Super, let me rephrase then; I'm sure that even though they are both under the .gov umbrella, an Amtrak MOW or mechanical shop employee can't make a lateral move into a SNHS shop position. I think if you were able to build that bridge you would have a large pool of competent hires on tap.

Granted, SNHS would probably become the place where Amtrak employees ride out their final few years, but is that a bad thing? The Feds don't want to privatize the excursions and the park is too unique to work well within the NPS framework. SNHS is obviously floundering. The only avenue I see left is to cut some red tape so they can pull from Amtrak to staff the operational end.

A slight diversion:

In connection with the 'stubby little tender' discussion -- I have seen the diagram for the proposed LV duplex (it would likely have been similar to a PRR Q2) and there are four little axles at the rear, for the (mandatory!) detachable water tender to deal with the fierce water rate of ~8000hp while allowing the engine to be turned -- you sure wouldn't want to try a 4-4-6-4 on a typical wye!

This was the same rather obvious 'cure' for the bitty little RENFE 4-8-4 tenders, which never let the locomotives achieve anything near their potential. Make the entire "tender" a water-bottom coal bunker, and put most of the water in a detachable 'module' with water connections at each end... that was the 'right' answer for Poconos at Scranton, and it might be a 'right answer' (temporarily) for visiting steam built to more generous dimensions...

Would Steamtown be a better fit affiliated with the Smithsonian?

There isn't an excuse I've heard here... it isn't an excuse that it is hard because they are government. At least if you have good people.

I have managed a multi-million dollar budget Federal budget. An advantage of budgeting in the government is stability. I'm going to guess the annual budget for Steamtown hasn't changed by all that much (up or down) in a number of years. While there might be an over all downward slope in the budget via inflation, it is likely stable. That means you can PLAN out a number of years. Com'on, you know your fixed costs, if you have decent people, you know your upcoming major expenses. Your bigger contracts have option years, so you they are pretty easy to execute for 1-3 years.

It is about the planning. Planning. Planning. Did I say planning? If you have a decent facilities person, they can come to understand not only what works needs to be done in the coming year(s), but also come up with a list of possible failures and have a plan in place for dealing with them (like knowing what lead times are for parts).

Yes procurements can take a while. Especially for one off stuff. But, again, if it is planned out... we start working on major procurements in June/July. RFIs if needed and other market research as needed. Ideally, the package is mostly done by mid September, ready for the trigger to be pulled in Oct, or when the first allotment comes in. If it's not a new thing - something you've bought in the past, then you still get the procurement in the system by Christmas if there is a CR.

Hiring. You don't have to hire from within NPS, or even other government agencies. You can likely hire a veteran without even putting the job out on the street or interviewing anyone else. Even if it is a challenge to find someone with experience in the technology at hand, any good facilities person is going to be able to come up to speed on it soon enough.

I suppose there are upstream bottle necks at NPS. Where I work, for example, the HR group only has the resources to hire x number of people per year. This means vacancies. _Sometimes_ you can redirect those unused labor dollars for other projects.

It is possible Steamtown gets crappy procurement support from region or HQ. Sometimes you can put this in your plan as well. It sucks when you are working with a S*hot AGO person who understands your program (every single government operation has it's special cases, just not Steamtown) and they leave... and it might while before you get a replacement and get them up to speed.

It is possible that Region or HQ HR requires you first try to hire from within. This requires senior management work hard with HR to work though the issues.

There could be others. But for a lot of this? I suspect it has more to do with changing management, how Steamtown is on the "edge" of NPS's mission and perhaps that Steamtown management jobs might be considered a career dead end or just a bad job.

I'll stop my rant. I just hope someone is going to get a bad annual review and no bonus.

Bob

After you do your job, a lot of the stuff can hand off to me. My volunteer gigs have almost always included contingency planning for the planning column that starts off “What if...” Son takes over for me when I’m done, and he plans for Worst Case Scenario.

You tell me you’re having a fairly casual event for 150 people and you’ve arranged for the food, drinks and entertainment. You’re going to do coffee, hot water for a few tea drinkers and canned soda on ice, meat, cheese and vegetable trays and cookies from a grocery, so the menu is about as some as it can get. Let’s assume you’ve dealt with the store and found reliable. I’ll look at the stuff I know goes wrong often—the most likely mess-ups for that kind of event.

For instance, if somebody is detailed to pick up sandwich trays, do they have a backup in case their car, kid or themselves is sick? Will the store allow a substitute or should there be an alternate listed from the start? When you ordered the sandwich fillings, did you remember bread and/or buns? If you need a kosher, halal or other special tray, did you remember to have it marked?

Should anything happen to disable the deli, you need the equivalent of the time Steve Lee got a hungry trainload fed by calling ahead to a barbecue place he knew could handle 600 with a little advance notice. One valuable item is a list of extra suppliers or fix-it folks. Maybe they’re competent but normally more expensive, but you’ll likely need them at least once in your career. We had to scramble at church once because our Christmas basket turkey provided had a fire in her store. Where nearby is an alternate store who could replace your party platters? How fast can they be ready with a special order if you call, or do they usually have at least some things already prepared?

Power and water outages are one of the most common oh-no moments. If you have a lot of coffee drinkers, battery power for your big urns and a few gallons of water stashed in the kitchen will fix it, but you have to think of that. If you have auxiliary heat you’d normally use with volunteers, Will your insurance let you use it with guests in the house? Steamtown failed at even this upper layer of planning.

If your main road may be cut off your staff knows how to get everybody out the back way, somebody has the gate key and you know the lock works. Every so often have everybody leave out the back way so they don’t get lost. Aside from weather, we’ve had weirdness like the town forgetting to tell anybody they were going to pave the main road. They had maybe fifty cars trapped overnight. It was spectacularly, Steamtown-level dumb—not your fault, but your problem.

After I do my part, son does Worst Case. Denial is not an option. How likely is the worst possible thing and what would you do about it? Tornadoes are the most common example. Odds that any one building gets hit, even in a major outbreak, are small but would be devastating (low probability, high risk event.) Do you move the event out of the most probable time or cancel? After all, even in Joplin, Missouri most of the town wasn’t damaged beyond some travel inconvenience. Once again, what do you do and who decides?

Seriously, not preparing for an outage in the northeast US in late fall is about like a new parent sauntering out to shop without taking along a diaper bag.

You may get people with relevant aptitudes; but I'm not sure you'd be getting qualified people. Who on Amtrak has ever had to deal with 49 CFR Part 230, UC valves, archaic steam heating? Maybe I'm underestimating Amtrak staff, but it seems they'd have a learning curve with heritage equipment and then there's the issue would they want to relocate from Beech Grove to Scranton.

I don't think so, because the Smithsonian doesn't have any experience maintaining operating locomotives or running excursions. Furthermore, I think if there was such a possibility, it would have been raised when Bill Withuhn was an active volunteer at Steamtown and still a Smithsonian Curator. The closest that we came to any kind of joint venture was when Bill brought the 1401's whistle up to be installed on CP 2317 for the purpose obtaining a recording. As I recall, that was quite the administrative feat.

There is certainly the opportunity for the sorts of administrative improvements you mention.

As for the requirement to be NPS, here is a position for a Supervisory Park Ranger in Philadelphia.

https://www.usajobs.gov/job/689882400

You'll note the limited application pool. Now this isn't always the case. Steamtown had a Maintenance Division Chief, several years ago, I think he was from the outside. There is a strong preference. As you know government tends to want to have people with knowledge of not only its policies, procedures and systems; but its ethos, habits and dispositions. At certain point, the job description may not have a an explicit formal limitation, but the requirements muight be a constructive restriction.

Of course the core problem is the NPS doesn't have institutional knowledge in the restoration, maintenance and operation of railroad equipment and the external talent pool is obviously limited if you aren't developing it internally.

I tend to agree; but I'm not an HVAC expert (or even rudimentary literate for that matter); so I don't know if the system could be made modular or redundant, but that would be extra diaper in this case.

Nobody mentioned the Golden Spike National Historical Park. Anyway. As far as the steam heating system goes, before the Staggers Act, the railroads called it deferred maintenance. Couldn't a local congressman have gotten a replacement project funded in one of those omnibus spend on everything bills. Not out of NPS capital budget.

Tom Hamilton

The plant I'm responsible for maintaining in continuous operation 24/7/365 is equipped with 4 chillers to keep the computers cool and happy. 2 are down awaiting new replacement proprietary VFD / control modules with a lead time estimated (not guaranteed) in multiple months, and I'm out of redundancy...... and these are just a couple years old and still being manufactured (or will be once the supply chain allows for it) by one of the major name brand HVAC makers in the world. I'd multiply the lead time / sourcing issues by a high factor for retrofitting an obsolete system in an old plant with not off the shelf plug and play equipment. Modern state of the art systems tend towards modularity rather than customization because redundancy is now a wider requirement in a lot of plants and it's easy to build in using identical multiples of the same capacity components with a couple extra thrown in for emergencies and PM shutdowns...... if you can actually get the damn things. This is the current state of industrial HVAC. I completely get their issues at Steamtown and am reluctant to start pointing fingers as a result.

The TL: DR:
The National Park Service is perfectly capable of confecting a variety of excuses for its failures and Inadequacies; it needs no help in this regard.


The term “finger pointing” is defined by the following sources:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/diction ... r-pointing

https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/f ... 93pointing

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/di ... r-pointing

These are typical definitions of the term “finger-pointing” that imply unfair, unwarranted or exaggerated criticism, often as a deflection or diversion. Since nobody here is responsible for this situation and or has the authority or capacity to remedy the situation, the use of idiom to diminish the public criticism seems unwarranted in those regards. The only remaining use of would be that the criticism is unfair, and that is what I am addressing below.

In the personal example you provided; if component failure was unlikely and it was generally anticipated that they would remain readily available, so as to render a parts inventory extravagant or unnecessary; then your management implicitly made or endorsed a prudential judgment but one that carried the risk that not just two, but if all four fail simultaneously-your data center goes Chernobyl, no?

On the other hand, my experience as a government auditor avails me of a structured method of determining whether a particular situation is proper, compliant or meets expectation. A Finding contains five descriptive elements: Condition, Criteria Cause, Effect and Recommendation.

Since the fairness of affixing blame is in question; I’m going to concentrate on the element of “cause”.

In a hypothetical finding with the Condition “Steamtown is unable to provide heating to certain public use buildings” the following are two possible causes:

A.) Steamtown/The NPS incurred a complete heating system failure of its visitor use areas and the system will remain inoperative until [insert necessary occurrence or estimated time of completion here]

B.) Steamtown/The NPS incurred a complete heating system failure of its visitor use areas after repeatedly experiencing various malfunctions over a period of years and failing to remedy the deficiencies causing these issues. [insert necessary occurrence or estimated time of completion here]

Based upon the reports that smaller dysfunctions were experienced; I would have no problem with the B. version as it fair, even though the NPS/Stea would no doubt protest in its response (like other auditees) receiving an adverse finding that it was out of their control with all of the creativity and vigor of a four year old being questioned about the broken vase after being told not to throw the football inside.

Now of course, the question of the locus of responsibility would rest upon inquiries/responses about who identified the problem and what was done in response. If the Maintenance Chief/Superintendent was raising the issue with the regional office, the accountability would rest with the higher authority, for example.

I might also expand upon this as pattern, knowing as I do or as likely might be established through ordinary audit procedures that there was a storm damaged building that was allowed to deteriorate until there was a partial collapse necessitating the razing of the structure. In addition, we know there’s several locomotives that remain exposed to the elements and high wood content rolling stock was scrapped due to rot that made those pieces unsafe, unrestorable eyesores.

A reminder; we pay taxes to support this operation and we have a right to expect that they will follow their mandate; which is incorporated into federal law:
54 U.S. Code § 100101

(a)In General.—
The Secretary, acting through the Director of the National Park Service, shall promote and regulate the use of the National Park System by means and measures that conform to the fundamental purpose of the System units, which purpose is to conserve the scenery, natural and historic objects, and wild life in the System units and to provide for the enjoyment of the scenery, natural and historic objects, and wild life in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.

Where are the alert newshawks of the northeastern Pennsylvania region? They could likely winkle out either the technical details of the failure or pinpoint the areas of stonewalling -- I would submit this would be closer to the semantic sense, along with some possibility of 'where you stand is where you sit' buck-passing -- in perhaps Pulitzer-grade fashion. Sure beats typical Times-Leader fare!

Personally, I'd find it highly likely this was originally a distributed steam system, possibly supplied from the Scranton utility that folded up in 2006. What the NPS substituted for what was likely a lavish mass flow of relatively low-pressure steam is where the speculation should focus. I doubt they renovated a direct-steam plant at the roundhouse to supply space heating for the new construction.

Now, whatever it is would be less than a couple of decades old, and that leads to the concern that some fancy electronic controls have 'failed support' or have key components on permanent backorder as critical deliveries bob offshore in containerships. I can sympathize with this. My college 'eating club' was equipped with a relatively enormous Weil McLain heating boiler -- of a very interesting historical design, their so-called "J" boiler, which was designed so that any part of it could be carried through normal doorways and up and down unreinforced stairs during installation. This boiler was installed in 1966 and had a state-of-the-art... for 1966... firing system. Part of this involved clever relays with a plethora of contacts, reminiscent of the equipment in '60s jukeboxes, and when these relays started to "malfunction" not only did they scramble the (undocumented) logic, it developed that the components were unobtanium. (In fact, the whole J boiler seems to have been deprecated at Weil McLain; I could only ever find one promotional datasheet describing the range of available components for it.) It was fun to see washers on string dangling from a couple of the relay armatures to keep the heat on...

Surely you jest.

In most major cities in the USA, we may be lucky to have ONE "investigative reporter" worthy of the name still employed by a major media outlet. Honestly? Unless those to be investigated have done something to personally aggrieve an editor or publisher (or their political views), it doesn't happen today. The advertising dollars aren't there to pay for the long, hard work this takes.

The one in Baltimore worth the title retired four months ago.

Yeah, I was being a bit sarcastic -- remember superheater's invocation of a certain radio station personality a coupla months ago? Could it be time for an 'updated' version?