I believe one of the most important endeavors leading to the success of not-for-profit organizations as they relate to railroads and railroad history is how well the organization, its members, and its employees relate to the visitor and the donor. I will only discuss today the relationship of an organization with its visitor and donor in general and bring Mid-Continent into the picture in Part B.

As everyone surely knows, visitors and donors are the bread and butter that sustain an organization, regardless whether not-for-profit or for-profit and regardless whether museum or tourist railroad. Railroad historian John P. Hankey told the board of directors of MCRHS back in the mid-1990s, “The visitor experience is king.” If the visitor has a good experience, he will come back again and if the potential donor has a good experience, he will give. But what constitutes a good experience? For a tourist railroad, it may be a train ride behind steam or diesel or electric through the countryside or mountains like that provided by the Strasburg, the Durango & Silverton, the New Hope and Ivyland, and the xxx Railroads. For the commercial excursion or dinner train companies, it may be a ride in pre-Amtrak vintage rolling stock behind steam. And for the museum, it may be the education provided by interpretive displays, interactive exhibits, restored artifacts, and educational documentation.

Then there is the view that static displays offered by a museum do not attract visitors like a ride does. This is not a problem for larger museums like the Smithsonian or Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and medium-sized museums like the Adirondack Museum and Wisconsin Maritime Museum, which draw visitors by their good names alone and do not give rides. So smaller museums offer rides to visitors in order to attract more visitors. Some museums provide free rides covered by the price of admission to the museum, like National Railroad Museum and Illinois Railway Museum, and others offer free admission to the museum for the price of a ride, as is the case for Mid-Continent Railway Museum. Still others have separate tickets for admission to the museum and for the ride, like Steamtown. And other railroad museums may benefit by having a tourist railroad across the street or nearby, like the proximity of Strasburg Railroad with the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.

I wish to make a special point here. I am really getting tired of hearing that Mid-Continent Railway Museum is failing or any other museum is on hard times because of its rural location. I would argue the failure of any organization is either the failure of incompetent leadership or a failed strategic business plan. For MCRM, I believe both are in play in recent times. I am of the firm belief that, “you build it and they will come.” Visitors who come to Strasburg, PA, Chama, NM, Durango, CO, Blue Mountain Lake, NY, or North Freedom, WI will find small towns or villages, yet visitors come because of the reputation of the organization. And this reputation is developed over many years of professional leadership dedicated to the principles of the organization and not to personal agendas or catering to members. Members join and stay because they value the ideals of the organization. A case in point is the Adirondack Museum located in Blue Mountain Lake, NY, which has a winter population of about 200 and is about 60 miles away from the nearest town of more than 10,000. Yet, this museum attracts more than 70,000 visitors during the summer season. Why? The visitors come because this museum has professional staff, dedicated volunteers, and outstanding reputation for educational and interactive displays. Important points supporting rural settings are: low costs, low crime, low insurance costs, welcome need for employment, and less risk of NIMBYs.

An interesting turn of events has happened at two airplane museums I know of and may have happened at railroad museums, as well. My understanding is the Commemorative Air Force Museum and the EAA AirVenture Museum separated from their parent organizations, the Commemorative (formerly Confederate) Air Force and Experimental Aircraft Association, respectively. By separation, I am of the impression they both have separate boards of directors, budgets, bylaws, policies, and officers. It is also my impression that this is the only way the collections could be protected from use and abuse by members who wanted to operate collection items. Because of these changes, both museums are now accredited by the American Association of Museums, a very valuable accolade. This is the basic conflict between operating and preserving, unless operating equipment and collections are kept separate.

With these background points made, I wish to get back to the topic of the relationship between the visitor and the museum. I mentioned above that visitors come time and time again because of the reputation, whereas advertising will mostly bring the new visitor. When the visitor arrives, is he or she greeted by helpful signs, courteous and informed volunteers, uncluttered and safe physical plant, properly displayed or protected artifacts and collection items, and educational and interpretive displays?

According to The Manual of Museum Management by Barry Lord and Gail Dexter Lord. (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. NYC, 1997, p. 19) governing boards have the following ten responsibilities in common: (1) ensure the continuity of the museum’s mission, mandate and purpose; (2) act as an advocate in the community (national, international, state, province, county, local, or community of interest) for public involvement in the museum; (3) provide for the present and long-term security and preservation of the collection, and the safety of staff and visitors, at a level consistent with the museum’s mission and mandate; (4) ensure that the museum serves as wide a public as possible; (5) ensure that the museum undertakes research to create and disseminate accurate and objective knowledge relevant to its collection; (6) review and approve policies consistent with the museum’s mission and mandate, and to monitor staff implementation of these policies; (7) plan for the future of the museum, including reviewing and approving a CORPORATE PLAN (or STRATEGIC PLAN or BUSINESS PLAN) that identifies the museum’s goals and ways to attain them, and monitoring implementation of the plan; (8) assure the financial stability of the museum through reviewing, approving and monitoring budgets and financial reports, arranging for regular audits, investing the museum’s financial assets wisely and raising funds as required to allow the museum to meet its current and future financial responsibilities; (9) recruit and negotiate a contract with the museum’s director, to evaluate his or her performance, and to terminate his or her employment if necessary; and (10) ensure that the museum has adequate staff to undertake all museum functions.

If you are part of a railroad-based museum, does your organization meet these criteria? And when you visit a railroad museum, is it apparent to you as a visitor that this museum appears to meet these criteria to be a bonafide museum? This becomes especially important if equipment is being operated. Is there clear evidence that regularly operated equipment is separated from the collection and operated equipment appears to be clean, safe, and well-maintained? And, as part of maintaining operating equipment, is there an attempt to be honest to and educational for the visitor during its operation or is the operation an amusement? I am going to look at these questions this way. Visitors ride a roller coaster for fun and thrills, visitors ride a steam train at Disneyworld or other amusement park for amusement and transportation, visitors ride a dinner train for the experience and a great dinner, and visitors ride a tourist railroad mostly for the experience and scenery. Thus, expectations are fulfilled and no visitor or rider is deceived. And children are drawn to Thomas the Tank Engine, as video stories or in real life, because it teaches them not only about life and emotions but also about the railroad industry, albeit a fantasy. What greater tool to bring in a younger generation to appreciate our world.

However, I cannot help to wonder what the visitor must think if a museum is not honest to its visitor. For example, if a diesel engine pulls passenger coaches and the organization refers to a demonstration train of the 1880s to 1915, if plywood is used to restore a the sides of a freight car, if rivet heads are welded onto a newly-fabricated, welded boiler of an old locomotive, if a coach or freight car was labeled for a railroad for which it never operated, if laminated wood beams are used in the reconstruction of a historic building, or if asphalt platforms are made to look like brick. A tourist railroad can take old Boston & Maine coaches and paint Strasburg Railroad on the letterboards but a true museum would not. Granted, some visitors may not know the difference but some will. After all, an organization that deceives its visitors or neglects it collections does a great disservice to all well-intended organizations. I think the public is smart enough to tell the difference when they are being deceived, but are the members? And does the rail fan care?

Part B will bring Mid-Continent Railway Museum into this picture.

Haven't been to Strasburg lately, have you? It's now suburbia...

That said, I will agree that visitors will come to a rural location if you give them a good reason to do so. It also helps if the rural location is surrounded by more urban areas. i.e. Things were easier for Straburg even back in the day than they were for the D&S and C&TS.

If you haven't been to Strasburg lately you may also have missed that they seem to be much more interested now in accurate lettering and colors than they were in the past. Mostly gone is the bright-yellow color scheme of the 1970s and 1980s. I think this is a trend at tourist railroads in general, and I don't think it is entirely incompatible to run an operating railroad and to be historically accurate.

It is an interesting paradox that MCRM has done restorations that appear to be accurate even under a microscope, but at the same time has done non-prototypical restorations. What is their mission?

Another point I think we have missed to date is that if MCRM does indeed want to be a tourist railroad it doesn't have that impressive of a railroad to operate on - it is relatively short and passes through a nondescript area. To make up for this other operations have brought in non-prototypical entertainment, such as cowboy-and-indian gunbattles. Again, what does MCRM want to accomplish?

Chris.

[quote="ctjacks"] It is an interesting paradox that MCRM has done restorations that appear to be accurate even under a microscope, but at the same time has done non-prototypical restorations. What is their mission? [/quote]

Which "restorations" fall into the latter category? Are you thinking of the bastardized ex-Pullman heavyweight club-sleeper used by Mid-Continent for some of its first-class services? The modifications it incurred, like slicing off one vestibule to make a fake open platform, were actually done by C&NW when it owned the car in the 1980s, in which guise the car was painted the last time I saw it at MCRM, and some of the internal partition removal may have been done even earlier, when it was part of the New Haven's business car fleet. Far preferable to use such a car in regular service than one of those microscopically-accurate (and far more significant) pieces.

I'm also aware of a few freight cars at MCRM that were painted innacurately for filming purposes over the years, presumably providing both income and the benefits of a coat of paint, although I was under the impression that these have since been corrected.

It seems pretty ironic that a year or so ago, readers of this forum were praising The Henry Ford / Greenfield Village for painting several steel storage boxcars into the paint schemes of historic railroads on which they never ran, and which were not even "correct" schemes for the general car designs. Were was the demand then for that museum to explain its mission? Running around in a circle in figment-of-the-imagination "open cars" at Greenfield Village doesn't seem very museum-like either, until you give a second's thought to even the best museum's need to pay the bills by drawing in and entertaining tourists - er, museum visitors.

I would rather not get into the Henry Ford Museum in this thread - that raises a whole other set of issues. Believe me, there have been plenty of questions raised about how they have spent money and preserved their collection over the years.

[quote="ctjacks"]I would rather not get into the Henry Ford Museum in this thread - that raises a whole other set of issues. Believe me, there have been plenty of questions raised about how they have spent money and preserved their collection over the years.[/quote]

Um, nobody asked you to do so, nor are things that The Henry Ford has done "over the years," like the 0-4-0 to 4-4-0 fakery 80 years ago, etc., relevant to what I asked you, which was to identify the "non-prototypical" restorations at Mid-Continent to which you refer (within the greater context of its apparent distinction between everyday operational "consumable" items versus the crown jewels, which any responsible museum would make).

Your use of a model railroading term ("non-prototypical") is also of interest; perhaps it belies a background unrelated to the formal subject of museum collection management. In addition, your deflection away from my example of some quite recent innacurate (but obviously utilitarian) "restorations" at Greenfield Village that were generally applauded here only underscores the need for you to set out what your own standard of accuracy is, now that you've denigrated Mid-Continent's without identifying any specific examples.

For those RyPN reader's who do not know the Greenfield Village box cars that are mentioned in this thread, here is a refresher:




C&O 19462 (ex C&O 19462) Repainted 7/2009


Here is C&O 19462 in 1999

Since you can't make much out of that rusty car, here is a similar car from Richmond, VA (C&O 19400) for reference





NH 34054 (ex C&O 19464) painted 2010 (not entirely completed)




Here is C&O 19464 before becoming a stand in New Haven box car.

Mr. Long,

Though I must be honest and tell you that I have found your postings on the financial matters of the railroad somewhat sour in nature and content, I will honestly revise my opinion as I agree 100% with this, the current posting, Part A. I agree with you for a variety of reasons. I change my opinion of this string of postings as I feel strongly that you have actually hit a nail square on the head, and by the looks of it, too many of us want to argue the color of a box car, not the real issue! The real issue here, has everything to do with the paragraph outlining the rules for leadership with-in a board of directors with oversight authority.

I will keep this short and to the point.

Very few and when I say very few (I have found so far three, maybe four) Historically oriented operations with a real business plan. (when I say a real business plan I mean a thought out, 1-2-5-10 and 20 year plan with pro-forma balance sheets, inflation factors and depreciation charts). Further, I see few, if any railroads that conduct proper business meetings. I see few Boards that actually get involved, strive to understand or even want to run a "real business".

I have found in the past seven years that running any business, no matter what it is, means doing just that.....running a business. I feel strongly that business has only two stations: Growing and succeeding, or shrinking and dying" There simply is NO MIDDLE GROUND. Once a business starts the cycle of slowly dying....it is only a matter of time before it is really dead. I wish I had the time and the space to share my in-depth studies on the number of tourist operations that have died and are dying this sad death. Yet, when you speak to these organizations, they will tell you....."but that box car sure looks great" and...."you know.....times are tough".....and (excuse after long excuse for lack of planning and foresight).

In all of your postings Mr. Long, you have subconsciously outlined the real heart of this issue. The heart of this and all tourist line issues is this: Culture. What is the culture of those who run (play) with your railroad? Who do they admire, who mentors them, who teaches them, what do the they read, what do the talk about, how do they interact with others, where is their moral and ethical compass pointed.....do they even have one? Business has nothing to do with the wid-git you sell, it has everything to do with the culture in which you sell it and present it!

So.......we could look close or far, near or wide, north or south.......if we want to learn from what is going on close to you, we need to look at what is going on close to us and realize, we have established a culture...either a culture of success and growth or a culture of death and dying.....there is no middle ground!

Culture....the base cause and effect of everything!

[quote="John E. Rimmasch"]Mr. Long, Though I must be honest and tell you that I have found your postings on the financial matters of the railroad somewhat sour in nature and content, I will honestly revise my opinion as I agree 100% with this, the current posting, Part A. *** Very few and when I say very few (I have found so far three, maybe four) Historically oriented operations with a real business plan. (when I say a real business plan I mean a thought out, 1-2-5-10 and 20 year plan with pro-forma balance sheets, inflation factors and depreciation charts). Further, I see few, if any railroads that conduct proper business meetings. I see few Boards that actually get involved, strive to understand or even want to run a "real business". *** [/quote]

But this is what I simply do not get. By all indicators, this is precisely the way Mid-Continent's management has been conducting itself, to the great consternation of "the old guard," i.e. folks like Mr. Long, who by means of annual attempts to manipulate or change its bylaws seek to return it to a "club" organization where members vote for the leadership and the exercise of democracy is seemingly the primary goal.

Former readers of the blog that used to be authored by the recently forced-out General Manager (evidently an accountant by profession) had no doubt that "balance sheets, inflation factors and depreciation" had become integral to MCRM, along with a plan of funding that relied both on growing "the business" and external fundraising, at which Mr. Meyer was highly successful. The members' forum on its website discloses significant current investment in the long-term viability of "the business," such as brand-new wheels for the "everyday" coach fleet and extensive re-railing of the line (some years back, it was Mid-Continent's position that even the rails themselves were museum artifacts - is this what is now again being argued?)

Along comes Mr. Long, raising claims which in my own professional experience are specious (such as his position that the use of the same collateral for two different loans constitutes fraud - which if true would criminalize every homeowner with a second mortgage). Yet the mere raising of such claims brings people out of the woodwork to voice their agreement with him, without regard for Mid-Continent's actual accomplishments in righting its financial ship and in moving away from the "club" model (imagine for a moment the ordinary members of the Metropolitan Museum of Art being able to annually vote out its president, or if the influence of someone who donates hundreds of thousands of dollars to it was equal to that of someone who merely purchases an annual membership).

Perhaps, rather than continuing to spew the negativism to which Mr. Rimmasch refers, it's time for Mr. Long to spell out precisely what he feels is wrong with Mid-Continent, citing precisely which law or professional museum standard is being violated in each case. I understand that some of this will probalby be alien to those whose organizations continue to function along the nonprofessional "club" model, but to each his own.

Well one of my pet "tear the scabs off my ulcer" is blanket statements such as the most successful marketing line ever, "it's for the children". This line has kept more people/society in hock more than any other marketing scheme I know of. If you dare question it, then you are guilty of hating children. The second most "tear the scab off my ulcer line" is "we must run it like a business". If you disagree with the statement then you are some how a member of "the old guard" who remembers steam locomotives running and tourist numbers double what they are today. You are now guilty of wanting to return to the bad old days when you had 10-20 members every weekend volunteering. Very bad. Helped set binders on a steam loco this weekend. There were two of us working out side, no one in the shop. Didn't have to fight over tools that is for sure.

I may not understand all things related to being on a BOD, but after what I have witnessed since 2002 or 2003 I would welcome the "bad old days" to return to Mid Continent. Yes I am aware we cannot go back and run the place by the seat of our pants like we once did. I know we need donations to help us with the monster costs of our bigger projects. But Mid Continent is not a business. We have tried this approach and it isn't working, it has never worked at Mid Continent. Maybe we need to sit back and take another look at what worked and what has not worked. You cannot blame all the failures of Mid Continent on the membership or the flood. The museum was formed the way it was and it was what made Mid Continent to be what it once was, a great museum. Ever since we have taken on the "business" approach we have back slided. If you want to turn Mid Continent into a business then it will no longer be Mid Continent. For those of us who remember being around from the mid to late 1960s to the present are sick to our stomachs with what we see now.

There are most definitely business ideas or ideals that should or need to be incorporated into running the place. The need to cultivate donations, absolutely. But to hand over the place to a bunch of people who continuously seem hell bent on destroying the very essence of what made the place rather special doesn't appeal to me. I may not agree with Byron Long on all things, but he certainly raises questions that I question too.

I do not have the answers to Mid Continents problems. The nature of the beast is no doubt a slippery thing to try and hold on to and frustrating to try and manipulate or control. Kind of like a socialist trying to push his ideas in a country based on democracy. "You know it is so hard to get anything done, damn that Constitution anyway". Mid Continent was not formed as a business, it was formed as a museum, run by and managed by volunteers. It has always been a magnet for strong personalities who clash with each other. Cooperation has always been in short supply. But despite all our short comings we still managed to come up with a very unique place, a museum if you will. Still say go back and see what worked in the past and try and incorporate it into what has worked with the so called "business approach". Not sure what is really working in the last 12 years in our "business approach" but no doubt there has been some progress? Like many museums it seems to be the acquisition of more donations/money is more important than spending it wisely or even following or trying to follow any mission statement. Much like our government, just throw money at it and it will somehow get better. To me this is not the way to run a railroad.

The membership has a very big part to play in the health of Mid Continent and needs to get involved. If the membership continues to let the place be run as it has been for the last 10 years or so, the place is doomed. It is still a membership run organization and it is time for the membership to step up to the plate, or not.

Well flame away if you choose, I am "old guard" and don't run very fast. Easy target. Cheers, John.