or more years ago a large number of visitors at a railway museum were people on a nostalgia trip. Today many of those visitors are dead or unable to travel. To many visitors today a museum with a car ride is Disneyland south, east, north, or west. For these people static displays have little interest. They are too young to remember the days when this equipment operated regularly in public.

This was a long time ago, but we had a volunteer at our museum (which has had cars running since the early 1960's) who had lived in another state and who had belonged to a museum which, at the time, was strictly a static display. To him, there was no comparison, if a transport museum doesn't have something running, even over a relatively short track, if fits the old definition of a "museum": A neat, clean place filled with dead things.

I think richness of experience can be provided in ways apart from running stuff down the track. Back in the '70's, there was experimentation with HUGE theatre screens and surround sound. I recall a film shot from the POV of a fire engine rider going at high speed down Lombard Street in San Francisco, which had the audience leaning in their seats to keep from falling off........a very successful display is in the basement of the history museum in Cincinnatti. You walk through a door from a display of dead machine tools and find yourself on a gaslit night-time street at a wharf in 1870. A semisuccessful effort is the Reuben Wells sound and light show in Indianapolis Children's Museum basement (ALL the cool stuff is in the basement in real museums). Simple effects like projecting an image of a talking head onto a 3 dimensonal white styrofoam wig dummy are surprisingly effective. If you can't do the real thing with rolling stock, you can still find ways to give your audience an experience that will impact them and make them want to return. Your stuff may be dead, but in a live context it can still be impressive.

dave

hah, thats innovative and real simple, never heard of that.

Consider the Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas, you step into a small carrier ship you are being sent to land on a planet, but then suddenly lights flash, its dark, you hear transporter sounds, wind whistles around, lights on, and the room has changed, you have landed on the Enterprise (very effective live) you walk to the bridge where the Star trek stars appear on the view screen while actors run around doing things, one of you is a missing descendent from the past, you are whisked away to another ship, which is another large theatre screen, and the whole seating area is computer controlled, lifting/moving the audience as if racing around in a star ship (but you are really in one spot) feels like your on a rollercoaster. You end up back in Las Vegas the Trek stars declare the "descendent" has been returned to the original state and the future is safe.

Very effective, its all about the experience. The old time railroading was an everyday experience, but today its seems more irredescent. We don't have everywhere the ding dong of streetcars on every turn, but reminds me when I was in Philadelphia, I was shooting 8mm of a streetcar, and a girl asks me about why are you taking pictures, I explain, well, other places don't have streetcars and so on, and she was like, well, yeh, its an everyday thing for her like nothing.

So many places around don't have streetcars, but are running buses looking like trolleys, a ghost of the past.

By all means making the experience is what its all about for a railroad museum.

For me, I only go to Museums which run - and run steam as a #1 concern. However, I'm a railfan and NOT your #1 customer.

Compare visitors with operarting days vs non-operating days, if you can. OERM Perris comes to mind.

All that being said, we spend about 90% of our effort keeping the equipment up and running, staffing trains, keeping tracks open, etc. and we about break even after all the costs. Is it worth it? Not sure. Could we do something else more "high tech" - like being in a locomotive cab back in 1884 thru modern electronics???

You can't - unless you have perfected time travel - be in a locomotive cab in 1884 running steam today. You can be in the cab of a steam locomotive running for demonstration in 2010. Electronics have nothing to do with it.

While nothing simulates the real thing better than the real thing even in a temporal disconnect in another type of use, not everybody has the resources to run the real thing.

Something I'd like to see done by a landlocked static museum someday is using effects to replicate the experience of riding a hard working steamer at speed in the cab - heat, smell, noise, motion, etc - in a rich and effective way. I think it could be done well enough to provide the visitor a better experience than that gained by riding in a coach behind a steam engine doing very little work on a bit of old branchline behind junkyards or through weedy fields at walking speed.

Hell, I love the damn things and spent a couple decades professionally doing little but working on them and I don't get excited about too many passive ride experiences any more. I'd rather be working in the shop or passing coal. Most visitors don't know what passing coal is........but what is their tolerance for passive riding?

BTW, thanks very much Jim for the honor of a cab ride when I visited your place. I'd not have ridden otherwise, but would have spent money in your gift shop to support you.

Another point: how many visitors have access to cab rides? Maybe that isn't the most valid basis for this consideration. Perhaps using a synthetic context done well is the only way we can provide the cab ride experience to most of them.

dave