Visitor Safety at Railway Museums

robertmacdowell · **Posted:** Thu Oct 20, 2011 11:29 pm

railfan44 wrote:

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.

Should you have known better? You were there. You knew what was going on. Either you are a worse parent than Casey Anthony -- or you had reasonably assessed the risk given conditions, and determined that the danger to your child was minimal. I'm guessing the second :)

Now, turn the page. Here you are contemporarily, outraged at the thought of another parent doing exactly the same thing. On the downside, you are a hypocrite who fancies himself the only father capable of deciding whether it's safe for your kids to play on trains. On the upside, you are cognizant of that fact and are able to catch yourself.

So... if it wasn't a serious threat to your child... maybe it's not actually a serious threat to his.

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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.

Hmm, how much do warning signs really change the legal situation? Isn't it obvious that historic equipment in a museum is not a jungle-gym?

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door." The world is full of sharp edges. Now if you hang out in urban society a lot, you'll notice they've "nerfed" a lot of stuff... jersey barriers on any freeway, tactile dots on the edges of subway platforms... but even those are to protect the naive from risks they AREN'T looking for. If you willfully jump out of a perfectly good airplane - you're on your own. What, I'm going to get sued by your family because I failed to cover my property with a 20 foot thick layer of foam rubber?

It comes back to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Some would say the "life" part gives license for government to protect you from yourself. Base jumping is illegal, but it's for your own good. Pursue happiness in the bottom of a bottle, but not in the bottom of a bong. Well we all know the lie there: a gilded cage (or a nerfed city) is no freedom at all. Liberty must include the liberty to make mistakes, even well-known mistakes.

The key is to have the legal liability land in the right place. Would a reasonable person expect an activity to be safe? Or would they recognize a risk of danger? The law works pretty well in that regard when people stick up for themselves. The problem comes when they turn chicken and run.

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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.

Should be shut down... FOR LACK OF A SIGN telling people not to something they already know not to do? That's a bit harsh.

Rick Rowlands · **Posted:** Fri Oct 21, 2011 7:10 am

Thank you Robert for the much needed dose of sanity and common sense.

railfan44 · **Posted:** Fri Oct 21, 2011 6:06 pm

It is called risk management, i.e., in the what we are talking about it means do all you can to minimize injury to people. Permanent signs that say something like "Please Do Climb On This ..." is certainly the minimum. Another example is eliminating sharp corners at an 8-year old's eye height. That's a is a no brainer. And I have recently done it on one table in a museum bookstore. I also recently filled a small hole in the grass that a lady visitor tripped on. She wasn't hurt. But for a good minute I was afraid she wasn't going to get up.

RDGRAILFAN · **Posted:** Sat Oct 22, 2011 6:05 am

I work part time at a Arboretum in Philadelphia as a mechanical support person. The facility has from 50 to 1400 visitors per day with the weekend having the most attendance. Usage and children have a way of breaking things that do not break.

We are required to have safety checks of the entire public areas before the gates are unlocked and sign a standard check list of features and items checked. If checks are not complete and "called in" the gates do not get unlocked. We then have a quick meeting with the "boss" for a review of the status. of what needs attention and if attention is required then fix.

Cumbersome to do every day but you would be surprised what you find as far as minor/major items that need attention after a day of heavy visitation.

1) Checking the display area against a written check list and then log the check list is a valuable tool in risk management efforts.
2) Rotate the way / path you check displays/ features, things you do not see one way you see when walking another.
3)Rotate the person(s)checking - different people see different things.
4) IF a heavy visitation day, mid day exhibit checks often turn up items for correction.

While this is a cumbersome effort, it goes a long way with your insurance carrier