Art museums loan each other paintings all the time. I got to wondering if any trolley or rail cars have been loaned to another museum for a given length of time.

Orange Empire Railway Museum loaned a Birney car for restoration/operation to a Tucson group a while back. There has also been some of this among the Maine narrow gauge museums Anybody know of any others?

I am sure that there are a lot of museums who have an interest in the same trolley or rail line. all thre of the New england trolley museums have Connecticut Company cars. Perhaps it is time to do some sharing among the limited number of surviving cars.

We need to do everything we can to get more vivitors to come in the front door.New Exhibits are one way to accomplish that.

Off my soapbox.

Ted

ted_miles@nps.gov

Hello All

I agree with Ted, this is would seem like a good way to entice new and repeat visitors. I can name a few examples that come to mind.

When last I visited the RR Museum of PA in Strasburg I saw a Hawiian teakettle and an ALCo Army RS unit, both on loan from the Smithsonian.

Steamtown USA in Vermont did quite a bit of this loaning/leasing, as one of the CP 4-6-2's went to the midwest for a season or two, the B&M 3713 went to the Science Museum in Boston and the 1218 went to the Virginia Museum of Transport in Roanoke.

The deals can have several benifts, the recieving museum has a new attraction, while the lending organization gets someone else to maintain/preserve a piece thereby reducing expenses. Any monetary arrangement would also likely benifit the loaning organization as well.

However there are potential dangers.

In the 1218 deal Steamtown lost the 1218 as NS wanted the 1218 for its excursion program about the time Steamtown was moving to Scranton. The NS refused to allow the engine to be moved over its rails, thereby holding it captive. Eventually Steamtown wound up with two diesels from NS in trade for the 1218 to settle the matter.

So I guess there are benifits and potential hazards to such an arrangement when you take a look at the above situation.

Dave Crosby

bing@epix.net

Just back from England (beware - travelog on the way) and it is very common for locomotives from one museum to vist other museums and tourist railroads, not only for special events but for long term operation. Of course, there are also many more mainline steam excursions and many priately owned mainline certified steam locomotives available over there as well.

Thomas seems to be the most frequent visitor over here (and there too).

I hope to see more of it in the future. The B&O event next year would be a nice venue for a large meeting. Could be some midwestern mainline steam gets further south for a visit as well. We'll see.

Dave

irondave@bellsouth.net

Well Said Mr. Crosby.
A very accurate summary of the benefits and risks.
I'd like to add some further examples. The Museum of Transpot in St. Louis loaned the Charles H. to an organization in Chicago in honor of a CTA aniversary. (100th of Chicago elevated rail perhaps?) I believe that a California museum, (San Francisco perhaps?) also loaned a small steam locomotive to another organization after cosmetic restoration. (I recall only an article on repairing the cylider casting and transporting it via highway. I can no longer recall the details, or even precisely where I saw it.) Additionally, 1522 is technically leased to the SLSTA, as SLSTA is officially a seperate organization. I'd like to say that most of the major line-haul excursion programs opperate much like that. (If not fer very much longer, the situation being as it is.)
Perhaps art museums are more willing to do so as the rate of return is very much higher (meaning they get their stuff back, not that they necessarily make more money than rail museums would off a loan,) the risks of tranportation lower, (not to mention the costs,) and there are well established procedures and insurance programs to cover the possibilities of loss or damage. But it certainly happens in rail preservation.
Sincerely,
David Ackerman


david_ackerman@yahoo.com

Mr. Ackerman makes some good points, especially the cost. Most trolley museums are small and don't have the resources to move their equipment over the road, which is how it is done nowadays.

Having recently had several electric cars moved, I can tell you from experience that you had better look for outside funding to get it done. Nice idea, but cost-prohibitive.

East Troy Electric Railroad
jftrolley@aol.com

terrific idea. Not only loaning, but, simply swapping or donating stuff - rationalize your collection.

> When last I visited the RR Museum of PA in
> Strasburg I saw a Hawiian teakettle and an
> ALCo Army RS unit, both on loan from the
> Smithsonian.

Bill Withun at Smithsonian has been very active in sending treasures from their collection out to travel while the Transportation Hall at NMAH is under reconstruction and redesign.

Smithsonian has loaned over 100 industrial heritage artifacts to the new National Museum of Inductrial History on the Bethlehem Steel site in Pennsylvania, including the CVRR "Pioneer" engine.

As noted, the Hawaiian teakettle has been visiting RRM of Pa and the Smithsonian's 1830s Camden & Amboy coach is due to go there shortly.

Say what you will about other recent developments at NMAH--they are leaders in artifact loans.

On a related note--Paintings from the National Portrait Gallery currently anchor a major exhibit on the fouders of American Railroading at the B&O Museum.

eledbetter@rypn.org

I'll play devil's advocate on this. :-)

While it would certainly be nice for different electric cars to make visits to other museums, there are definite risks that must be weighed against the potential gain. In the early 1980's a group in Appleton, WI known as Trolley '86 did a full restoration of a Milwaukee streetcar, #978. They were able to refurbish the car (which they got from the Kentucky RR Museum if I remember correctly), and the first thing they did with it was to ship the car to San Francisco for that city's Trolley Festival. En route, there was an accident and the car's frame was broken. Car #978 never ran again, and Trolley '86 ended up restoring a second Milwaukee car that had originally been classified as being in worse shape than #978. It was about 10 years before that car ran.

The risk to a museum of shipping a restored car is great, and the monetary risk is hard to calculate. When Orange Empire shipped their Birney to Tucson, it was 1) in very poor shape, and 2) they had an identical car in better shape. This would seem to be the ideal situation, a museum loaning an unrestored car to another group in return for work being done on that car. Shipping unique or fully-restored cars, though, is risking more than most museums would think they stand to gain from loaning cars out.

Frank Hicks

BTW, another recent example of this is IRM loaning three Chicago "L" cars back to the CTA to participate in the shooting of the movie "Ali"; this occurred in early 2001.

fullparallel@wideopenwest.com

Thanks for your thoughts guys!

I am glad to know that although that there are difficulties, it is still possible to do this.

further, that it is possible to change exhibits with out having lawyers and law suits such as the recent case of the Lackawana engine in ST Louis.

ted_miles@nps.gov

Perhaps one way to make exhibits available on an economical basis would be to create an exhibit car that presents specific railroad history displays. The car could be a baggage car outfitted with exhibits that would be changed from time to time. Several museums could sign on to fund the car and it could circulate to any museum willing to host it and pay "rent" for the time they have it. Displays should be professionally created and the car should be self contained with a generator and a/c system.

Similar cars in use include the Art Train and the RPO that circulated a couple of years ago.

A car would be less objectionable to railroads for movement. With the right promotion, they might even move it free.

Just an idea. Any thoughts?
-Jim Herron

hrvideo@mindspring.com

The Museum of Transportation in St. Louis and the Chicago Transit Authority alone were responsible for our Lake Street Elevated
"Forney" 0-4-4T #9 being exhibited in Chicago for the centennial of the Loop Elevated in Oct 1997. The CTA requested the loco and provided the rail equipped trailer used to move it. The museum provided the tractor that hauled it and the driver. As the leader of the project to research and restore the loco a few years earlier I went along to look out for the loco and put up an exhibit on its history. We were very well taken care of by the CTA and posed the loco along with South Side Elevated coach #1 of 1892 at the 63rd Street lower yard and even on the elevated structure (the top of the ramp at 63rd St.). The loco was then on public exhibit under the Quincy and Wells station on the weekend, while the coach was on the tracks above. We unloaded it onto flat-bottomed tram rails we had brought from St. Louis for this event. The Illinois Railway Museum exhibited some old CTA buses under the station, but had nothing to do with the loco being present.

Museum of Transportation
rdgoldfede@aol.com

> Perhaps one way to make exhibits available
> on an economical basis would be to create an
> exhibit car that presents specific railroad
> history displays.

> Just an idea. Any thoughts?
> -Jim Herron

Jim -

don't most good ideas come from Jim's ??? I love the idea.

Also - like is full of risks - in order to get ahead, one must be willing to take risks.