Hi Everyone,I don't think steam will be relagated to the static display yet. I'm 31 and the majority of my steam experience has been looking at park engines and pictures in books, but I got to ride behind NKP 765 back in 1992 when a group who was trying to start a museum sponsored a trip on the P&L RR. That has been my only mainline steam experience. The only other trip I've taken has been behind the St Louis & Iron Mountains little 2-4-2. I've never had a cab ride or anything like that. I have volunteered at a tourist railroad for three years and qualified as conductor, fireman and brakeman. The RR had started restoring a steam locomotive and I put some hours in on it, also. I hope to one day be able to say that I had a hand in a steam locomotive restoration and I want to quailify as an engineer on a steamer so bad, it's not funny, but the opportunities are limited and I keep growing older. Now if only I could find a job working on a steam locomotive, I would be in heaven.I hope this helps all of you that read this board to learn a little about me and I hope it helps the older generation to know that there are some of us younger guys that are here willing to carry the torch if it is offered to us.Stuart

I don't think nostalgia is all it's cracked up to be. We are on the cusp of the steam era becoming true history, where the visitors/tourists can find out about how a steam locomotive, or any railroad equipment works, and why it was needed. To make that realization that we all do that things used to be a lot different will make up for the nostalgia group's passing. However, we are also in a curious position. Does the visitor/tourist just think of a steam locomotive trip as an amusement park ride? How do we get beyond the idea that train rides are just for the very young? I see families with newborn children take rides at Steamtown, but I just don't know what is compelling them to do this. For some reason, they think it is an experience they need to take,perhaps not knowing why themselves. I think the next 10 years or so will help us figure this out.

I don't think we need first hand nostalgia to keep steam alive. Civil War re-enactment is thriving and of course no one alive remembers that.Demographics play a role in volunteer statistics. The baby boomer generation is still consumed with career and family. Watch what happens when they enter retirement.Having said that, I have not been impressed with the recruitment and motivation efforts of U.S. museums. I have moved around over the years, and in spite of claims of desperate need, a prospective volunteer actually has to exert considerable effort to get noticed at most places.

One ratio that is always of concern for any preservation-historical-archival group is the average age. But some other comments here are very relevant as well. My own experience parallels the observation in an earlier post. I have a life-long, very extreme interest in trains, railroads, anything that runs on rails. Even managed to work in the field for about 25 years. In my younger days, I worked two summers for a tourist operation (Rail Tours, George Hart's operation on the M&P). Beyond that, life definitely got in the way as far as any volunteer work was concerned until I retired three years ago (a little early so I could play with trains more!). Since then, I've made it a point to be active in several railroad historical societies and a museum. This contributes to the higher average age of the organizations because I'm over 60, but my personal observation seems to indicate that if the average age stabilizes and the groups size is stable or increasing, then trouble is not waiting on the doorstep. Maybe it just reflects retirees or people with more elective time available are coming forward, and that the younger people are interested but preoccupied with jobs, kids, all those things most of us have experienced along the way!

Yes, that’s true now, but those events got started just as the veterans were dying off. There were people alive who remembered it when that hobby got going in the 1960s. Civil War Re-enacting didn’t get really going again in any numbers for well over a decade later. It seriously took off in the 1980s. My point here is once the people who were alive who remember steam were gone, we may experience a serious lapse in interest in steam from the public at large, at least for a while, perhaps even an entire generation, before it starts to build again.

One thing I see as a problem with running steam or diesel trains is the fact that there is little or NO training for machinest & welders to work on these engines. Most high schools have shut down metals classes or just have the CNC & computer training. While this is important, learning to run a mill, lathe or even a power hack saw with out a computer is important to maintaining our equipment.
My high school metals class covered machine shop, welding, forging & foundry basics & we had a great teacher. Now that whole program has been dropped. What a loss. I guess we have to do the training in house but who has the time to do that & run the operation.
I was born in 1955 & I don't remember seeing steam in regular operation but my grandpa was a railroad conductor & at the age of 7 I got to ride with him from Danville IL. to Chicago on the N.Y.C. & just the sites & smells of the railroad got me hooked.
I couldn't wait to get my drivers license so I could get to the then Monticello & Sangmon Valley museum to work around steam power.
This love of steam was crucial in my decision to be a Boilet tech. in the U.S. Navy & then work in boiler rooms at two hospitals. I was also around stean traction engines from a early age & this experience furthered my love of steam..
I got out of things for a while as I raised my family but now I am back at MRM doing wht I love, working on railroad equipment.
When I started at MRM there were lot's of young kids wanting to learn our crafts at the museum but there aren't near as many now. We sure need to figure out how to get more of the younger generation involved or our trains will just be something to look at in a museum & forget.

Dave Huffman

It is possible to recruit younger volunteers in significant numbers, but someone has to set out specifically to do it. Occasionally I volunteer at a project which is quite exceptional, the Mountsorrell Railway. This is a project to rebuild a quarry branch off the preserved section of the GCR main line.

They have deliberately set out to involve the local community, especially schools, and have succeded very well. I assisted at a trackbed clearance session last year when around half the volunteers were under twelve; whether the parents brought their children or the other way about I would not like to say. Many young children are fascinated by the chance to do something practical, an opportunity they do not often get today.

Their website is at mountsorrelrailway.org.uk with a special photo section devoted to their younger supporters.

Tim

I'm a member of the younger crowd (19 years old). I've never seen large mainline steam. I've experienced several small logging locomotives and 2-8-0's, but never the likes of 4449, 3985, 700, etc. Yet, I still have been hooked on trains ever since I was about 2 or 3 years old. How? Well, there's basically two steps:

1). Kid sees Thomas the Tank Engine, and likes it. Kid learns what a "train" is (This step takes a couple days, weeks, maybe a month).

2). The older generation shares their love for trains with said kid (this step takes about 10 years).

If the kid only sees trains as "Thomas the Tank Engine", (which he's going to grow out of), he's probably going to leave trains behind as he grows older. However, if he is introduced to real trains at a young age, and is given special opportunities, he is more likely join the ranks of the preservationists as he grows older. Let the kid run the model train at the train show. Show him around the cab. Help him blow the whistle. Answer his questions, and get him curious so he asks more.

Sure, the trains might be interesting, but if the older generation welcomes him and encourages him, he is a lot more likely to join the preservation movement as he grows older. Yes, he will need to be taught, but often he's willing to learn.

Let's take an informal poll.

How many of you remember steam in actual revenue service? Here in the US, you'd need to be about 55 to remember it, since 1960 was pretty much the last year for steam. Yes, there were a few remnants, notably the D&RGW and a few mills and shortlines and the like. But aside from those relative oddities, by 1960, steam wasn't around any more.

My very strong interest in steam wasn't driven by seeing "the real thing". Yes, I did make a few journeys to the oddball locations, so I could see "working steam", but that was only after I was hooked. I rode the PRR commuter train back in the early 60's as a young boy on his first train ride, but that would have been diesel as far as I can tell. For me, the first ride on "real steam" (not a park train) was the standard gauge 0-6-0 at Penn View Mountain Railway.

Nobody knows where my interest came from. My father recalls steam but he wasn't really a fan. As best as we can figure out, an interest in model trains started things, and some hands-on "engineer training" in the cab of a mill switcher by a doting uncle at a very young age sealed the deal, along with the previously mentioned steam train ride. After that, vacation destinations always revolved around what tourist railway we could visit.

So, how about the rest of you? How many of you saw real live revenue steam, and how many got addicted via "second hand smoke" :)

Bob,

Will you count fireless steam at a power plant? If so, I was watching that a couple miles from my home in the 1970s and 1980s.........

Bob -

I remember steam in regular service; but quick snatches and pieces mostly. A short stretch paralleling a Milwaukee Road engine in commuter service near Glenview, Illinois. A Soo Line steamer at night. Steam behind our house just before the IHB dieselized, and an "ugly" NYC steam engine on those same tracks (which I later realized was a Niagara). Getting a quick glimpse into the cab of what was probably a 4-8-2 as we drove by the IC tracks in Homewood, Illinois and then later counting the wheels on an engine hauling a one car freight through Flossmor, that WAS a 4-8-2. Seeing a switch engine (0-6-0?) taking water from a water tank at the Milwaukee Road's Western Avenue station in Chicago and reading for the first time the words in the red herald (Chicao, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific) and then years later seeing the swan song of C&NW steam on commuter trains from that same station. Spotting a GTW engine ROARING through the south side of Chicago on a freight train (almost certainly a Northern; was it 6323 or 6325?). On my way to school, running in front of a B&O steamer that was sitting, waiting at a crossing for a signal to proceed into Barr Yard. Hearing Pennsy steamers from my house in Dolton, Illinois blowing two longs and two shorts for that same crossing. Seeing the front of what was obviously a Pennsy steamer sitting dead on an enginehouse track at twilight at 59th Street and Damen Avenue in Chicago on a day that my Dad took me with him on a bowling night. A fast passenger train east out of Englewood that I saw from a couple of blocks distance, which I now think was a NYC Hudson, but maybe a Pacific. My cousin and I coming back from spending a week at my Grandmothers house out in Round Lake, Illinois and riding the Western Avenue streetcar and seeing smoke from what was obviously a steam engine on tracks paralleling Western, but always having a building on the west side of the street block our view until somehow we passed the engine up and never saw it! I think now that it probably was a B&OCT 0-8-0 because most steam was gone by then, but who knows? Talking my friend into riding our bikes down to Calumet Yard where we saw the 755 and 757 (two of the Nickel Plate survivors!) under the coal dock, but not under way. We walked into the roundhouse and found a dead Hudson (was it 173?) which I took a photo of and gave all of that days cheap-camera photos many years later to a younger railfan friend who today models the NKP in the late steam era. Getting a ride from my Dad to downtown Chicago the winter of 1958(?) and seeing a Berk heading down toward the roundhouse after cutting off of a freight. There were a few other incidents, but most were short snatches, rather than sitting next to the engine at a station, or standing in one spot and watching the engine go by. Amazing I guess, that I became a steam fan. Goes to show though, just how powerful an attraction it was!

Les

I just out of diapers when N&W steam ended, so it was definitely strories from two railroading grandfathers, seasoned with a healthy dose of "second hand smoke". Tweetsie, "The General", Rebel Railroad, and then the "Famous Green Dream Machine"............

Yes, I do count it as "seeing steam in revenue service", (just barely) but only you can answer the question of whether it was what interested you in trains and the hobby.

In my case, it doesn't count. Yes, I spent time watching fireless cookers at Mesta Machine Works in Pittsburgh, so I can say I saw steam in actual, non tourist RR revenue service.

However... That was long after I'd been bitten by the bug, and was pretty much the railfan equivalent of a birder hiking deep into the forest to see the last surviving passenger pigeon. It had nothing to do with inspiring my interest.

As mentioned above, model trains and tourist railroads get the credit in my case.

So, in your own experience... Did you go see the power plant steamer because you already liked trains, or did seeing those engines stir up an interest in steam you didn't know existed? I don't think a lot of kids got bitten by the train bug after seeing a themos bottle shuffle hopper cars aruond, but hey, who knows?

Very dim recollections that may have been of industrial steam running around the old place in Pittsburgh - which would have been around Homestead, Clairton, Hays, Mesta Machine, Duquesne Slag maybe.........nothing mainline.

Vacations which included tourist lines, Old West theme parks, and cold rusty stuff left wherever I could find out about it. Even then I liked grimy industrial context, the more intrestingly mechanical or colorfully shortlinish the better.

As I remember it, the least intersting part was the ride in the coaches.

dave

I remember going to the East Wayne Yards seeing all the laid up berkshires with the numbers crossed out. I recall some fan trip the steam engine had to run on a wye. Musta been the NKP.

Otherwise its that O27 layout my dad made and we had a ball with it running RDC's as engines as they had MagnaTraction. Nothing else could pull...

otherwise its been visits to museums, riding the CTA and the former NS trackage, but I recall riding the North Shore. Of Course the South Shore still exists here.

Helping with 765 restoration was full rewarding.

Yah, the Thomas the Tank engine is one of the connections that gets interest in it, if we are to reach out to people we need to hit the places the kids are at, on the games platforms. Like if the museums could create some gaming thing to run on them and promote their museum.

I always felt the hobbyshops need to double up interest and sell PC/Console games in the same shop, gets the attention in to the hobby as they go in to buy games they may go whats that over there, trains?
There are the Train simulators out there as well.