I have recently visited several railway museums. I was very much impressed by the way the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania uses the wide aisles in their display building and with their use of mannequins. A few pictures will show you what I mean.

One more picture.

I agree, these displays add value nearly everywhere they are offered.

I believe the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania is the best of the "Car Barn" style railroad Museums. The aisles are sufficiently wide (the photo above shows about 30' track centers at the aisle), exhibits are reasonably well lit, and the equipment is arranged into trains that not only look "right," but do a great job of illustrating their evolution. The curve adds a lot to the building's success by limiting how much you can see at once, and by breaking the monotony of the single-point perspective problem that is endemic to the car barn "display" buildings many museums host.

Another successful aspect of this design is how the center of the building is held open to create a large space where visitors enter the hall. The unused track is planked over to create a large, open floor allowing visitors to orient themselves to the building's contents.

Lighting railroad equipment inside a museum building is very difficult. Windows and skylights can either work, or create glare that actually makes viewing conditions worse.

The Car Barn approach is very common because of the relative efficiency, but when making a museum, packing in the most railroad equipment should not be the primary goal. I recently did an analysis of the California State Railroad Museum's building, and it actually has a bit more in common with the Car Barn model than you might expect despite being wedded to a roundhouse. Many of the tracks inside are more or less parallel. The biggest difference is that only about 18% of the CSRM's exhibit hall space is occupied by railroad equipment so that the displays can be split into a series of diorama-like scenes. Curved track and spatial isolation are used to help create these separate scenes.

Open space at the museum hall's entrance:

Look, you can easily see the whole GG1:

CSRM Floor Plan Diagram:

If your tastes run to electric traction and the Trolley Era, consider visiting Pennsylvania Trolley Museum, Inc., Washington, PA. Our 2004 Trolley Display Building was designed around the visitor experience and shares many of the attributes of the PA. RR. Museum in terms of wide aisles, good lighting, and few impediments to photography. No mannequins yet, but maybe some day.... Lots of trolleys in the meantime.....

I just want to know how they keep the ice from melting....lol

Seriously though, I have visited the PRR Museum about a dozen times with my kids and I am always impressed with the way items are displayed. The mannequins add to that experience as they tell the story of how those items were used.

The aisle space is also very good. Plenty of space to photograph and enjoy the sheer size of the equipment. When items are shoe-horned in on adjacent tracks, such as in the covered sections of the railroad museum in Saint Louis you quickly lose that awe factor, IMO

I agree that the Pennsylvania State RR Museum is really nicely done. The wide aisles are attractive and allow the public to comfortable see the displays. I would have to presume they make wheelchair access and other ADA compliance issues a non-issue, since there's lots of width.

As a photographer, I really like the setup.

As a railway preservationist, I have to wonder about the un-used track. Is everything at the museum under cover now? If not, wouldn't that track be better served by storing equipment under cover?

> I just want to know how they keep the ice from melting....lol

If you're that poor bugger packing it up the ladder, you're hoping it will melt, especially those big blocks on the cart!

Speaking of exhibit photography...

Do any of railroad museums offer special events for photographers in the static display areas?

I don't mean railfan trips and photo charters out on the line, obviously I'm well aware of those. I'm also aware of Peter Lerro's marvelous setups, involving special effects, actors and the like, at least one of which was done at RRMofPA if I recall correctly.

What I'm wondering about is a more basic event. Something along the lines of an after hours event where there's a limited amount of people present. The docents come in and carefully remove the chains and "KEEP OFF" signs from a loco. Move garbage cans and benches if needed. Then you establish a photo line of sorts, set up your tripods and get some quality shots. Then you move on to the next loco and do it again.

Yes, time consuming and expensive. Fine, have the ticket price reflect that, maybe $100 per person, considered a donation. It could be held maybe once a month or so.

Photographers get prime access, the use of tripods (many locations don't allow them during regular hours), and the displays are presented as nicely as they can be with reasonable effort.

I know of a couple non railroad examples that seem to work well. Northwest Trek, a local animal park, has a photographers trip about once a month. You pay $75, get a two hour ride on the tram amongst the wildlife, you can bring your tripod on board, and they stop the tram so you get clear photos, while normally it doesn't stop. Cost is about $75 per person, and you get a continental breakfast afterwards.

The Portland Rose Garden has a photographers membership, which you have to have to sell photos you take there. They also do special events for photogs, allowing tripods which are usually prohibited, and opening early so there are no crowds. I don't recall the exact fees, maybe $100 for the membership, and the photo days might be $50? It's been a while since I checked into it.

Seems like a possible revenue source that doesn't take a lot of work. Some extra hours for the docents, maybe a bit of prep work and cleanup.

As an after hours thing that has been successful and always full is the annual Night Photo Shoot at the Ct Eastern RR Museum in Willimantic, Ct. We usually limit it to around 15 people for safety, because the photographers are walking over the tracks and amongst moving equipment (as we change scenes) in the dark, and have held additional night shoots for the local photo clubs.

For a nice group of shots from the last one in October: http://www.nanosphoto.com/blog/2011/10/ ... oto-shoot/ You can also find photos of previous shoots by searching Tom's site.

Definitely brings the museum to life.

Rich C.

The purpose of a Museum building is to Display equipment, not to store it. Museums in other fields often have storage space that is equal in size to their display space. Since the stored materials are packed together, this means that the majority of their collection is not on view.

I also want to clarify that this isn't about photography either. It is about Displaying the collection in a favorable light so that it can be viewed and appreciated by the visitors.

Preserving railroad equipment is obviously pretty central to what we care about here, but Preservation can not be our only goal if we are going to survive, let alone fulfill our roles as non-profit educational public-benefit corporations. We need to work harder to engage the general public, and well-designed museums such as CSRM, RRMPA, Railroaders' Memorial, B&O, and Steamtown do that better than most.

The subject of how railroad preservation gets no respect when compared to other cultural institutions, especially Art Museums, comes up here from time to time. Respect is earned, and the institutions I've listed above have worked hard to earn that respect from their communities by creating Museums that appeal to the general public.

Many of our institutions have been building either "Display Sheds" of (too dense) parallel tracks, or small "Museum Buildings" with low-ceilings for rail-related artifacts and exhibits. I believe a number of our institutions are ready to take the next step by building truly visitor-friendly Museum buildings to display railroad equipment, but I suspect that most of these organizations will have a difficult time leaving behind the preservation-only-oriented mindset that they need to maximize their indoor storage space.

Not everything is inside and to my disappointment Old Rivets is outside.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRR_4800

My friend and I were just at the RRMPA yesterday- since their geothermal project it is amazingly cool inside which will be better in the long run for the materials inside. Yes, they have hosted photo charters.

One thing that we talked about the other day was that it would be interesting to see rolling stock position changed around once and awhile, but with the PHMC financial situation certainly understandable. Re: comment about 4800 outside, some different pieces have been rotated in and out but as more pieces are restored (Reading car, PC/PRR freight cars) stuff gets moved out. The roundhouse will go along way to help this in the next couple years and I've seen a sketch of a plan in the friends newsletter for a track in the front of the building enclosed.

Time and money.

Joshua

Yes, absolutely, and while I'm sure that I'd agree with most here that all of it should be undercover, I also think we can't wait for that achievement before contemplating better visitor-oriented Museum facilities.

Although a lot of organizations have slowed the rate at which they collect, unless something really drastic occurs somewhere, I suspect the sisyphean task of housing our collections will never end. Nevertheless, some of our institutions (Union, Perris, Rio Vista, amongst others) have made a lot of progress on this front. They are probably in a position to consider modeling their next capital projects on the successful Museum Buildings in Strasbrug, Scranton, and Sacramento.

Edited to add that the latter institutions obviously need storage buildings to supplement the covered space they have in their Museums. As I mentioned previously, in other fields, exhibit storage is usually a large portion of any museum building. CSRM's ill-fated (and named) Museum of Railroad Technology (MORT) was really a storage and restoration building disguised as a new museum. They wanted to build it to protect and restore the ATSF collection, but were unable to get the state to pay. Since leasing the SP shops buildings, CSRM has done a decent job of rotating presentable equipment in an out of public display.

Getting it undercover should come substantially before visitor-oriented facilities. Don't be ambivalent on this point. A large carbarn prevents about $50,000 a year of weather damage, a visitor center project cannot say the same. Get that carbarn up, unless you lack the requisite land, then get that while it's cheap.


Yes, Rio Vista Junction and Perris have near 100% under cover, so now they can think hard about exhibit halls. This is usually right about when Carbarn 1 is about to fall down LOL! Union and Kennebunk need more barns ASAP.

WE ALL need more barns ASAP. Whenever someone says we have too much stuff, they're saying "scrap what we can't take care for", which works out to either frantic painting or "Scrap stuff 'til everything is covered." Like the old joke about the lottery ticket, God replies "Meet me halfway. Build a carbarn!"


Did you read the last IRM "Rail and Wire"? Very first article was about their desire for a new storage building to replace their containers. IRM has 50 containers and God knows what else in boxcars. It's 16,000 square feet in containers ALONE, that is the size of a carbarn, folks! (worse, a building is big open space, not 50 convenient sized steel lockers.)

At a recent WRM board retreat, we literally had a dozen departments talking in turns about their yet-unmet indoor space needs. Very quickly we tallied more square footage than a car-house.