The great concept in the thread on preserving not just locomotives but whole trains could be expanded even further.

What is being lost over time is not an appreciation for the whole train but the whole RAILROAD.

Behind the scenes, almost invisible (in the way a carrier gets lost when an F-14 takes off) behind the train there was a whole support staff and infrastructure that was far removed from the rails but was just as important a part of the operation. Yet as fast as the steam-era equipment and its shops and facilities are disappearing, the understanding of how business was done before laser-jets, faxes, email and voice response units is slipping away even faster.

In a way, its almost impossible even for those of us who remember offices with typewriters and (electronic) adding machines to understand how a business enterprise with thousands of miles of track and hundreds of thousands of pieces of equipment like the Pennsy operated without anything more sophisticated than slide rules, typewriters, mimeographs,(if you remember getting typed exams in school with a piquant aroma and purple ink, you are getting up there) ticker-tape machines, telegraphs and greeneyeshade-clad armies of clerks with "one-armed bandits" of mechanical adding machines.

In a perfect world, our museums would be able to comprehend and interpret the whole railroad-including the archaic business practices. Not just its equipment but the support functions, the people who ran it, worked for it and patronized it.

In THAT perfect world, we'd hear from the master mechanic who started out as a machinist's apprentice, the corporate officer who started out as a mail-room "runner", the engineer who lived by his Waltham watch and his wife who cleaned his dirty bibs with a box of fels-napha and a washboard or a "ringer" washer. I think this is the focus of the still nascent living history movement-but with so many actual practioners gone-how much of that can be gained first-hand?

So why the focus on locomotives?

First they are THE icons, THE most visible symbol of the railroad and the most impressive tool of the railroad core function-moving things. The knowledge of running them is there. They are obvious and self-defining. Restoring and running a (steam) engine can be done in the absence of any information of how it was ordered, and delivered and serviced and how those departments were organized. We can fabricate new parts and methods even when we don't know how it was "REALLY" done. Things survive, people and their ways don't.

Second, its a function of ordering priorities. Much preservation is done by groups that can barely get enough funds to buy the engine and provide the time materials and space for its restoration. So the period-appropriate consist goes by the way, let alone figuring out what the back-office was doing. You worry about the engine first. A train is an engine with or without cars.

Third, there's the economics. The Altoona Railroader's museum- a "people-focused" organization requires a major reorganization, while the more "locomotive-focused" (especially in the context of having the Strasburg next door) survives quite well. The general public is still fascinated by the locomotive and that fascination will occupy the day or two they have might spend to investigate railroad history and its significance.

Fourth, its the tradition. From Beebe and Clegg on, the preservationist mentality has always been locomotive focused. We were all immersed in that and so we followed along, forgetting the train and scarcely realizing fallen flags took with them valuable stories, practices, traditions and cultures.

Finally, in the 1940-50's when preservation began too take hold, what was disappearing was steam locomotives. The roundhouses stayed as RR property, the stations and passenger consists were still in use, the freight cars didn't get replaced until the rolling bearing revolution. All of these other losses were the later strikes in a war when the preservation community was still fighting the first battle-preserving steam.

It wasn't until the 80's until a lot of real estate started to fall or become an insurance/liability issue and we started to say look what else is becoming conspicuous by its absence. This is why so much first generation stuff-the evolutionary dead-ends of the diesel era- the Baldwins and ALCOS and part of the story of how GM/GE conquered those old-line manufacturers disappeared without much notice.

Having pontificated on the ideal, I think we need to remember the limits of what we are trying to accomplish. Trying to preserve the past is spitting in the wind and we are making it up as we go- there's always going to be more that we could or should do. We can't let the ideal become the enemy of the good. Sill maybe the link will generate an interest in the largely ignored part of the old railroad.

MHO

N&W office pics 1920's-30's
superheater@beer.com

While most operations have a modern business office (ie. Computers, phones, fax machines etc) environment, the operational department(s) work in a similar manner to their historic counterparts. Equipment, track, and supporting structures have to be maintained before the next wheel turns; nonetheless, many of these existing activities are performed "behind the scenes".

Although safety is the primary concern, allowing simple access to these hidden activities can create eductional opportunities of "how" a railroad functions.