In the bottom posts, there is some discussion about the Steamtown budget versus other NPS facilities with a rerence to budget vs. visitation.

Here's the problem with that sort of analysis. The NPS encompasses (my categories) three types of facilities.

First, the natural area, aka "woodsey owl" parks. They require administration, maintenance, security, interpretation, and some biological/archeological specialists, who usually service multiple locations.

Second, the static historic or industrial sites "President X's home".They require administration, maintenance, security, interpretation, and some biological specialists and occasionally, some external specialists, such as architectural and archeological professionals, who usually service multiple locations.

Third, the dynamic industrial site. There's only one. It requires all of the folks indicated above, plus mechanical specialists giving a notoriously labor intensive machine TLC.

Among the things absent from simple dollar per vistor comparisons are the amount of hours provided by Steamtown volunteers.

If I had my way, there'd be a seperate division in the Park Service devoted to the care and feeding of DYNAMIC industrial sites. The Lima Locomotive Works would have been saved and provided with some sort of way to have demonstrations of foundry operations, drafting and design, including and up to interpretive remanufacturing of key components or at least the maintenance of the "instruments of production" in working order. Similarly, there might be a site devoted to military aviation that kept up old warbirds. There's no shortage of now archaic technologies that in a perfect world, would be preserved.

I understand thats not going to happen. The federal budget is spent in ways that produce the mothers milk of politics, money and votes. Thats not going to change, I fear.

The bottom line is, each park is different. Last summer, former Steamtown Super John Latcher (sp?) visited Steamtown. Despite the fact the Steamtown 10th anniversary celebration fell on the anniversary of the Gettysburg Battle-he took the time to come North. A professional historian, you would think he'd not done that if there wasn't something important in Scranton. I'd love to confirm what I once heard - that Lee's ULTIMATE objective was the desstruction of the Scranton Iron furnaces because he understood what an advantage domestic rail production provided the Union.

The point of bringing up his visit is twofold however. Right now Gettysburg is in the process of restoring the battlefield to its 1863 appearance. Beyond the mindless criticism of "what is the NPS doing cutting down trees", its expensive. If you employ the simple dollar per visit metric, that might not happen.

The NPS is a park SYSTEM, designed to preserve important aspects of NATIONAL importance. Some parks will be unique and not produce the same statistics. Its not like comparing Dollar General Stores X an Y, where the operations are largely similar. Scranton was important-for a lot of reasons. Steamtown is different than any other park.

Is it perfect? No. I still say much criticism that espouses simple answers like "Strasburg would make a profit" to be conceived without consideration for the legal aspects of such an action, let alone the fact Mr. Moedinger seems to be focused on his own operation. Fine place, too.

If you can't volunteer-visit. You decide whether the veracity of the characterization of an inefficient bureacracy has merit. I suspect you'll lean towards a different perspective.

Indeed Steamtown is a horse of a different color in the eyes of the National Park Service. When most people think national parks they either think the great outdoors or the Liberty Bell and Steamtown just does not fit the mold. So comparing Steamtown to Mesa Verde is just not going to work.

Without trying to sound like a flame I can say as a family man, steam nut, and past visitor to Steamtown, on behalf of my family that it is humdrum at best. They just are not hitting the mark. Everything seems so sterile and the presentations feel canned. The train rides do offer the feel of mainline steam but the on-board presentaion lacks. They need to loose the green NPS uniforms and wear railroad clothing and for god's sake get rid of the rangers with guns. Steamtown is on my list to visit once every ten years until they make a drastic change. Too bad for Scranton.

As brother Ross said....maybe if they contracted out the excursions to someone who with "fire in the belly" and just focused on the museum the increased rideship would also increase the visitors through the museum gate. But what do I know, I am just the family guy who visits and tells his friends it is humdrum.

Tom:

The situation you described, with staff wearing visible firearms no longer exists. As a federal installation, there will always be a need for effective security, which is maintained.

Its time to come back. I visited in 1986 or so, rode to Kingsley and walked away frustrated with the feeling of "whats with the OK corral" and felt the same way-I came in 95 where that had changed and stayed.

Your post isn't a flame, but it does contain badly outdated information.

Mr.superheater's above post is well put. Wrong,but well put! His point that the NPS 'system" contains facilities of vastly different charactars and needs is certainly valid,but not the point that will carry the day when the real budget crunch comes. It would be encouraging to think that the NPS organization would be able to effectivly differentiate/catagorize their various facilities as he suggests(and makes sense) but if/when the axe falls and the orders are cut to close the 10 or 15 or 20 most expensive per visitor sites the selection will be done on that formula alone. It gives the carreer NPS folks the political cover needed(sorry-the numbers are the numbers), and the politicians the same.
The reason I'm suggesting that Steamtown out source its operation now is to get in front of the issue. At a cost/visitor of over $50 its got to be the most expensive facility in the system and a certainty to be on the closure list.
I'm confident that if the NPS were to issue an RFP for a D/O with reasonable incentives and parameters it would attract serious responses from a good number of respected,proven industry players. If by doing this the Federal outlay could be reduced from a current $ 5plus million to say $2 million then perhaps it would be able to survive the cut line?? At least it would have a much better chance. And let's say the private sector operator was able thru their free marketing savy to double the current claimed visitorship of 100,000(if you believe that) to 200,000 then the cost/visitor # is even better.
In all likelyhood there's very little chance of this happening before axe time and my hope is that when that day comes the facility will end up with the County who will almost certainly go the D/O route (as they handle their county owned resort properties).
It will be interesting to see how it plays out.
Ross Rowland.....no s please

Last time I went was a couple of years ago, I rode one of the all day excursions on the old D&H and planned on spending the weekend. We were going to camp at Lackawanna State park and visit the museum the next day. When we returned and got off the train we asked to use the restoroom facilities and were told, NO, everything is closed. We got in our SUV drove away never to return. In a private business they know if the public gets off the train and can't use the can, they might not come back and it could impact the bottom line. The NPS does not worry about the bottom line because the public has always come to the Grand Canyon and Washington send the money no matter how bad the NPS performs. Again, I am not trying to flame here, this is a real life experience and why my and my family have not been back.

Steamtown is not the only "big iron" park in the National Park System, and I think budget to visitors ratio is very important. Other "big iron" parks besides Steamtown are:

Hyde Street Pier ships

Lowell Massachusetts, cotton mills

Golden Spike National Monument

Comparing these with Steamtown would be interesting (and comparing them with state institutions such as Cal. State RR Museum and Nevada Museum).

I agree softwerkslex that those comparisons would be instructive and interesting. Perhaps one of our active posters has the computer skills and the time to use the link to the NPS budget and retrieve those #'s for us???
I made an attempt and it's beyond my very poor computer skills.
Ross Rowland...no s please.......

As to comparison, I just looked at the Golden Spike NHS. Looks like the budget is a low $827,000. Fairly cheap actually. Total 2004 visitors was just about 46,000 people. Comes out to about $18 per visitor. You might want to check my math.

You are all leaving out one important consideration. In many cases, and not in all, its about jobs. Not historic preservation or anything like that. I would suspect Steamtown could be fairly safe when looking at jobs creation and at who their politicians are.

I have dealt with the federal budget for more than 20 years. Take off the blinders just a bit and really think about why money is spent where it is spent.

J.R. May

Like I said before, its about jobs. I was curious as to how this thing was created and I found the following. Some of you probably know this already, but I didn't.
J.R.


First elected to a largely Democratic district in 1962, Joe McDade (R-PA) was one of the few Republicans left standing following the Johnson landslide in 1964. The Republican defeats, especially members on Appropriations, were a benefit to McDade; it left a slot open to be filled by the sophomore legislator from Scranton. When he was first appointed to the Appropriations Committee, he must have been elated; there is little reason to doubt that he was not thrilled with his subcommittee assignments. The Ranking Republican on the committee awarded him slots on the District of Columbia, and Interior Subcommittees. Service on the DC subcommittee was a right of passage, a task which many members were to make a contribution at some point. What must have been exasperating was his appointment to the Subcommittee on Interior.
Joe McDade, who represented a poor mixed urban and rural district, with a declining industrial base, likely would have seen little use for his constituency in his initial subcommittee assignments. With little public land and no National Parks in his district it seemingly would be impossible to appropriate money to help Scranton and the surrounding areas. However, as the case of Ron Packard described above illustrates, a creative legislator can often find a way to help his or her district as a member of any subcommittee: Joe McDade did it by creating a National Park in his district.

In 1984 the city of Scranton bought a collection of steam locomotives from a collector. F. Nelson Blount, of Vermont; city leaders envisioned Steamtown as a railroad museum that would provide a tourist destination and help replace the jobs that were being lost to deindustrialization.
Austin Burke, President of the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce, projected in a 1984 letter that the facility would employ 10 full-time and 28 part-time with an overall operating budget of $1.5 million; the total economic impact of the operation of the facility would add $1.9million to the local economy and create “hundreds of construction jobs annually for the next several years...the renovation of historic buildings has always been much more labor intensive than new construction.”18 Within a few years the costs involved in maintaining and restoring the antique trains forced Steamtown into bankruptcy, and led Steamtown supporters to petition Joe McDade for help in finding support for the threatened project.
On September 18, 1986 McDade introduced H.R 5555 to designate Steamtown as a National Historic Site. In his testimony before the Interior Subcommittee on Public Lands McDade hailed Steamtown as “an historic treasure that should be preserved for future generations...It has unlimited possibilities for bringing to life an important part of our history – America’s Steam Age.”19 As adopted by the Subcommittee, and subsequently by the full Interior Committee, the legislation directed the Secretary of the Interior to administer the site, create a management plan for Steamtown Site, study the transfer of the site to the National Park Service and, important for helping to ensure future appropriations, authorized $35 million for the administration of the Steamtown National Historic Site.20 Once the initial funding was in place funding for Steamtown was annually challenged by anti-pork groups and some fellow members of Congress. However, as ranking member of the Interior Subcommittee and later the Defense Subcommittee, he was able to maintain support for Steamtown using his influence in the House Appropriations Committee and use his connections to the Senate Interior Appropriations Chair, Robert Byrd (D) of neighboring West Virginia, to protect the investment in Steamtown. With the opening of Steamtown in 1995 (about $100 million dollars later) the facility became a permanent fixture in the National Park Service budget. Less well-known, but equally impressive in scale, was McDade’s efforts to create and expand the Delaware Gap National Recreational Area in Northeastern Pennsylvania. For instance, in the same year that McDade secured initial funding for Steamtown he also inserted appropriations totaling $8.5 million to expand, improve, and operate Delaware Gap.

Mr. McDade is now retired and the district is represented by a junior Congressman with no where near the clout that McDade had. That's one of the reasons I'm suggesting that Steamtown think seriously about getting in front of the inevitable budget axe.
Ross Rowland.....no s please...........

Still got Weldon, Murtha, and Spectar. They are known to me, I'm not sure about the power the others may have, but those three (well mostly Weldon) do wield some power.

For a junior guy, he's doing alright for himself. Data on Don Sherwood is available at http://www.house.gov/sherwood/bio.shtml.

Don't get me wrong, I do agree that a different approach may be needed. I'm just not sure its as simple as contracting out the operation.

IMHO, there is no comparison. The Golden Spike NHS has very little infrastructure. A 3,000 sf visitors center, two stall enginehouse, two miles of track and two 1979 vintage steam engines. They don't have any other rolling stock. Probably only 3 or 4 switches on the whole line. How many full time staff members do they have? I would say maybe 5 or 6 at most.

Its worth the visit, but it doesn't compare to Steamtown in any other way than both are about railroads.

Chris

> Its worth the visit, but it doesn't compare to Steamtown in
> any other way than both are about railroads.

And therein lies the problem. When talking federal dollars, its not about railroads or history. Its about funding amounts, its about numbers of visitors, and in some cases its about jobs created. You really have to understand the funding process in DC. It is based on a different reality than most people in the rail preservation community are used to.