This summer, I had the good fortune to spend my family vacation in California (first time for me) and do a couple cool rail-realted activties while we were there (visiting Travel Town, getting a cab ride on the E.P. Ripley at Disneyland, etc.). On our last day in California, we visited the Huntington Library for a few hours. As it turns out, we arrived on the last day that a Union Pacific-sponsored exhibit was open. The exhibit documented the creation of America's first railroads, and was mostly made up of old pieces of paper (as in 1830's old) displayed in wood-and-glass cases. While it was definitely cool to see such well-preserved documents from so long ago (many of which I'd only seen reproductions of in old books), the majority of the exhibit lacked good storytelling.

There was one room, however, that opened my eyes to what could be the future of museum storytelling. I am a student in college who is majoring in “Digital Technology and Culture”, which is in the English department. Basically, DTC teaches one how to take English skills (rhetoric, storytelling, etc.) and apply them in the digital world. Instead of your final work being on paper, it appears in the form of a photo, a video, a slideshow, or other multimedia medium. I've realized that it takes good storytelling to make a good story worth listening to. In railway preservation, we already have lots and lots of great stories to tell. But is our storytelling just as good? Well, we've already made significant progress in making our stories come to life (Living Hi-Story). Many railroad museums have an operating railroad of some type. Many museums have their crew dress in period attire. Many museums have wonderful docents who are also wonderful storytellers who don't just tell, but show how all the different parts of the story fit together, and why Ol' Number 9 is relevant to the visitor's life today.

Well, in that exhibit, I saw two displays that made me realize that there are even more ways to tell the stories we preserve, ways that still make the experience visceral. In that room at the Huntington, there was a display on the telegraph and a display on stereoscope images. The telegraph display had some telegraph keys inside of Plexiglas boxes. Okay, not very visceral, right? Exactly, except for the fact that there was a small touch screen (likely an iPad or other tablet computer) with a virtual telegraph. When you tapped the screen, you could type out morse code. The code you typed appeared on a virtual telegram card on the left side of the screen. Furthermore, there was another tablet screen nearby playing a looped video of a telegraph operator working the key. In that little display, the visitor was shown the actual artifact, how to use the artifact, and then allowed to try their own hand at the activity. That, my friends, is hands-on-learning. It's visceral. it engages the visitor. It's storytelling that lets them become part of the story.

The other display was another tablet screen with an plastic eyepiece extending out in front of the screen. Stereoscopic images were displayed on the screen. When one looked through the eyepiece, the 3-D effect of the stereoscopic images worked! I had seen stereoscopic images before, but never had I seen the actual 3-D effect! I was amazed. Just as amazing was the fact that, by swiping one's finger across the screen, the visitor had access to at least a hundred stereoscopic images. Again, this is experiential learning that is both fun and educational. Plus, it allows the visitor to take in as little or as much information as he or she wants. The student of history may go through all of the images, while another visitor may only look through a couple.

Now that we are in the middle of the information age, I'm starting to think that it is in the best interests of history museums to be able to tell their stories in a way that current generations will both understand and be interested in. While signboards will always have their place, would not digital displays, such as those at the Huntington, appeal to much of the younger generation? Of course, nothing will ever beat experiencing a steam locomotive up close when it comes to understanding the concept of "steam locomotive". But could we find a good balance in telling our stories both through Living History (i.e. operating and demonstrating a historic equipment), and through digital storytelling?

Sometimes, some pieces of our collections cannot be operated, whether due to age, rarity, legality, funding, etc. Likewise, paper collections often cannot be handled by the general public, due to the fragility of the medium. It is in these situations that I think digital technology can “fill in the gaps”. “Sure, the snowplow may not operate anymore, but here's an interpretive signboard with a screen showing a video of that snowplow when it did operate”. Digital technology can open up a whole new realm of possibilities when it comes to artifact interpretation and preservation.

As part of my education, I must complete an internship relating to my major, and I may end up interning at a local railroad museum. What I want to know is:
1). What are your thoughts on the role and place of digital storytelling in railway preservation?
2). Have you seen digital storytelling implemented in a museum setting (if so, how? Was it done well?)
3). What are some places/areas that you know of which could use this new technology in oder to better educate and entertain visitors?

I know there are a lot of people on this forum well-versed in railway preservation. I look forward to hearing your responses and your ideas on this subject.


Thank you.

--Drew Black

Thank you Drew...

We need to think beyond steam locomotives in steam, to how we can tell our stories...

Randy

Very pleased to know that someone with your professional skills is interested in pursuing this - I think actual interpretation is a commmon weak link, right after dirty restrooms, and boring bad interpretation more common than not. Besides, you understand the critical importance of storytelling and what visceral means!

I think in many ways you are the future.

dave

One big consideration for any display: maintenance. Anything electronic needs to be robust and someone on site needs to be able to maintain it. I can think of a couple of museums right now where the intention was good, but maintenance never seemed important, so the displays sit broken for years; in one case, the monitors that don't work are old CRTs.

It also helps if the display is built for easy update when technology changes. There's a big map of the Ohio River at the Hannibal Lock and Dam visitor center. When it was new, visitors pressed a button and pictures of industries, important places and events lit up while a light in the river map showed the location being discussed. Over time, the music began to gargle and the recorded voice distorted until it sounded like Halloween. The staff had to turn it off after awhile. The problem? The whole thing is set up with an 8-track tape and no one can come up with a fresh copy, nor is the original in good enough condition to reprocess. Keeping an eye on what's wearing out and moving on it in time to head off such problems could go a long way (for instance, had anyone made a copy back when, or had anyone thought to re-record onto cassette, CD, DVD, or mp3.)

We have an interactive exhibit at National Capital Trolley Museum. It was designed by a fellow from Minnesota Streetcar Museum and is now at least 15 years old. There are three options: 1) find the parts on a PCC; 2) Photos of several DC streetcar routes from one end of the line to the other; and 3) streetcars now and then: scenes of cars over the years at various locations when cars are still running in the US and Canada. The PCC parts "game" is most popular. It is a good teaching tool for showing the various parts on the PCC car body. It takes time to find all 17 parts! The DC street car photos were selected to show the cars at familiar locations in the city.

The technology is a bit of a problem since the program was written in an earlier version of Windows. The presentation crashed at one point in the last two years and it took a while to find someone to resurrect it. Thankfully he was successful and the program still educates and entertains our visitors.

Wesley

I can offer a side track to this aspect of "digital preservation and presentation":

Quite often, of late, I have been perusing search engines for information on rather obscure railway books, in a process of evaluating books for potential addition to one or more rail history/technical libraries.

Often, to my shock, I'm finding incredibly obscure and/or high-priced books have been digitized and made available on Google Books for free.

One example: Daniel Clark's ground-breaking (for the time) 1851-1855 treatise on "Railway Machinery" (WARNING: The following will be a MASSIVE time-sucker to far too many folks here!!!!):

http://books.google.com/books/about/Rai ... gOAAAAYAAJ

http://books.google.com/ebooks/reader?i ... pg=GBS.PR1

And here's Volume Two, with all the full-sized plates:

http://books.google.com/ebooks/reader?i ... pg=GBS.PT3

Now, I for the moment have "custody" of a two-volume set of this book--it's massive, basically two feet by three feet, big leather covers. This set has been selling for anywhere from $300 to $3,000, depending on location, date, and condition. (And, tragically, an unethical book dealer could break up the plates, have them framed, and get probably $10,000 or more.) Our Library Committee will be having a very lively discussion as to whether to keep this set or send it elsewhere, especially with the news that someone who wants to look up the information in this book can just go to Google Books instead.

Say you're researching the Pennsylvania Railroad instead? The famous Centennial History of the Pennsylvania Railroad from 1948 hasn't been scanned yet that I can find, but guess what has? The even rarer 16-volume Corporate History of the Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh, or at least *most* of it (thanks, Princeton University):

http://books.google.com/books?q=edition ... wpAAAAYAAJ

Now, this eventually makes a decision as to whether or not to acquire a book for a library more interesting. It also, it appears, serves to depress the "collectible" value of such tomes by freeing up the information and data to all, making the books little more than collectibles rather than the only sources of data. Of course, all of this discussion hinges of the future availability and preservation of Google Books, or whatever internet archive may spring up to preserve its content come the day that even Google is considered irrelevant and you're issued a personalized access number to all the world's data simultaneously, or whatever.

Other functions of such digitization: It speeds and frees up access. No longer will a researcher be stuck with looking up tomes at some Federal repository, academic, or specialist library. You won't have to travel to Washington D.C. or St. Louis or Sacramento or Strasburg or Chicago and run through a gauntlet of security and appointments and pen seizures and cotton-glove issuance. You can just sit at your computer in Podunk, Peoria, Punxsutawney, Prescott, Paris, or Point Barrow and read it at two in the morning if that suits you. And it's handicapped-accessible.

Now, imagine a day when you could, just to fantasize, find a rare book on the shelves of a cooperative library/archive, and instead of paying $300-800 for a copy through a book seller site, you could offer to instead subsidize the cost of scanning the book to Google Books. For $40, they'll scan it to Google Books read-only; get three people pledging, say, $40 apiece, and they'll scan this massive tome as an e-book you can download to your reader and make available to others for their reading pleasure. I'm just blabbering off the top of my head here, but it would certainly reckon with the occasional problem of local libraries getting their one copy of a local rail history book stolen.

And as if Google Books weren't enough of a black hole for your time, there is also
www.gutenberg.org
and
www.archive.org (you have to look around for the books, but you will also run into an incredible amount of video, thousands of pictures...)

Eighteen years ago, when I was working on the first edition of my coal book, I spent a lot of time digging through local libraries because the internet was barely toddling. This time I've found probably three or four times as much material from my laptop. Books will always have their place, but it's amazing to me that I can stuff half of a library into my purse on the iPod.

The Colorado uses the simplest of digital techniques to communicate with visitors, the cell phone. It works. But Drew envisions far more. See:

http://railfan44.blogspot.com/2012/08/o ... useum.html

The best of these exhibits are developed by museum professionals with backgrounds in education and design. Many institutions will even test and refine their exhibit content to ensure that it delivers the goods by being engaging and effective before putting it out on the floor.

Some of these museums may be willing to share the content they have developed for their digital interactive exhibits, more and more of which are using off-the shelf tablet computers. I was recently at a museum that used IPads set in acrylic blocks that had been machined out to house the devices. The exhibit content for these are basically custom applications. If you see an exhibit you like, it might be worth talking to the institution to see if they are willing to share their content.

While developing custom content may be out of reach for many of our museums, we could pool resources to develop exhibits. Many topics, such as telegraphy or the basic mechanics of steam locomotives have a broad enough relevance that well developed content could fit in anywhere in the country.

For those of you who would like to see the potential of CG generated video, take a look at Masaru Tochibayashi's CG movie on the 1942 Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands (Japanese captions only):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY8t04qQupQ

The movie itself is about 51 minutes long, and ends with 1942 still shots of the actual naval action. Then there are trailers at the end for some of his other projects including Midway, the Naval Battles of Guadalcanal, Savo Island, and others.

PC

Thank you all for your input, I will defintely keep working on ideas of how to improve the interpretation of our stories through digital means.

PCook, that is an amazing video. The realism of those scenes is quite astonishing. There's only two problems, though. 1: Those types of videos take a lot of work to create. 2: Those graphics will only look amazing until newer technology comes out that looks even better and more life-like. One day, even that video will look dated.

I think a lot of rail museums already have what they need for some basic digital displays in the form of analog media, such as photos, videos, paper documents, and the like. That analog media simply needs to be converted to digital. Digital Storytelling requires the same rhetoric and writing skills for creating a paper or, in the museum scene, a signboard. However, instead of the final work appearing in print, the story is told through pictures (if a picture is worth a thousand words, how many signboards is a short movie worth?)

This, of course, requires some knowledge of visual rhetoric, but so many of us are already familar with how our culture expects visual rhetoric to work. Consider how many advertisements you see everyday, both in print and on screen. You already know how to understand those ads, which means you understand to some degree how visual rhetoric works.

From reading many posts on this forum, it seems that at least some museums struggle with interpreting their artifacts, and making them relevant to today's visitors. I think that interpreting, or storytelling, is best done through a variety of means. If you have volunteers who are good storytellers, by all means, let them be docents. Human-to-human storytelling is a great method of interpretation. Signboards and digital displays can also help get the job done. Some visitors may not like the digital displays, so having signboards won't hurt. Just remember, there are people out there who won't bother to read a signboard that would be fascinated by looking through photo after photo in a digital display.

I expect that Masaru Tochibayashi's CG "models" of the ships and aircraft will be further refined and improved, there is a steady advance in the quality of his work as he goes from project to project. Of course naval battles are an ideal subject for this kind of presentation since the ships and aircraft are the centerpiece of the action and the ocean "terrain" has relatively few features. Look at the incredible sunset and night scenes he developed though, truly impressive. It would be very interesting to see what he could do with a railroad subject. Anyway, I just thought it was interesting as an example of some of the capabilities that now exist.

PC

I have been rather tickled by the abilities of some "V-Scale" model railroaders and commercial video games, such as L.A. Noire, to recreate lost scenes from the past.

Although Microsoft Train Simulator was abandoned by its corporate distributor long ago, the hobby of modeling and operating digital railroad models lives on using a variety of platforms. The 3D modeling forums at http://www.elvastower.com (I think registration is required to see the images) continue to host some impressive screen shots featuring everything form Western Pacific Mikes at Keddie to Pacific Electric 950s in Venice.

L.A. Noire is a police procedural video game that reproduces much of Los Angeles and Hollywood as it appeared in 1947. While purists can find quite a few details the Australian developers missed, generally, the verisimilitude of the game's post-war Los Angeles is amazing.

Certainly these technologies could be used for educational purposes, but someone needs to figure out how to package it in a way that will be interesting and informative to the general public without getting into gun battles or having to know the ins and outs of stretch braking. At the very least, these simulations could be used to recreate scenes that have been lost, or were only documented in still media. With no small effort, the artists that make these kinds of models could recreate a scene from a still photo and bring a few seconds of the past back to life. An 1870s photos of a high-stepping American with its train of emigrant coaches stopped at a small depot could shift to color, the camera could pull back, steam could escape, and the train could ease its way to speed.

None of this could replace the experience of the real thing, but a video presentation of this nature could also help to demonstrate how our preserved railroad and/or equipment might have looked at a grander scale than we are easily able to orchestrate.

Alternately, delightful demonstrations can still be done with physical models, but they take up more space, and they lack the immersive quality of video, with the virtual camera's ability to show scenes up close at "eye level."