I took this picture this morning.

What is interesting and rare is that the father is up there with his two children. There are no signs telling them not to climb on the engine.

Then I remembered this picture.

It's of my son on the display engine outside the Galesburg, IL CB&Q Depot in 1978. There was no sign. (Now the loco is inside a substantial fence.) At that point I had my PhD in Transportation System Engineering and had done a few safety analyses. I sure should have known better. But my son was having fun and I took a neat picture.

So much for expecting parents to protect their kids in our museums.

What scares me about the first picture is that the museum has plenty of equipment without warning signs for kids to climb on, and they do. If a kid gets seriously hurt, and the museum is found negligent, the museum ceases to exist. A risk I think is unbelievably stupid to take. And how would the museum management live with themselves afterwards? Plus this really grates on me as a professional and a lifetime member of the museum.

Your disgust should be placed on a court system that places responsibility on the wrong parties. In your first photo the sole responsible party IMO is the father. If one of his children, or himself, falls the responsibility should be completely his.

Barring a mass "coming to our senses" as a society and a total revamp of the liability industry, the next best thing is to place signage and fencing to protect the assets of the owning institution.

Did you bring this issue to the attention of the equipment owners?

The Dennis the Menace childrens park in Monterey CA has a SP 0-6-6 locomotive and tender that has been equipped with walkways, railings, and hand holds for children to use for climbing.

It's sad that we have to post signs and erect fences around everything. No trespassing, keep out, do not climb on equipment. How do you display equipment and make it accessible while also protecting yourself from lawsuits? Signs and fences will also alienate many of the railfans you're trying to attract, since you can't get good photos.

In any case, I doubt that signs would make much difference in the behavior, though I guess they may be helpful from a liability standpoint.

Here's another problem to ponder: What about people who don't speak English?

I very narrowly averted a tragedy one day at a local tourist railway. I was standing at the crossing, radio microphone in hand, and poised to say the words "Bring 'em ahead..." Due to the fact the local dogs liked to walk under the train and even occasionally hang out there for the shade, the last thing I always did was look under the cars before moving the train.

Well, when I did that, I didn't see any dogs, but I did see two kids! They were crawling UNDER the last car in the train. I keyed the mike and said "Do not move the train!" as I headed for the kids. They were fairly young, definitely pre-teens, so I could sort of understand how they'd think it was OK. I grabbed hold of them as they crawled out from under, looking for their parents. I soon found them, they were right behind the kids, taking the same shortcut! (All that for a 3 car train, and it was the last car! Would have been much easier to walk the extra 30 feet than crawl under...)

At this point I was pretty danged upset, almost killing a couple kids will do that to you... As I stood there screaming "What were you doing? What were you thinking? Do you have any idea how close you just came to getting run over by the train?!?!?" I realized that they had no idea what I was saying. They did have a real good idea I was upset, as they were backed up against the car looking at me with a fearful expression. (Yes, screaming at bad guests is very bad form. So is sending your kids under a train that is about to move. My excuse was the extreme levels of adreneline after realizing the kids probably owed their lives to my last look unders the cars. I was still shaking 1/2 hour later... Not sure what their excuse was.)

A couple other folks who were calmer also tried to talk them, and it concluded they spoke very little, if any, English.

So, even if they had signs that said "Please don't crawl under train" these folks could not have read them. Common sense would indicate that no matter what language you speak, crawling under a train isn't a good idea. How do you protect yourself from things like that? (Putting a fence along the track helps in this situation, but very few things are truly "fool proof")

Signs in every language? Totally fence off the right of way? What about the trees on the right of way, do they need signs about how if you climb them and fall out, you could get hurt?

I personally encountered the language problems at a couple operations where one would expect it--Disney World, Travel Town--and places where you wouldn't think at first glance you would--the Grand Canyon (Koreans and Japanese, not Spanish), National Capital Trolley Museum, etc.

Furthermore, publicly-administered parks in many areas are sometimes confronting a new (to them) and at times startling syndrome: vastly extended Hispanic families (or churches or other such social groups) descending, unannounced in advance, by the dozens or even hundreds upon a public or semi-public park for a family picnic, reunion, or the like. It's apparently a cultural tradition, and of course they have the perfect right to do so, but occasional friction or even hostilities have erupted in some areas over the combined massive size of the entourages (and the resulting crowds) and lack of prior notice or reservations, augmented no doubt by language problems and shattered expectations of a quiet park, available space, etc.

The more you think about the possibilities of liability suits and predatory litigation, the more a certain bolted-tight warehouse in the Upper Midwest starts to seem like a heck of a good idea.

I would expect it at both of those places. One is a world famous national park and the other is close to our nation's capitol.

Here in Washington state, Mt Rainier attracts tourist from around the world, especially Asian countries. There are many times when I visit the park and feel like I'm in the minority since I speak English. Not amongs the worker, but the visitors, who tend to be more foreigners, especially during peak season.

This also brings up a related question. What, if anything, does your operation do to advertize to those visitors? Are they visiting the normal places on would find your brochures? Do you do any ads in tourist related publications catering to foreigners? (I'm guessing most budgets are so tight the answer is no...)

At National Capital Trolley Museum we took a lesson from the old site and have installed vintage paper clip fencing to keep arriving younger visitors from running directly toward the streetcars at the platform. The extended fencing at the new site finally addressed that problem.

Just inside the main entrance is a small glass foyer with a second entrance door to the right as you enter. (The foyer has a view of the exhibit hall and serves as a weather break between inside and outside for HVAC.) When small children enter through the outside doors they head right at the full length glass windows in order to get to the O gauge layout in the exhibit hall visible through the glass windows. The glass is etched with the Museum name in Capital Transit script, but the children and some adults would still walk straight ahead toward the glass. Some small plastic plants were added as a safety barrier for the glass windows.

Wesley

I looked up the Dennis The Menace Park. Trip advisor lists the park number 3 of 64 things to do in Monterey. A lot of positive comments from parents who liked the engine made into a jungle gym, comments like this…
After a long day of driving, we took our kids to this park … They had a blast. They didn't want to leave. It has a real steam engine train …

http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/-Ntbjz_A ... 1K8VjLEnFA

The Cantigny 1st Division Museum in Wheaton IL has a display of Tanks that they have also made somewhat safe by placing rubber tire mulch around each tank.

http://www.firstdivisionmuseum.org/imag ... rk/M60.jpg

They actually list tank climbing as a children’s activity, Help your child climb atop one of our tanks … remind your children to use caution while climbing.

http://www.cantigny.org/kids/activities.aspx

I have taken my kids there, and they too did not want to leave.
Giving families the opportunity to let their kids play in a designated area made safer than a regular loco on display sounds like a great idea to me. It will help keep them off the regular displays and if climbing is what they want to do, why not?

Why we make our museums as reasonably safe as we can and still be a touch and feel and see museum is not to avoid lawsuits. It's to protect our guests from injury, especially our children guests.

A child 15 feet up in the air on top of steam locomotive without signs saying not to climb shows a real lack of responsibility of that museum to its visitors. And maybe a museum like that should be shut down by a lawsuit because at least a bad injury or death would not happen the second time. My hope is that when a safety hazard is noticed by anyone, they tell museum management and it is fixed immediately, not tomorrow.

I've volunteered at museums where there are no safety hazards. There are no sharp corners at a child's eye level. There are no electric code violations. Next to no visitor is ever on top of rail cars. The train is in very good operating condition and is safe in every respect.

One day I was at Orange Empire and a young couple came up to me and asked if they could have their picture taken up on the front of a diesel but noting they knew they should not climb on the engine. I took the picture of them up there.

People read warning signs. And most obey them. The signs must be direct and simple. Not only for foreign language speakers but for eight-year olds, teenagers, and old folk.

Here is a real sign from a museum on the steps of a coach.

Talk about danger? Go to the Grand Canyon sometime. There are scant fences. I have witnessed looney toon parents taking kindergarten-aged children out on unprotected ledges where the fall could be as far as 3,000 feet. If one survives and requires helicopter rescue, the tab will cost you $4,000.

Sloan

Quite a discussion on other forums about the D&S operating the C&TS beginning next year. D&S yard in Durango is fenced off. C&TS yard in Chama is totally open.

An all-too-common sight at railway museums is visitors stepping on the railheads when crossing tracks (or kids playing "tightrope walker"). I will sometimes share my observation from a long ago visit to "open range" country, where I saw some cows cross railroad tracks. Cows will always step over the rails, and not on them. We can learn something from them! We should at least be as smart as a cow.

Every time I go up to Grand Canyon (which is about once a week now), I usually see a few tourists doing things that make me clench up. I don't like eating at the Arizona Room because it has a great view of the (unfenced) edge of the Canyon... and of tourists doing stupid things. They're very distracting and unsettling, which doesn't allow me to enjoy my meal.

Bob Davis wrote, "...visitors stepping on the railheads when crossing tracks (or kids playing "tightrope walker") ... Cows will always step over the rails, and not on them. ... We should at least be as smart as a cow."

Bob at your museum, Orange Empire, people don't climb on top of rail cars. But your point is well taken. Cows don't either. (-:

As you probably well know if you go there that often, one of the best-selling books there in the gift shops is "Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon." As morbid and gruesome as the book sounds at first glance, it's actually a somewhat fascinating analysis of just how and why people die there--not just from the famous last words, "Did you get the picture yet, Millie?" or "Hey, everybody, look at me!", but from unpreparedness at hiking, emotional turmoil (many folks who take a lot of effort at suicide go there one-way), drowning on raft trips, and even crashing planes.

If we were doing a book on rail museum operation, I think somewhere we'd have to have a chapter on just why folks feel compelled to climb on equipment, always pose their subjects in exactly the same way on the corner of a pilot (seriously, do they still tell folks to do that in Kodak/whatever photography guides?), flatten pennies on the track, walk on rails, etc. I swear it must be positively primal or something.

(Another aside: My wife pointed out to me (har-har, as you will see) that in so many of the vintage photos of the Grand Canyon or other such vistas, someone routinely appears pointing out or off to some unknown distant object. My wife and I have begun to mock this convention in my photos of such views.)