TOO MUCH STUFF. A new thread from the Walter Rich topic.

wesp · **Posted:** Tue Oct 21, 2014 11:29 am

ADM IV writes

Quote:

Ross and others,

With one estate, we filled FOUR 40-foot dumpsters. Two to overweight. The guy had 40 years worth of expense accounts, documentation and studies of transit systems and proposals (including the original "monorail salesman" from "The Simpsons") from all over the globe, railroad and transit publications from every corner of the globe (some in languages even I couldn't figure out!), etc.

The fact is not so much that the younger generations aren't interested in the stuff you and I and others used to collect, but that SO MUCH "stuff" is out there now that it's literally impossible to digest it all, let alone store and properly utilize it. And then there's the issue that folks who have "hoarded" this stuff for so long too often expect that they absolutely have to appreciate in value, and that such a complete set has to be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars. Not any more, sorry.

A complete set of Trains Magazine alone takes up about twelve linear feet of shelf space, as I recall, or perhaps six to eight wine-case-sized boxes if you don't use binders. That, alone, is more than a great many households have in reading material of any kind. Railway Age, in our library, takes up about a dozen or more four-foot reinforced shelves in the Maryland Rail Heritage Library. Our set of Railroad Magazine from 1922 forward takes up several more shelves, and that's just before the merger with Railfan in 1979. Yanking the Model Railroaders to "deep storage" when we realized utterly no one could remember the last time anyone looked up anything in one freed up four shelves, and we have a DVD digital set of MR "on loan" to us.

The "obsessive-compulsive" railfan of years past would have to subscribe to Trains, R&R, the regional magazine of his areas (Railpace, Pacific Rail News, whatever), and the "special interest" magazine of his choice (PTJ, L&RP, a specific fallen flag's T&H society mag, etc.) to stay informed. It's no exaggeration to say that this equalled about 120-150 pages a month on average. It's all they can do to keep up with what comes out new, never mind dredging through back issues of Railroad for old, obsolete locomotive rosters or fictional tales, or poring over old issues of company magazines indexing relevant information about their chosen railroad.

I've had to dredge through, and ultimately discard, thousands of pages and folders of well-organized but utterly redundant material such as articles clipped from Street Railway Journal and hand-written rosters of interurban and short-line equipment (down to cylinders and tractive effort of the steamers), from back in the day when the only possible hope you had of accessing such information was by assembling and shelving it yourself. Thanks to one late member who was a regular contributor to Extra 2200 South, we now have ten binders full of what appears to be every imaginable roster of every imaginable line, sometimes updated per decade or hand-annotated. But if you know where to look, you can find most of this information online already, and more is streaming online monthly. There's also the raw utility value of much of what's out there. The GG1 operator's manual that's sitting on my shelf is strictly a collector's item and not something of practical value today; if I were smart I'd sell it while there are still "foamers" interested in GG1's.

The bigger problem is attempting to make this ocean of information interesting and relevant to others, something we as an avocation are increasingly failing to do successfully. Some of this is no fault of our own--Rowland of all people can confirm how the railroad industry, insurance issues, etc. have increasingly obstructed attempts to "showcase" big steam locomotives before the public. But we also have a "national railroad history group" whose primary mission for 20+ years has seemingly been to run rare mileage trips for its better-heeled members, and another with somewhat more effective academic and educational missions that has stayed largely hidden and out of sight even among its prospective members.

The problem is not that no one cares. The fact is that we have failed at making folks care, and care enough to assume stewardship of a ponderous bulk of paper/rolling stock/photos/data, much of which we have to ultimately concede is not worth the trouble in a global scheme of things.

And sometimes I just mutter to myself, "I can't be an enabler of this illness....."

So I've got this 3' by 3' by 3' box that has a carefully organized collection of vintage traction/tram b/w photo prints from ALL OVER Europe. This would be some traction documentarian's dream come true. So how do I find the one S.O.B. on the planet crazy enough to take possession of it, scan them all, enter the data on the back of each one, and archive it online or make a book or DVD out of it?

Sandy and friends,

Having seen the "valuable" collection to which Sandy refers, I can add that there were so many out there in our region who thought said collection was the Holy Grail. But in reality no one doing research has ever asked to see the detailed maintenance cards from the Benning Barn, or the detailed ledgers of the Capital Traction Company. And this collection is the tip of the iceberg headed our way.

I have reduced my subscription base from Trains, Railfan & Railroad, Steamboat Bill, and Headlights to only an annual subscription of Trains. My "library" of back issues has been given away, save for a few keepsake issues of Trains, including one that includes the great story about Rock Island commuter service and another with the personal story about the guys who broke a speed record of their own with one of the Pennsy superpower engines in the 1950s. You just can't make that stuff up. Nowadays back issues of Trains go to the freebie shelf at the public library when I'm done with them.

Wesley

Bobharbison · **Joined:** Fri Dec 03, 2004 9:42 pm **Posts:** 2956

We actually have a two pronged issued here:

1) Too much stuff. Even if you have some diamonds in the rough, if there's too much overburden, they won't get found. I know I have books on my shelf that are worth $100's and they're sitting next to Barnes & Noble "shovelware" that probably wouldn't bring $5 at a swap meet. How do my heirs figure out which is which?

2) Lack of estate planning. I don't know the details of the Walter Rich event. There's mention of a museum, which now appears to be defunct (purely based on the comments). Was it his intention that this stuff end up there? If so, why didn't that happen?

More importantly, what are the plans for your collection? Will your family keep it and treasure it? Will it go to the local railroad museum? Do you have something of value? Often things have personal meaning, but are worthless to a more general audience. For example, tickets to a movie or show from your first date with the girl who ended up becoming your wife. Meaningful to you, not so much to others.

3) (Bonus) - Do you have 218,818 digital photos on your hard drive? Same issue in digital form.

Emmo213 · **Posted:** Tue Oct 21, 2014 1:45 pm

a) Not sure why this is now it's own thread. That doesn't make sense.

b) My dad has tons of Model Railroaders in the basement which never get read. I have no use for keeping every issue of every magazine ever written, especially when they come out with the DVD that contains literally all of them.

c) As others have mentioned, the Internet made collections of this not needed. I couldn't believe it when I saw the opening bids for the Rich collection which was a box of old magazines. They simply aren't worth what they used to be anymore.

d) As times change so do the people who collect. Everything falls in and out of favor so who knows, maybe in another 100 years those magazine collections might be worth something. I'm not going to hang on to mine to find out though.

e) Collect what you enjoy! If you like having all those magazine then there's nothing wrong with that, but don't be mad when somebody doesn't want to pay you thousands of dollars for it.

Alexander D. Mitchell IV · **Posted:** Tue Oct 21, 2014 2:24 pm

Emmo213 wrote:

d) As times change so do the people who collect. Everything falls in and out of favor so who knows, maybe in another 100 years those magazine collections might be worth something. I'm not going to hang on to mine to find out though.

Nor is anyone else here. "He Who Dies With the Most Toys--IS DEAD! Start the Auction!"

Any antiques or specialty-collector dealer will tell you how certain collectibles, and their values, go in and out of fashion. There was a time when the "sweet spot" of antique car collecting was the 1920s. Now it's the 1950s. Odds are there will be a day when 1960s and 1970s "land yachts" and Gremlins will be the big ticket item at the Barrett-Jackson auction, or whoever replaces them. Stamp collecting has essentially become passé and not anything someone could do as an investment.

The most important qualifier for antiques value is not age, but how much someone can relate to it, be it because it's fine craftsmanship, extraordinarily beautiful, or something they played with as a child. Adjusted for inflation, steam and interurban collectibles are barely holding their own, because that generation who remembers them is heading off this mortal coil day by day. The wildly-inflated prices of British loco nameplates will likely burst sometime soon, because folks will want something they can relate to, not just something someone else's great-grandfather dragged home. Air horns are superseding steam whistles as collectibles.

Quote:

e) Collect what you enjoy! If you like having all those magazine then there's nothing wrong with that, but don't be mad when somebody doesn't want to pay you thousands of dollars for it.

Or, for that matter, when your family throws it all out because "nobody cares about that old junk."

Your job, as is that of everyone here, is to make your heirs and others care about whatever you have invested your time and energy into, be it a collection of photos, an antique vehicle or machine, your historically accurate re-enactor soldier outfits and weapons, your recipes, antique furniture or books, whatever--and to care beyond "what can I get for it?", the mentality behind more than a couple railroad "collectors" I have run across.

We have railroad periodicals dating back to 1839 on the shelves of our railroad library. I'll let you know the next time someone actually comes to do research in any of the ones going back pre-Civil-War.

wilkinsd · **Posted:** Tue Oct 21, 2014 3:30 pm

Bobharbison wrote:

We actually have a two pronged issued here:
2) Lack of estate planning. I don't know the details of the Walter Rich event. There's mention of a museum, which now appears to be defunct (purely based on the comments). Was it his intention that this stuff end up there? If so, why didn't that happen?

Lack of estate planning is a key problem. If you do not want to burden your family with this stuff, do what Mr. Rowland's friend is doing, finding suitable homes before he passes on.

A gentlemen I knew in St. Louis recently, along with his wife, decided to downsize and sold their house, moving to an apartment. While he's very much alive and active, he had an estate sell for his railroad collection items and book collection. While he didn't say so, I imagine he didn't want to burden his family with it. He also donated his photo negatives and movies to a museum. Overall, I think it was a wise thing to do on his part.

Most states allow you to keep a separate personal property distribution sheet that is referenced, but not necessarily written into the will. If you do not want to dispose of your stuff while alive, try that approach.

robertmacdowell · **Posted:** Tue Oct 21, 2014 4:53 pm

Digital material is different for two reasons.

First it is SEARCHABLE. This absolutely solves the "too much to digest it all" problem. I'm looking for the period of time that Railway Utility Co sold those heaters, No browsing 30 years of Electric Railway Journal, just a couple iterations of tuning my search terms and boom.

Second it is redundant: if you, me and Chuck all have every copy of Railway Age since day 1 in digital form, then we have 1 copy among us, not 3.

The problem is more digital content that has not been OCR'ed... or in the case of images, tagged. OCR'ing is easy, tagging requires a mechanical turk.

p51 · **Posted:** Tue Oct 21, 2014 6:07 pm

I don't feel about scanning publications as the end all that some of you do.
Scanning quality has increased over the years, I hope people aren't doing with magazines like libraries did with newspapers, by scanning then tossing them. Some pretty valuable originals got canned for microfilm, which is pretty substandard by today's eyes...

robertmacdowell · **Posted:** Wed Oct 22, 2014 12:23 am

Scan quality has topped out. You won't get better scans if you wait 10 years.

There may still be some headway to make in mechanical handling of the documents, e.g. Turning the pages for you so you can scan faster and with less human intervention.

Richard Glueck · **Posted:** Wed Oct 22, 2014 8:42 am

It's already been touched upon in this thread,but allow me to echo: share.

Something that always grates at me is when people have hundreds, if not thousands of slides and negatives of, say, the PRR from 1950 through 1968, and say, "Oh, that my collection. Someday I may do something with those". That stuff is invaluable to technical and historical societies, but kept in a steel box on the shelf, and nobody gets to use it. Rather than expect to finance your retirement on an island in the South Pacific, particularly is you're in your sixties or seventies, put the images online! You don't have to write an article, but somebody will use them to some positive advantage. GIVE IT AWAY!

Case in point revolves around a fellow who shot slides and Super 8 films of the CNJ, PRR, NYC, LIRR, LV, during the transition years of 1966 - 1973. He died a few years back at a senior residence. Most of the slides were saved. The films got tossed by people cleaning out what remained.

A mutual friend of ours is now scanning the material for donation to a prominent T&HS. Amen!

Harry Nicholls · **Posted:** Wed Oct 22, 2014 9:05 am

In my opinion, the first thing to do is EDIT the collection of material before donating it to anyone. I am working on a collection of photographs at DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University. The photos were taken by Ed DeGolyer, Sr. & Jr. plus photos bought or exchanged with others. There are hundreds of unknown, unidentifiable photos that are of no use to any researcher as they may portray a "loco #" that headed a train somewhere as it left the area. Such a photo is of the end of the train and can not be identified by anyone but the actual photographer. And, if possible, do make notes on the back of the photo as to location, pertinent data, and dates for better information for the persons later viewing the item.

Other useless photos are similar in content and can not be used to do research by others. If the collection policy was used to eliminate such material, the collection would save space and time yet be more accessible. As it is, the un-edited collection consumes much needed space and archival material.

robertmacdowell · **Posted:** Wed Oct 22, 2014 9:18 am

And especially, cull anything that doesn't look like a roster shot. Any sort of detail of trucks, paint, underbody, interiors, door mechanisms, roof treatment, get rid of it. Nobody is ever going to be doing mechanical restoration and care about seating arrangement or orientation of brake linkage or routing of an electrical cable. Nobody'll ever restore a unit back to a particular year's appearance and care whether the unit had gotten this or that detail added by then. We never sit around the mechanical shop next to the prototype with a magnifying glass looking at a detail barely visible in the available photos and wish we had a better one of this detail.

Hard drive space is ex-pens-ive and your only constituency is foamers. Why save anything boring?

Richard Glueck · **Posted:** Wed Oct 22, 2014 10:30 am

Bob- That is exactly the material (trucks, linkages, etc., that T&HS's want. Perhaps not for a restoration of the real deal, but I'd argue that point, too. Modeling is, for some equipment, the only way we'll ever see it in three dimensions once again. Imagine the Staufer books without technical shots?

Alexander D. Mitchell IV · **Posted:** Wed Oct 22, 2014 10:57 am

Right now, some of the only researchers justifying the existence of such archives as the NMRA, R&LHS at Sacramento, etc. are scale model manufacturers. And what do they want? Detail shots, on the rare occasion that they can be located. Ditto the preservationists.

You screed against roster shots also eliminates the other most highly commercially viable photographs: street scenes (especially trolleys in big cities) and panoramas that place a train or streetcar in context. Virtually every time I find a streetcar photo that depicts a recognizable building in the background, and I take a print of that photo to the current business or owner inside, it's an instant sale. (I've only done it for a few cases where I knew the occupants personally; perhaps I should market harder?)

Also, railfans want people out of the photo; most commercial interest is in photos with people.

There's a certain subset of railfans you can entertain by showing them roster shots in loco numerical order. That group would make a fascinating study subject for psychiatrists studying Asperger's.

Bobharbison · **Joined:** Fri Dec 03, 2004 9:42 pm **Posts:** 2956

AMD4 & Richard, apparently your browsers don't support the <sarcasm> tag?

robertmacdowell · **Posted:** Wed Oct 22, 2014 12:32 pm

The problem is that the people who are in a mood to cull photo collections don't overlap with the people who are model crafters and restorationists.

I'm not against roster shots per se, only the mentality that they are all that matter. That may be the cause of Harry's problem above. I mean think about it. A railfan has a slide with the tail of a train, and (big hint here) an engine number. That means he saw the front of the train. Well. A little sleuthing work here. Ive heard of railfans that were into big cabooses, but you know any railfans who shoot a train without bothering to shoot the engine? Of course not. The photographer did not put details on that slide, because, the slide of the engine had those details. Now either Harry's crew desecrated the original filing system and a search for that engine number will turn it up. Or more likely I suspect, the head-end shot had previously been sold/traded away without its caboose... because of that roster-shot bias I decry.

TOO MUCH STUFF. A new thread from the Walter Rich topic.

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