I was thinking about going up to the Strasburg Railroad this weekend (August 27-28, 2004) and wanted to check their schedule and stumbled into their survey.

If you go to the official Strasburg Railroad webpage, look to the upper right hand corner of the main page and you will see three pictures: the hand cart, the J tower and three Amish children. Those pictures fades out and then "Take Our Survey" comes into view. Click on that and start answering their questions. Two of the responses I typed in was that I wanted them to take a page from the "Baseball Fantasy Camps" and have a "Railroaders' Fantasy Camp". Also, they need to have volunteer opportunites at SRR. For people who are SRR fans, after riding the train a certain number of times, they need to move up to the next level of involvement otherwise, it's a "Been There, Done That" type of thing that sets in.

Click on the URL below to get to the official survey section ...

http://www.strasburgrailroad.com/

I think Strasburg gave up on volunteers some years ago, when they started progressing into a full-scale business. Lynn Moedinger recently noted they do not have staff or time enough, for instance, to offer an engineer for an hour program. Unlike most tourist lines, Strasburg is a bustling place, surviving on good business practices that many major railroads would do well to emulate. It is definitely not just a bunch of guys playing train.

The RR Museum of Pennsylvania, just across the road, however, has ample volunteer opportunities for enthusiasts to get their hands dirty, and a lot of restoration work still waiting to be done.

I'm sure Strasburg is grateful that people form a strong attachment to the place, and many times we've discussed the influence SRR had on many of us as children. It certainly did on me.

But the fact remains they are not a museum or a nonprofit organization, they are now a professionally-run small to mid-sized for-profit business. They are not organized to recruit, train, supervise, coordinate, schedule, or insure volunteers. Starting a volunteer program would probably just distract management from running a high-quality tourist railroad that delivers value to the customers and employment to the local folks.

And speaking of employment, they do hire from time to time--anyone willing to really make the kind of committment SRR's management asks of its employees can probably get a job there with a little trying.

With so many other places needing volunteers--including Wilmington and Western right down the road, which runs steam and old coaches and pretty much does everything SRR does, why not give our labor to places where it is really needed instead of a place that's doing fine without it?

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The Strasburg Railroad, as said, is indeed a business. They are not a non-profit organization but rather trying to make the tourist dollar to keep their business operating. It has its pros and cons I'm sure, but they're doing well. As for volunteers there, it's not a non-profit group. They're not going to spend the money to train volunteers, pardon the pun. The steam industry is a very specialized field and there's plenty of people that already are involved. A lot of people to start volunteer at the non-profit groups, then at that point gain experience and can work their way up into the cab. The guys working at Strasburg...this is how they make a living. Volunteers would take away the need from those that rely on steam to give them an income. Also keep in mind the location of the Strasburg Railroad. This is amish PA, Lancaster County, and the SRC provides jobs and brings people to the area.

As for volunteering at the RRMPA, I don't think many people would be as interested because after your hard work you don't have the rewarding experience of getting in the cab and test running the thing after you're finished since they are just cosmetically restored. The mechanical overhaul aspects are of course the most important, however a lot of people interested in getting involved with railroads want to be able to sit at the throttle and blow the whistle, and many are oblivious to the aspects of the restoration in the first place, then the necessary maintenance to keep it going. Restoring a locomotive cosmetically only is comparable to embalming and putting make-up on a cadaver in preparation for a wake, while the guys across the street Strasburg are the doctors trying to bring life back into old machines and make them operable again. Not like the cosmetic restorations aren't easy, but you have to give credit to the Strasburg people who restore the locomotives mechanically to operation. They do what they do well, just look at their crowds. You know they're doing something right. Regardless, cosmetic restoration is an intricate process (look at the V&T engines at Sacramento or Nevada), however its much better when combined with a full restoration to operation :) . If you look at restorations by Dan Markoff with the Eureka, or Chris DeWitt with both the Inyo (operable) and Dayton (static), you can keep a locomotive looking just as spiffy operating it if you can take care of it nicely.

The "engineer for a day" programs are offered in several places. The Valley Railroad in Essex does it on an "off" day when there aren't revenue passengers in tow. That would be a lawsuit waiting to happen. However, Roaring Camp's program involves revenue passengers, but I don't know if they are under FRA. Both programs of course, as do all, give training before you just sit someone up in the right hand seat at the throttle. The Strasburg Railroad is too busy to offer this, and it isn't exactly an ideal place to do this. You have a few crossings (2 at least if I can remember), Amish folk in buggies that could potentially stall at any time in the middle of a crossing...imagine that if a guest engineer was there. No doubt he wouldn't be able to stop the train in time because on a first day of operating you're not familiar with the sensitivity of the throttle and how to operate the train and locomotive brakes properly. Each steam locomotive is, for the most part, a different personality. You must get to know them, and respect them...at that point they might be nice back. Being violent at the controls and threatening to scrap it won't get you too many points :)

-Ed Kelley