In a post on another e-mail group I belong to, a writer brought out an analysis of writers/editors/archivists/etc. as "thinkers" versus "Feelers".

Thinkers, the argument went, go about taking (as the example below) the Transcontinental Railroad story from a pragmatic, nuts-and-bolts view--how and why did it happen? What were the obstacles and the locomotives? Pursued to the extreme, this school of thought, in my view, turns into the roster-hugging rivet-counter that can--and will not hesitate to--correct you on the fact that EJ&E center-cab Baldwins were refitted with EMD hoods after their rebuild with EMD engines, and not rebuilt Baldwin hoods.

Feelers, on the other hand, wrap themselves in the human side of things--what personalities made the Transcon? How did it impact the Indians (oh, pardon, Indigenous Peoples), the settlers, and the lives of people back in the East? Perhaps again taken to an extreme, these are the people that would say that the Transcon story cannot be told without taking people to the cliffsides of the passes where toolmarks by the Chinese still remain to this day, or who say that the Golden Spike National Monument is incomplete without the steam replicas and period actors (oh, but no booze to toast, please) to help people see and feel the drama of the moment and time.

Is this the "Men are from Mars, Woman are from Venus" of our industry and vocation?

lner4472@bcpl.net

> Thinkers:
A lot of the nuts and bolts of the project are pretty much cut, dried and recorded. The difference between the starting technology and the finishing technology was fantastic

> Feelers:
Like to explain things with our standards and current thinking ... this is worth a new revision every five years and keeps them employed. (I'm in trouble here, but) ... Columbus was a jerk for discovering America, Thomas Jefferson was a hypocrite and we never shudda dropped the A-Bomb. Stand by for the latest revisions.

lamontdc@adelphia.net

> > Is this the "Men are from Mars, Woman
> are from Venus" of our industry and
> vocation?

I think the writer is making confusing the focus with the approach and offering a false dichotomy. I think he/she is confusing the focus with the approach.

Any rational person interested in forming an informed view of the social impact of the RR's has to use an analytical approach.

Railroads are about facts-historical, physical, social and economic. Feelings are inherently resistant to facts and durable even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary and can only serve to mislead the rational mind-in this regard.

Anytime somebody starts a sentence with the declaration "I feel..." and they aren't expressing some sort of emotion or affection or describing some physical sensation, be very, very worried, especially if they are running for office.



Superheater@rrmail.com

C'mon Sandy, what is any liberal arts degree program but learning how to think about feelings?

Reminded of the Dorothy Parker line about horticulture, but without emotionally grabbing people how are we going to encourage them to think and understand rationally? More to the point, how do we involve them in our interpretive efforts?

History is a flowing stream of human and other interaction with the universe as the universe evolves, rational basis or not for any such interaction. We percieve it as happening in a linear progression of time because it is convenient for us to do so, and explain it based on that perception.

None of these events transpire in a vacuum - especially those enacted by humans are colored by the popular culture of the humans invloved. To interest today's humans, we need to make it relatable and relevant across these cultural / time / POV distances.

Dave

> C'mon Sandy, what is any liberal arts degree
> program but learning how to think about
> feelings?

In some, if not most cases, its just the reverse. In my days at a large eastern land grant school-it was all about learning about what to feel about thoughts, if not the evacuation of thought in favor of emotion.

Listening to the chanting and sloganeering at many "institutions of learning" one is reminded of Orwell's warning about emotionalism in Animal Farm "Two legs bad, four legs good".



Superheater@rrmail.com

Cannot resist... must post followup...

I like this response. I wonder if an alternate dichotomy might be "reductionists" vs. "expansionists".

The reductionist wants "just the facts" (that interest him/her). The expansionist wants to hear both (or all) sides of the story. The reductionist wants to get to black and white as quickly as possible. The expansionist is thrilled with the color and variety that overwhelm the reductionist.

I often explain to people that my love of "history" is because of the last 5 characters (or second syllable) of that word: "story". History, and society are processes, and there is also context. (i.e. The North didn't just fight a war with the South and win. A whole lot more went on.)

The building of the TCRR was not just one, two, or even a dozen people's story. It is the story of thousands of people. If you want to understand the whole story, you have to hear as many as you can, or at least a representative sampling of them. As the saying goes, history is written by the victors. It is not the whole story though.

You can ignore the whole story, deny it, suppress it... but it won't go away.

> I think the writer is making confusing the
> focus with the approach and offering a false
> dichotomy. I think he/she is confusing the
> focus with the approach.

> Any rational person interested in forming an
> informed view of the social impact of the
> RR's has to use an analytical approach.

> Railroads are about facts-historical,
> physical, social and economic. Feelings are
> inherently resistant to facts and durable
> even in the face of overwhelming evidence to
> the contrary and can only serve to mislead
> the rational mind-in this regard.

> Anytime somebody starts a sentence with the
> declaration "I feel..." and they
> aren't expressing some sort of emotion or
> affection or describing some physical
> sensation, be very, very worried, especially
> if they are running for office.

Washington Steam Railroads and Locomotives
brianf425@yahoo.com

> Listening to the chanting and sloganeering
> at many "institutions of learning"
> one is reminded of Orwell's warning about
> emotionalism in Animal Farm "Two legs
> bad, four legs good".

Right-deviationist. That's "Four legs good, two legs better."


eledbetter@rypn.org

You are right, Super - I should have said "should be".

Dave

The nice thing about revisionist history is that whatever they say today you know will change tomorrow. It's a great system whereby the revisionists undermine their own credibility.

History cannot be understood without taking the position of both the thinker and the feeler. Problem is we can only view these things from our perspective and therefor we have a tendency to misinterpret the facts. An outcome is a fact. Lee lost the battle of Gettysburg. That would seem to be a generally accepted fact. Why did he lose? Was Pickett's charge stupid? In retrospect it seems so. To anyone standing on either side of that field today we would say "what was he thinking?" But that is from the viewpoint of all us Monday morning quarterbacks who have been educated, brainwashed and prejudiced. There is a reality, a fact of the matter if you will, but we may never know what it is for sure because that fact is inextricably linked to the feelings and perceptions of the people involved at the time.

I think we can get close to the "reality" of a historical event with an accurate understanding of the feelings and perceptions of the people at that time and place, but at some point all our conclusions will be based upon some amount of conjecture.

I think I have posted before the story of 7002. Rebuilt in a major way by Juniata shops and never operated. New firebox, beautifully riveted; remachined pop valves, piston valves and boiler slides, etc etc. These are facts leading to the obvious conclusion that this illustrates the fine craftsmanship coming out of Juniata. And so it would have been had we not gotten the thing running and found out how crappy all that workmanship was. Now we have a new fact. Is it generally true of the work in that shop or did it just happen on this locomotive? Fact is we will never know.

Off my soap box now.


linnwm@supernet.com

I, too spent time at a major land-grant university, so now I usually puke when I hear words like "dichotomy." (Although so much of that time was spent in a 2-8-4 boiler that not much damage was done.) But here's another division that I find it useful to keep in mind when I think about technology and museums:

A couple of years ago I found that much of my conclusions about technology and politics had been summed up in the book, "The Future and Its Enemies" by virginia Postrel. Postrel divided people or attitudes into two classes, and coined words for them: stasist and dynamist.

To greatly simplify, a stasist is someone who fears and resists change, and wants to institutionalize or enforce the status quo. Stasists are the persons who want to stop the new highway, close the new Wal-Mart, outlaw genetic engineering, thwart trade and mobility, censor exchange, and stop the re-laying of track on the old branch. Dynamists embrace change, and like the internet, new music, and more and faster machines.

Stasists usually populate outfits like the local historic-district architectural review board. One of the attractions of railroad museums is that (at least the ones I've been associated with) they're populated heavily by dynamists, whose approach is, "lets tear this thing apart, screw with it, and then fire it up and see what it will do out on the road."

The basic lesson of Postrel's book is that the dynamist approach is the only road to knowledge, and knowledge is the only thing that can advance the human condition. Stasists would never have found the knowledge that was lurking in the firebox of PRR 7002. I don't know what that knowledge is worth, but it's sure fun.

Aarne Frobom
The Steam Railroading Institute
P. O. Box 665
Owosso. MI 48867-0665

Folks,

At the western Railway Museum I have been trying to give some of the visitors some of the human side of electric railroading. This Interurban was the school bus and mail truck in 1910 etc.

But a lot of people, not all, come back to the tryed and true where, when, why of the car /railroad etc.

So I guess they are both important;depending on who is listening. For me the change from 600 volts to 1200 volts is more interesting than the
change in voting habits in the county.

Ted Miles

ted_miles@nps.gov

> Stasists usually populate outfits like the
> local historic-district architectural review
> board. One of the attractions of railroad
> museums is that (at least the ones I've been
> associated with) they're populated heavily
> by dynamists, whose approach is, "lets
> tear this thing apart, screw with it, and
> then fire it up and see what it will do out
> on the road."

Except that an individual can be one or the other depending on context.

I've noticed a strong tendency in our community for dynamists when it comes to restoration and "nuts and bolts" stuff to become statists when it comes to interpretation. The slightest wiff of innovation in message and medium gets dismissed as PC, revisionsist, and otherwise nonsensical.

No, I am not apologising for PC excesses like the Enola Gay exhibit text at NASM a while back, but then again, I am shocked and dismayed at the vehemence with which folks even here at the Interchange commonly denounce anything that even hints of social history.

What is wrong, I ask, with telling the story of the porters as well as the Pullman car? Of the passengers as well as the coach? Of the farmers as well as the stock car? Of the boilermakers and machinists as well as the riviter or lathe?

If this is revisionism, call me a revisionist.

OK, climbing off soapbox now.



eledbetter@rypn.org

> What is wrong, I ask, with telling the story
> of the porters as well as the Pullman car?
> Of the passengers as well as the coach? Of
> the farmers as well as the stock car? Of the
> boilermakers and machinists as well as the
> riviter or lathe?

IMO, nothing at all is wrong with it, and that is what is missing from a lot of museums. I think it isn't done because a lot of sacred cows will be gored and a lot of "conventional wisdom" will turn out to be just fantasy.

That's why, for example, in most museums, business cars and sleepers are so badly over represented and day coaches are under represented. Many sincerely want to believe - and to convince others - that all rail travel was luxurious and enjoyable, when in fac the luxurious part was very limited (no pun intended) while the masses (those that could afford to travel) rode in drafty, dirty coaches, ate in depot beaneries or out of picnic baskets, had to make multiple connections, etc. They didn't ride Pullman, eat on linen or sip drinks in the observation lounge. Or ride in a business car.
But most museums try to pass this side of the travel business off as the usual standard. Often as not, it is also a tiny part of the pro-passenger rail agenda carried by today's foamers. But it isn't reality.

Where are the troop trains, jammed with people sitting on their luggage, ratty, cold and flea-infested? Where are the Zulu cars (immigrant cars)? WWII rail travel experiences did more to drive people away from railroads than probably any other single event, but you'd never know that by what you get presented with at most museums.

Also not reality are todays relatively clean, well-lit, handicapped-accessible museum roundhouses and shops, crewed by wholly diverse staff. These things have nothing at all in common with the dark, dank, smelly, cold, junked up, oily roundhouses of reality, which were staffed by highly segregated (sexually, racially and ethnically) forces.

It is stuff like this that perpetuates the many myths such as the Standard Railroad of the World and the supposed superiority of certain builders or shops over others.

> If this is revisionism, call me a
> revisionist.

> OK, climbing off soapbox now.

Eric: I agree 1000% and I am also a revisionist. Once we get off the golden glow of the heros and start bringing out the stories of the troops in the trenches then we start to get a real picture of what was happening. I can not think of a single case in history where this would not apply.



lamontdc@adelphia.net

> What is wrong, I ask, with telling the story
> of the porters as well as the Pullman car?
> Of the passengers as well as the coach? Of
> the farmers as well as the stock car? Of the
> boilermakers and machinists as well as the
> riviter or lathe?

*The problem (when it does occur--it doesn't always happen) arises when the parties that propose the additions to the interpretation bring other agendas to the table in the process, or (as is often becoming the case today) cloak their missions of presenting a not-relevant-to-the-discussion agenda via revisions to the status quo.

Examples: The Enola Gay controversy of a while back was heavily criticized because, in part, the re-written signage was apparently written from the viewpoint of anti-nuclear, anti-war people who (if one listened to the critics) were out to condemn the actions of the U.S. military. Though they have valid thoughts to be considered, the Enola Gay signage is not likely the right place to bring these issues to discussion to the exclusion of the "we had no choice--it shortened the war" war historians.

Similarly, I could expect some red flags to be raised if, for example, I attempted to tell the Pullman porter story exclusively as one of corporate oppression of African-American men, tearing them from their families to make them travel as they worked........ or the story of agricultural development hamstrung by the big bad railroad trusts and monopoly, which forced the arising of the Grange......... or the railroad industry as the major contributor to pollution, greenhouse gases and global warming in the 19th century, consuming vast amounts of irreplacable coal and oil in the process.........

I'm only citing these as examples. I would be equally wary of a museum display saying that the UP and/or PRR were the major driving force in the American economy at the time or today, or that without steam locomotives we'd still be cavemen.

lner4472@bcpl.net