Given that the discourse over the last few days has been going hot n' heavy re: the subject of museums with large collections, I have been revisiting the concept of a small museum in my mind.

I am speaking of a entity based upon a modest structure ( a passenger station or freight house) with a short display track capable of displaying a small number of pieces.

My thought is: a small collection is far more easily maintained in acceptable condition based upon the resources at hand.

Any thoughts from the hoi palloi on the efficacy of small railroad museums ?

For example, wouldn't the interests of the Erie 5012 be better served if it were to serve at the centerpiece of a small collection ?

Dave

Dave:

Sounds good. And it should work! But then, take a look at the "Alabama Central 29" thread of a couple of days ago. Here is a local "Mining Museum" presumably (not 100% certain) run by the County. Five buildings: gym (?), two schools (including a one room school), local post office and a wooden small-town type depot. Now look at the railroad display. AC 2-8-0 # 29, an ore car and ex-CB&Q steel streamlined cupola caboose. The Consolidation looks as if it hasn't been touched in years. Rust showing through the tender. A small museum with this limited number of artifacts should have been able to keep this stuff painted at least. So I don't know, maybe the problem is; small museum= limited amount of volunteers.

Perhaps though, this museum is not atypical. What we would need is some more examples. See if it works, or doesn't.

Les

We are small; a restored station, two runs of track, four cabooses, one diesel, hopper, gondola, flat car and tank car. All static displayed at this time but when we get the funding (donations mostly) we plan to lay about a mile and a half of rail and run a small excursion to improve cash flow for restoration on the rolling stock. Currently there is one person doing restorations. Guess who that is? So our current funding matches our efforts. But as stated in an earlier post, we do get corporate donations as well. They go to acquisition and moving of rolling stock.

Later!
Mr. Ed

Dave:

> My thought is: a small collection is far more easily maintained in
> acceptable condition based upon the resources at hand.

> Any thoughts from the hoi palloi on the efficacy of small railroad
> museums ?

Whether it be a small museum or large, as we have seen in recent postings, the issues are identical, although their scale differs. A larger museum has more members and in theory more income to spread over their larger collection. A small museum as you depict would most likely have a smaller budget and a smaller group of volunteers. Thus you may end up with some element of the small collection that would be on the back burner versus other items in the small collection. A larger museum has the same problem, but just has more items on the RIP track.

> For example, wouldn't the interests of the Erie 5012 be better served
> if it were to serve at the centerpiece of a small collection ?

In a perfect world, this may work. My experience has been that a piece of rolling stock is not a good center piece. Here in NJ there have been some success stories with station focused historical societies which work quite well. The station is restored, used as a museum and also as a meeting place for various civic organizations. That would be the center piece. While the 5012 might fit well in such a setting, it would always be the step child to the station.

And, as they say "size does not matter." In most cases, something will be ignored and is a fact of life within the preservation movement.

J.R.

Small museums can do bigger things than bigger museums, assuming all their efforts and resources are focussed rather than dispersed to the point where nothing worth doing is finished, because there are too many things being done by a bigger one.

Visit New Hope Valley RR near Raleigh, NC on an operating weekend. They are keeping themselves managable in size of collections, and well focussed on their presentation to the public. Every year they get more professional and improve their limited stock of equipment, their site, and their visitor experience. There are several similar examples out there like this one.

Contrast this to several massive collections of stuff we are all familiar with, mostly deteriorating, with efforts being made on many fronts, incapable of keeping up with, much less getting ahead of, the rigors of whatever operating / interpretive program they might pursue combined with natural attrition.

If I were starting a museum, i would write a mission statement with narrowly defined achievable directives, and a business plan that stays small but enthusiastically involved. Better to do a few things well than a lot of things badly.

dave

We have tried to keep the focus of the Erie Lackawanna Dining Car Preservation Society very focused. The dining car was the focal point of long distance passenger travel. By recreating the dining car experience we hope to entertain and educate while preserving a little piece of history.