One thread regarding the situation with the NRHS has already been locked and the other appears to be veering towards a focus on a post mortem/political wrangling. The purpose of this thread is to encourage a discussion as to the best way to move forward.

The current situation raises many questions about the future of rail preservation.

As to the NRHS’ apparent last minute, and last ditch, attempt to pull itself away from the precipice of obsolescence, do we say “Amen” or is euthanasia in order?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62kxPyNZF3Q

Is a new or revamped national organization necessary to further rail preservation or do internet-based communities, such as RYPN, photo and video sharing sites, and other national organizations such as the R&LHS and ATRRM combine to completely serve the national interests of rail preservation?

If another entity, in addition to these web-based resources and national groups, is needed, why? What other nationally based services are necessary for the rail preservation community to continue to move forward?

To be honest, as a non-NRHS member, I see very little utility in the national organization, as it is constituted now, and even less if the proposed business changes occur. I tend to think that there are other organizations that will take up the slack if the NRHS suddenly disappeared overnight. The strong local chapters would likely continue to be strong, locally-focused organizations without the national organization.

Don't forget the RPCA which many NRHS chapters are already active in and

there's nothing wrong with a chapter also joining the ATTRM trade association which doesn't take individual members., in fact NRHS and a few chapters already belong to it.

Also, a joint ATTRM -- NRHS conference is planned for spring 2015 in York, PA

Bob H

Thank you for bringing the Railroad Passenger Car Alliance into the discussion.

Unfortunately, the rest of your post regarding the Association of Tourist Railroads and Railway Museums (ATRRM) appears to not address the questions in my post. Do you mean that there are services that a national such as the NRHS can provide in the future in concert with other organizations?

If so, what are they?

What function(s) can a national serve that (as Mr. Wilkins pointed out) can not or will not be backfilled by the other organizations and websites?

Are they enough to justify the additional allocation of limited preservation resources (dollars and FTEs)?

"The purpose of this thread is to encourage a discussion as to the best way to move forward."

It would be nice but first we really know where we are, don't we?

To say the present organization is a model that has "gone bust" might be an observation of the obvious, but it's not a diagnosis (he's very sick, as opposed to he has a bad flu/Ebola/MRSA)

I have a lot of family and friends in medicine/nursing and I spent some time in healthcare finance. One of the things I learned from them and my time on the billing side is the need to be conscious of violating the "first do no harm" maxim -because of the possibility of "iatrogenic" (doctor induced) pathologies.

I have yet to hear WHY the principal cause of the NRHS' woes is organization or how this plan will succeed. What's lacking is specifics.

To know where you are going, is to know where you are.

If an auditor was engaged to conduct a "performance audit" of the NRHS (or any other organization deemed to have "issues"), the audit team would produce findings that detailed the following:

Condition: What presently exists. How things are. This should be specific and qualifiable or quantifiable.

Criteria: How things should be, the requirements, or attainable goals This should be specific and qualifiable or quantifiable.

Cause: What causes the present situation, with an emphasis on specific causes the condition to deviate from the criteria (aka the performance gap)

Effect: Why this matters.

Recommendation: What should and can be done to abate or mitigate the conditions that fall short of the criteria. The recommendation should be reasoned, deliberate, specific, and feasible.

Findings are always presented IN WRITING to the affected parties, and they have an ample opportunity to respond.

I was taught to write audit reports as though the salutation read "ladies and gentlemen of the jury"-make them airtight, because they do end up in court (a lot).

Show us the specifics. They say (former) salesmen love to be sold. For a while I peddled ceramic floor tiles, so sell me. One of the elements of a sale is overcoming objections. Sell me with specifics, present alternatives that give me the warm fuzzies, not the feeling of a song and dance.

The entire episode / debate reminds me of "Myspace" and "Facebook".

Myspace was first but didn't adapt and faded away.

Facebook appeared on the scene and has much surpassed what Myspace had been.

Even the YahooGroups dedicated to specific railroads have largely been replaced by Facebook for train movements and other information.

I am not a member of the NRHS or any other national railroad organizations save for NARCOA (a track car guy). NARCOA has their own growing pains too. An aging membership, lack of new blood, and lack of anyone younger than 50 ever having seen speeders in real use on railroads. The main reason they stay in business as a national organization is the insurance policy they obtain that allows us to run on railroads throughout the Country. If the insurance policy was no longer available or viable I fear that organization would also fade away.

To me the internet groups have really taken over the railroad news, photography, and even the history end of things for me. I am a member of Trainorders and look there for current information. I turn to RYPN and some other railroad websites daily for more historical information and in depth reports on restorations.

At the end of the day being a member of the NRHS has to have a value TO its members and more so to its donors. I for one have not seen that value in either the past/present organization or the proposed.

Superheater raises some very interesting questions, that, unfortunately, should be out of the scope of my original post had I expressed myself more clearly.

I mentioned that the other threads, from which I was trying to differentiate this thread, included a trend towards a post mortem. My first question is basically does the preservation community accept the changes suggested to reinvigorate the national as necessary for rail preservation (and not the NRHS) to move forward or does it let the national fade away?

My basic premise is to accept the NRHS' self reported state of its own affairs and move on from there.

While Superheater's approach is a valuable one for checking "where" the NRHS is compared to "where" the NRHS says it is, it will require a lot of resources to do properly.

If my other questions are answered in the negative, that is, as Mr. Wilkins stated, "I tend to think that there are other organizations that will take up the slack if the NRHS suddenly disappeared overnight.", or if the suggested useful cost-effective functions of a national are beyond the scope of the NRHS' capabilities (revamped or not), then the whole "inside baseball" controversy addressed in the other threads is irrelevant and the thorough audit approach Superheater recommends may not be cost-beneficial in serving to move the national rail preservation situation forward.

The Amherst Railway Society, a totally independent group, also contributes a significant amount of financial support to preservation. Their organization is not redistributing funds from donors, they raise the money through a train show and other efforts by their several hundred members. And they have been doing that for decades.

What will help to move preservation forward is the successful completion of projects. Preservation can't just be an industry that is good at taking things apart. Unfortunately railroad preservation in particular has suffered from a series of high visibility failures in recent years, which have left equipment disassembled, component parts spread around to rebuilding vendors with no paper trail, and financial contributors disillusioned. A certain streamlined train particularly comes to mind in this regard, but there have been many others. Just raising money is not enough, you have to complete the projects to demonstrate to the contributors that their funds have been used effectively.

PC

I am not suggesting that they conduct an audit. They did however engage some sort of external consulting firm, I would assume they produced some written report.

I would assume the committee also kept meeting minutes. Their conclusions should be summarized.


Right now, these are the details provided.

http://nrhs.com/news/nrhs-reveals-detai ... ness-model

This is at best a "sizzle sheet", which does not have the type of context, structure and detail required to be actionable, and quite frankly, I don't think it was developed based on this phrase:

"The new model is subject to the National NRHS Board of Directors’ approval at its September 20 meeting. If approved, a transition process would immediately begin"

That's a lot of open territory. Any reorganizational that eliminates members should be accompanied by new by-laws, right?

As for this statement:

If rejected, it is unclear how the society will continue through the current crisis.

Well then, how did you let things get this bad?


Nobody will ever tell me that any organization is in an existential crisis and management is faultless, especially even as it considers eliminating chapters, it continues to describe chapters on its website as follows as of 16:25 EDT 09/10/2014:

"Local Chapters: the heart and soul of the NRHS

From our very beginning, when two local railfan organizations combined to become the first two local chapters of the Society, the NRHS has only been as strong as our Chapters make us.

Our Chapters are where we meet to share our love for the rails. Chapter activities include monthly meetings, field trips to historic rail sites, and rail excursions. Most local Chapters even have their own newsletters exclusively for their members.

Although it is possible to belong to the NRHS without joining a local Chapter, there is no doubt that belonging to a local Chapter brings valuable benefits. Local Chapter members have full voting rights in the National Society and full participation in all National events, and receive subscriptions to National publications and advanced ticket purchase for the annual NRHS railroad convention."

Where's the caveat? "The above statements are opinions and subject to change or annulment without prior notice, for any, all or no reason. As such there are no warranties express or implied...."

PC, great points. So you seem to indicate that for raising funds and seeing projects to completion, a large local or regional group can do the job and a national organization that primarily acts to redistribute donated funds is not necessary.

As for completing projects, Humpty Dumpty artifacts are a nightmare both for the folks who have to attempt to finish the job years later and from a marketing standpoint for others trying to raise funds for their projects.

PC, is there any way a national organization can function to address this issue of uncompleted projects or is this a challenge that must be dealt with on the local level?

Superheater, if there is no way that a national can add value in a cost-effective manner moving forward, or if the national rail preservation need is greater than the NRHS can meet, then what is the benefit to the preservation community of making all of these inquiries as to the condition of the NRHS beyond that of an academic exercise? Would it be best to not invest any more time/effort/cash and let obsolescence take its course?

PC, is there any way a national organization can function to address this issue or is this a challenge that must be dealt with on the local level?


See Rich Jahn and the good folks at the ARHS, they frequent your location.

Ditto for John Isaakson (spelling?) and the good folks at the ELDCPS.

Not to mention Tri-State (owner of 663). Of course, when it comes to project completion, local control is not always successful. The question remains, is there an answer on the national level or is this an issue that is beyond the scope of what a national organization can accomplish?

Events like Spencer have an incalculably positive effect on preservation. Having a dozen or more successful preservation products around a turntable in a high-visibility, high attendance event helps to show the public that there are groups out there that can get the job done and are worth supporting. It also helps to identify directly who those groups are. The images and the publicity of such a high visibility success help to overcome the drag on funding imposed by failed preservations and the bad press and internet debates they generate.

I believe that donors would much rather write their checks directly to groups whose preservation projects can be seen and appreciated, than to some agency that claims they will distribute the money wisely.

PC

I have always felt that there is a role for a national organization to play in preservation, by assisting the individual local preservation groups with finding information resources, sourcing parts, identifying potential suppliers, and providing referrals to properly qualified contractors. When you look at some of the more recent preservation efforts that have failed, lack of access to information and experience has often played a part. But as far as the preservations where the principals just won't listen to good advice, there is nothing a national organization or anybody outside can do, those are purely local problems. Unfortunately sometimes those problems fail a project.

PC

All -

The information released on nrhs.com a few days ago is a very high level summary of the new model. It was released because there was a lot of discussion about the new model and we wanted to give people some directional information. It was not intended to explain everything thoroughly nor is the Board going to be asked to make a decision on the new model on only three pages of information. The Board will have a lot more material to make its decision on. The committee is in the midst of finalizing the following:

1. A mission/vision statement for a "new" NRHS.

2. A detailed document describing the new business model. That document is somewhere around 30 pages right now.

3. Bylaws for the new organization. A draft of these has been completed.

4. A financial model. Basically this is budget for the first two years.

5. A job description for the operations manager role.

6. A high-level implementation plan that covers the first few months. This is a starting point for the management of the new organization.

The Board has seen a draft of all these documents except for the financial model and the high level implementation plan, both of which are going out tonight. All these documents will be provided to NRHS members and the public. But, first the committee has to finalize the documents so that we are releasing accurate information.

Jeff Smith
NRHS Board Member