I can completely relate to that. But even when a museum has many interactive things for children and the children at heart to do, people are curious and will bend the rules put before them. Case and point, at the Connecticut Trolley Museum, we have trolley rides, access to certain cars inside our main display hall, a informative movie in the auditorium, and countless other things to do, and yet we still have people who cross the line. Just last week, I walked into the main hall and a grown woman had crossed under a display chain, climbed up on top of a display stand and on top of our circa-1880s velocipede. If that wasn't enough when I walked in and caught her, she was just getting ready to stand on top of it. When I asked her to get down, her response was "why".

I think you may want to look back at the history of railroad preservation, particularly in the period just after WWII, when street railways were being abandoned, and steam was being replaced by diesel.

Many if not most of the railroad museums started as railway enthusiast clubs, who acquired railroad equipment to save it for the members pleasure. Many of the pieces now in our museums were purchased by individuals or small groups of individuals as personal property, in reality toys. Unlike many old objects, railroad equipment tends to be large and heavy, and is to some extent useless without a place to run it (particularly if you are an enthusiast)

They acquired the title of museum, and with it non-profit status as to allow donations, particularly from railroads and members. The title "museum" helped with community relations, explaining why what looked like a industrial scrap facility wasn't.

Over time, most of our railroad museums have become better museums and stewards of their stuff, cleaning up the property, cleaning up ownership issues, building buildings to protect cars and adding a few glass cases and signs telling your visitors a little bit about "old 652".

Increasingly we are building real visitor centers, with nice bathrooms, and planting a few flowers.

Behind it all, many groups are railroad enthusiast clubs, and a large part of the membership considers the stuff their toys, and the museum just a way to have their toys, and the public a distraction. Old club governance systems act like an anchor, dragging against the efforts towards progress as a museum.

End of rant...

Randy

I think many people can tell similar tales when dealing with what appears to be durable and functional museum pieces. There will always be that person who has no respect for the rope, especially when what’s behind it looks large and unbreakable.
The “Why” question is sadly no surprise to me. It’s not RR-related but I think somewhat on point, but I’ve had to forcibly remove people (and an entire family on two different occasions) from sitting in my WW2 Jeep when displayed at airshows and military events. Each time, they’ve gone around the barriers, moved the straps across the openings, moved the stuff off the seats, then plopped down for photos (or in the case of the families, making it their private picnic area. Most of the times they’ve gotten huffy when I’ve asked them to move. One family I had to get a military policeman to remove them under threat of arrest when they refused to leave and even then, they argued to the point that the MP almost pulled out the cuffs. I’ll never forget that one time, after the family had left (with looks of murder directed toward me), the MP turned and said he’d thought this was a practical joke at first because, “I never thought people would be THAT stupid to think they could just sit in your Jeep after you told them to clear out.”
I’ve also seen people refusing to leave the cab of steam locomotives when ordered to do so by museum people (or the crew in one case when it was under steam). This is where a dedicated “security” person really comes in handy!
Randy’s point was very well-made, but a RR museum really isn’t any different than any other museum type. I’ve gone into a LOT of aviation museums in my lifetime and you don’t see the mindset of people feeling entitled to climb on an airplane like they do a locomotive or caboose. That’s probably based in no small part to the fact that many locomotives have been displayed in parks (and many still are) where people can climb on them. After a couple of generations of knowing this, people have culturally gotten to expect that have every right to climb on all RR equipment.

My "home road" museum has a number of wooden "pretend" trolley cars and a caboose that are enthusiastically enjoyed by our younger visitors. The bells on the "streetcars" get a big workout, and cries of "All Aboard" are often heard. From time to time, the play cars have to be taken "out of service" and rebuilt--but it's a lot easier than repairing the full-size relics.

Regarding the reminder that many, if not most, railway museums were started by enthusiast organizations: We (the folks who read RYPN) tend to think of our cars and locomotives as sacred objects of veneration, not playground apparatus (I still remember being quite emotional when I saw the only surviving Fairbanks Morse TrainMaster in a Canadian museum). Sometimes it takes a bit of diplomacy to get this point across to the general public. To give a feeling for how old some of our cars are, I like to tell visitors that our Huntington Standard streetcar 665 went into service in 1911, while the RMS Titanic was still under construction. "The streetcar is still running, because we've never had problems with icebergs in downtown Los Angeles."

Here's a big vote for providing play space for visitors.

As mature and experienced as I am, I still get a kick out of ringing the bell, blowing the whistle, and climbing aboard.

Our group (www.spcrr.org) has an advantage over some... we are one of several groups cooperating on a city owned, county managed historic farm.

We have the farm with crops and animals (horses, cows, sheep goats chickens and turkeys, oh my!), a horse drawn narrow gauge railroad (occasional visiting steam) a house museum, a black smith, acres of lawns, occasional Victorian children's games, spinners and weavers an outdoor kitchen with a wood burning stove... and more, much more.

A mother and child, or a family can visit, and do things... the railroad doesn't have to entertain everyone.

The farm (county) maintains the restrooms, parking and infrastructure.

The result is a great family site, with a railroad...

Randy

"But where can he climb?"

"The forge."

If you want to hear the bell or gong really get exercised, let a Troop of Boy Scouts visit your museum. Other members fear that the foot traffic will wear through the platform floors, which have already lost their paint, which the operating company never replaced. My suggestion to protect the remaining historical fabric of the car was to apply some heavy duty floor paint, and keep applying more as needed. The paint won't be an original part of the exhibit, ant that's my point. The car's history is not being destroyed by wear and tear on a modern protective coating. In the future, it can be removed, if we really want to display how the car looked at the end of its public service life.

Is that the ultimate goal of preservation? To stuff and mount everything behind barricades, ropes, and finally glass? In a display case, next to king tut's coffin, with a little humidity-temp gauge in the corner? Don't be surprised when the public considers you irrelevant, portable, and finally disposable! I was once in an argument with a curator over a small cotton comber I think, it had the outline of a dirt dauber nest right on the front. Asked why it wasn't removed..."It might hurt the patina!" PATINA?!? Are you nuts? You found a chunk of junk, gave it the hardest thrashing you could with a feather duster, and called it a display! What you call 'patina' is not a result of it's hard use as a machine-there is no polished areas where some worker used it every day, no cotton dust, no fresh grease on the fittings! The patina is NOT an artifact, it's what happened when it spent 80 years in a barn unused! There is no better preservation then OPERATION! You take an old streetcar or locomotive and go through it, out it comes looking like new, operating like new, you've just virtually subtracted 100 years from it's age. And of course some purist complains the paint is latex or the seat covers have polyester in the blend-screw'em, is it better to be original, faded paint slowly turning into dust to be swept away by the custodian, the seat covers tattered and grey , can only see them if you can get a good angle through the window? Instead of a dozen volunteers with some sandpaper and some passion, now it's a million dollar restoration project with some consultant telling you what color the paint was when really when it was new they just mixed up another can good enough to pretty much match the last batch-or worse, the million dollars isn't there so it just keeps falling apart! If all I can do as a volunteer is make another display case and move the barricade another foot away, forget it, just cut this junk up and make it into another dozen Daewoos. And while it gets no fingerprints and the footboards never wear, the insides slowly rot-all you've got is a monument. What did it sound like? Smell like? Do you have a clue what a steam locomotive is if you've never been close enough hear the woosh of the firebox and feel the heat from the flame? Maybe one day historians will debate what 'Johnny Popper' means because no one will drizzle a little fuel in and give the flywheel a tug.

And yes, your darn right it's STILL grandpa's ax!

There's a happy medium in which you use paint better than -cough-latex, yet don't allow the project to be megabucked. In fact the happy medium is the best approach to preservation. Anytime you have megabucks involved, you also have contractors and the bane of all preservation : the contract. Contractors do what the contract says, consistent with generally accepted modern practices in his field -- and then -- they get paid!

Good restoration requires a nuance that cannot be captured in the text of a contract, and the only thing that matters to a contractor is what he can be sued over. Or worse, your vision is X and his vision is Y and there are enough layers between you and the contractors subcontractor that he considers you to be of no consequence, just like a neighbor complaining about the noise at 7am. Ask pemberton about the work done on the pemberton station.

Also the way half the megabucks will be spent administering the megabucks.

No no, best to keep the megabucks out of it.

Robert,

I just forwarded your last post to my colleagues and will keep a copy of it pasted to my office wall. You are of course exactly right about the pitfalls of "megabucks" projects. I witnessed it firsthand last fall.

Robert,

You've gone back to this subject numerous times lately, and while I get the problems you are referring to, I think you are burying your head in the sand on this one.

There are a lot of things that our museums are going to have to start doing that will absolutely require this "megabuck" approach. The days of throwing up polebarns and laying track without permits and planning review have been over for a while. The big problem I see is the general ineptitude of our organizations at operating in the "megabuck" world. Beyond the ineptitude, there is a great deal of brow-furrowing suspicion directed toward outsider experts.

Look I am a fan of the DIY thing, but there are real limits to what can be achieved when we are talking about a bunch of railfans trying to run a non-profit to benefit the public (does anyone else get that the previous phrase sounds a bit odd?). If there is one that that we should have been able to learn from Web 2.0, it was that, "while, yes, it's great that everyone can be a creator and share with the world, there are still only a handful of people that are really good at any given thing." Museums need experts.

If you want careful preservation work handled by a contractor, you can most certainly achieve that, but you have to know how to both write the appropriate specifications and hire a properly qualified contractor that, you know, knows something about preservation. If your group does not know how to do these things (and in my experience, that is almost every organization in our movement), then you need the help of professionals that do.

While Western Railway Museum has done a decent job with not-too-limited means, the major projects have clearly required the services of professionals, grants, and megabucks. At the same time, these projects have missed the boat tram in some ways mostly because of lack of quality design assistance at both the master plan-level, and at a level closer to the ground.

Parking lot and visitor center...Great! But what the heck happens when you walk out that building into the museum campus? For those that have not been there, you exit onto a windswept sidewalk facing the long blank side of a carbarn about 150' away. Since you are at the middle of the carbarn, and the only way in is at the end, you have to walk half the building's length and then across a field to get to the carbarn and boarding platform. I bet all WRM members are blind to how awful this entrance sequence is, but the visitors notice.

A decent master plan does not answer this problem with, "well, we have this pie in the sky plan for a new boarding track that will be built next to the building on fill–and it will only cost twice as much as the building, but we are not going to worry about that for now..."

For a major project like the visitor center, it should be designed so that it looks and works on opening day like it was never meant to change, while still allowing for future growth. Most skilled architects and landscape architects can do that. We (us over-priced designers) get that the "meantime" may likely be the only time, so it better work at the end of the immediate phase.

As to more detail-related issues... Like many organizations, WRM raised funds for this big building but no money for exhibits or their design. Unless things have changed since my last visit, the funds spent on exhibits in the exhibit hall look to have been in the high-hundreds. Who in the organization actually has the skills needed to design and fabricate railroad history exhibits that will resonate with the general public? This is probably a "megabuck" project that needs grants, a fundraising campaign, and paid consultants. Frankly, our museums need to do more (some...any?) of these kinds of things to get the public engaged.

Also, what is up with the Jensen carbarn? Is it for storage? Is it for public display? Will it always smell of creosote? You clearly had engineers involved, and there may of been an architect too at some point, but the consideration given to public visitors was infinitesimally minimal. These were the following:

There will be platforms between every other track that allow for pedestrian movement.
(these aisles allow visitors to see about 15' of rail equipment at a time)
There will be people-sized doors at the end toward the visitor center.
There will be lights inside.
A semi-breathable nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere will probably fill the interior.

A decent megabuck consultant might have offered a few other helpful suggestions for this megabuck project, but it is a different game that most of our museums seem unwilling or unable to play.

Just to touch on the actual topic of this thread, children learn through play, and well designed interactive children's exhibits can combine the elements of education and play. This would be a better goal than installing playground equipment, but at the same time, you could do worse than to give the public what they want if it means more families will come to your museum.

It would seem to me that such issues as major fundraising, master planning and project management all are deserved topics for ARM or TRAIN conventions in the future.

It is also to note that the Illinois Railway Museum is a 100% volunteer operation, perhaps with a membership/knowledge base the rest of us would kill for but.....

Add another class in volunteer recruitment and retention. It's all more than just scraping rust and replacing wood, or even running something.

Michael Seitz
Missoula MT