Just a few more comments from the peanut gallery:

Working in railroad preservation, museums and tourist roads, paid or volunteer, comes down to feeding a passion. If you don’t get enjoyment out of it, why do it? It boggles my mind that we still have instances where the younger guys get berated enough to quit instead of nurturing that passion. I just don’t get it. It makes no sense for the longevity of the industry.

More power to ya. Kinda makes me a bit jealous.

Been there, done that. You have a better chance at winning the Power Ball drawing.

Totally agree that it’s only a fashion statement, albeit one you can’t easily dispose of when it goes out of fashion.

What most don’t realize is that you cannot test for impairment, only for metabolites. THC is a complex molecule. It’s broken down into simpler metabolites in a somewhat linear process that can take 30 days or so. Does a positive test mean you’re high? Nope, not at all. My take is that I don’t care what you do on your own time as long as it doesn’t affect your performance in any way on the job. Unless you’re an axe wielding serial killer…..

I know for a fact some of the BOMX staff in their forties have tattoos.

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Kelly, now there's one smart gal. I'm thinking of reaching out for her to see if she'll sell me a franchise for two satellite offices I'd like to open for Delete !!

Great idea. Thanks, Ross Rowland

Mr Rowland, Sir, I'm not trying to be confrontational or funny, but may I suggest that she just might make a good steam locomotive fireman ?? It could be worth a shot.... especially if she also has the guts of Kate Shelly.

I joined the group I'm with in 1994 when I was 33 years old. At the time I was the youngest person in our organization. Twenty-nine years later I am now the second youngest person at the age of 61. The youngest being now 29. So it is safe to say young people are just not interested in preservation anymore with few exceptions. There are young railfans out there, but the preferring to sit at trackside and take pictures of trains. That's not my cup of tea.

Quite simply not true. If you don't see the young people involved industry wide, you're not looking. How's your organizations recruitment policy? What incentives do they have to join your group? Just as important, what reasons do they have NOT to?

Every organization I've seen struggle with recruiting and retaining younger individuals puts next to no effort into considering the above, and the challenges they already face presented in this thread.

With all do respect (and you're not the only person I've heard say this, either, not by any short measure) "Young people are not interested, they only want to railfan" is the lazy, 'Boomer' copout for failing to pass the torch. Consider turning the spotlight back on yourselves and your organization instead of the youth to try and find out why they're not coming. You might not think you're a good old boys club, nor intend to be, but when you take a look around the membership just to see "the good old boys", well you might not like it, but I've got news for you...

In my opinion, by and far the most important factors in being successful with this is to 1) Give them a reason to come (work vs. reward) and 2) A welcoming, engaging community.

A friend who coordinates volunteers on a local tourist railroad has expressed frustrations over his latest attempts to attract volunteer help. All of these groups that have aging helpers should be doing everything they can to attract and retain new people. But he says it is very hard--typically he gets new really excited volunteers who come on strong, they return 3-4x and then they vanish. They don't want to do the hard work, get dirty, get hot, or something else better comes along. Plus he feels their wives hammer them when it is going to be a trend to be at the RR and not at home, so they disappear.

Another new trend seems to be young people "booming around" from railroad to railroad every weekend but not really committed to one operation exclusively and on a regular basis. My friend's railroad had to cancel running trains on several occasions because all of his engineers were off running someplace else or they were attending a train show. They also try to train new candidates but it is hard getting commitments to show up for training sessions.

The only real cure to this issue is to pay crews for reliability. Too many say they will help but then cancel out at the last minute and those left are stuck.

Having been a volunteer coordinator myself for four years at one of the nation's premier state-run railroad museums I can tell you there MUST be a mechanism in place for volunteer recognition, or they won't stay. There has to be more of an incentive to attract and retain volunteers beyond just running trains. They need to be thanked, to be made felt part of something meaningful, and need to be appreciated, etc. This can be in the form of staff shaking hands, thanking them for their work, taking a genuine interest in what they are doing and accomplishing, giving awards at the annual banquet, profiling them on the organization's social media page and newsletter, given token gifts for a job well done, paying for and/or serving free lunch on their day of work as a reward, recognition of goals/hours of service achieved, etc. Granted it takes more work but in the end doing so reaps dividends and broadens your mission, builds positive morale and grows the retention of your volunteer corps.

Really this is not an issue of young vs. old but rather one of care and feeding of your ranks. Regardless of your age and standing in life, everybody who volunteers in any non-profit organization has an innate need to feel appreciated and accepted. Since volunteers aren't receiving pay there must be something of real value offered in exchange for their services. Positive face-to-face communication (and recognition) is the key to success.

K.R. Bell

Kurt makes a really good point: there's so much more than just getting folks in the door. Once they're there you've gotta keep em.

And THAT is where having a good inviting dynamic is key. If someone shows up and gets the sense that they're being given the side eye because of their Conrail tattoo, they're also not coming back.

This right here. I was going to say I'm a young person, but if I'm honest with myself, "close to middle age" is more accurate. This is just one of the reasons I no longer volunteer with a somewhat nearby excursion railroad. The infrequent volunteer activities were on weekday nights - which when you work and live an hour and a half or more away, it's impossible to attend. The only recognition were trip vouchers - but with a list of restrictions that for me made them almost unusable. Basically I got tired of driving 3 hours round trip to leave tired, dirty and frustrated.

I've discussed this before. There are, indeed, "volunteer" operations where the only way to ensure "clockwork" opening and assuring that things happen when they are supposed to is paying the workers with the skills, muscles, brains, or driver's licenses to make sure they are there when needed. And not just railroads, but other museums, food banks, tutoring programs, animal sanctuaries, etc. And I won't get into the increasing unwillingness of people to work late/weekends/overtime/etc. for whatever pay in 2023.

We'd love it if every volunteer charity/philanthropy had enough unpaid volunteers to always reliably open, operate, etc. as needed or scheduled. And as long as I'm dreaming delusionally, I'd like world peace, a cure for cancer, and free beer. We are now in an era when I can't even reliably count on a for-profit store, bar or restaurant to be open when I want. Three times in the past week, I've had my hopes for a sandwich, beer, or other purchase dashed by a "Closed--Short On Staff" sign taped to the door.

The danger is that this can create resentment among people who are there for free if/when they find out that so-and-so is quietly paid under the table, or directly with a pay check. The one supervisor's answer to protests to that effect I heard was "Okay, [obese/elderly/weakling volunteer], if YOU'RE ready to show up here EVERY Tuesday and Friday at noon and unload ten tons of food from a truck and reload it into the coolers, be my guest! I'd LOVE to save us that money!!!"

I remain grateful to the volunteers at the IRM who showed up to open the Museum for me and a very small crowd of visitors on the ONLY day I could fit into my schedule to see them when I was in the area a couple years back: an Easter Sunday.

A verbal thank you is always appreciated, but please don’t bother giving me worthless paper "certificates of appreciation". I already have a stack of those. I also have more than enough tee shirts emblazoned with the museum’s logo. If you want to reward me (or any other volunteer) give us something of value that has nothing to do with the museum. For example, a gift certificate to take my long-suffering significant other to dinner at a nice restaurant would be appreciated by both her and me.

/s/ Larry
Lawrence G. Lovejoy, P.E.

Been there, done that, too. I was a college student who would have had to ride a bicycle 45 minutes each way to the enginehouse, and miss both paid-for meals that day at the college dining hall, if I wanted to participate in the all-day-long, sunrise-to-sunset work days. They couldn't find a way for me to just step in at 11 or noon and spend a couple hours scraping rust, painting, or whatever.

The other kicker is the "Volunteer Appreciation Banquet" which gets scheduled on a night where you can't make it, either.

How about not even trying off-work hours? A museum I volunteer at a couple days a year schedules their's on a random Tuesday at 11am. Yet they "don't only cater" to retired volunteers.

Their shop work sessions are also Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9am-1pm. Then everyone breaks for lunch and goes home. No wonder a paint job clocks in at 3-5 years.

But they can't figure out where the "new blood" is.... go figure.

Been there, done that, too. I was a college student who would have had to ride a bicycle 45 minutes each way to the enginehouse, and miss both paid-for meals that day at the college dining hall, if I wanted to participate in the all-day-long, sunrise-to-sunset work days. They couldn't find a way for me to just step in at 11 or noon and spend a couple hours scraping rust, painting, or whatever.

The other kicker is the "Volunteer Appreciation Banquet" which gets scheduled on a night where you can't make it, either.[/quote]

This settles it for a lot of younger folks. Plenty of the ones that would be enthusiastic hard workers are also hard at work building their own lives. That means probably 50+ hrs a week are already committed to employment or education. Severely limited or inflexible volunteer hours can kill any desire to volunteer before they start. I'd love to get more involved where I've volunteered, but their work days are my work days. I've got a family now, so reliably attending weekend sessions is kind of futile. If they'd do a weekday 4-9 PM work party I'd be all over it.

Regarding the issue of why would younger folks WANT to become, and then remain involved, my go-to is how it went at the first place I volunteered. A few of us sought them out and asked to volunteer. They were in dire need of track work for the upcoming season. No problem! The first couple Saturdays were hard work but we were learning and enjoying it. After we could pull and replace a tie on our own, the old guys that ran the show mostly just watched us work unless they were micromanaging or talked about "how lazy kids these days are" and seemed to think we should be thankful for this opportunity to show up at 7 am on our day off from construction labor for even harder labor. Never even asked about so much as a token cab ride, I was informed to not even ask... That's the good ol' boys engine crew turf. It got old quick. Once a hint of summer was in the air, we began to ask ourselves "why are us 20something guys doing this when there's beer to be drank and bikinis to be seen at basically any body of water?" And that was that, it was an amazing summer. I realize that a preservation group is simply not going to be exciting, but you'd be amazed at how many people will volunteer for something just because it's fulfilling. If you need volunteers, but aren't going to make them feel like their free time is well spent and the people leading are worth following, they'll go with something more exciting.