If any one is so inclined, check out the Maine Narrow Gauge with respect to operation and a "traveling" engine. Monson #3 has been trucked to and steamed in many locations with and without track and cars. We have even brought our own cars. The size of our equipment is in our favor. Nonetheless these engines and cars are real railroad, authentic, and historic equipment. Monson #3 has been trucked to and operated at the WW&F (Alna,ME.), Strong Me. (track built on SR&RL right of way), Monson, Me., Bedford, Ma. (on abandoned B&M track that was pushed in to two foot gauge), Beverly, Ma. for the Historical society (steamed on lowboy truck), Yarmouth,Me for the yarmouth clam festival, Harrison, Me. (near B&H right of way, run on temporary track with one coach) for the Harrison Bicentennial, etc., you get the idea. Monson #3 has been as far west as California and is now at Phillips, Me., operating on SR&RL right of way. We have had hundreds of people pass through the cab of a hot engine and pulled thousands in our cars and generated income and untold good will.
Rick.

I wonder how many operating days most museum steamers use up before the calendar days expire?

Sharing a locomotive could provide hundreds more operating days to recapture the capitalization of the overhaul, and set up funds for the next one.

There is a TINY 2-8-2 in Arkansas that comes to mind.......

dave

There's zero question that a live operating steam loco. is a far stronger draw than a static one. If you look at the attendance figures of the rr museums that have a "live" component vs. those that are static only the verdict is crystal clear.
However Mark Bassett makes a critically important point regarding both preserving the knowledge base and allocating sufficient resources(both human and financial) so that downstream there exists the ability to keep the machine in good working order.
Seems to me that the real chances of our industry maturing to the point that "sharing" a loco. amongst a number of different properties is very slim. Hope I'm proven wrong but that's how I see it.
Ross Rowland

Jim:

If you commit your organization to an operable steam locomotive, as I see it, you really need two and preferably three locomotives. One to run, the second as a backup in case some problem occurs with the first one and a third undergoing restoration. I have seen a number of operations that have advertised steam, or where visitors have expected steam, that do not have a steam locomotive available. This eventually hurts visitation.

You could get by with two, but better to have a third "in the shop."

Likewise, more than three is 'overkill,' unless the others are strictly going to be display and non-operational.

Les

Dependent, Les, on the operational intensity and available talent and facilities.

I ran a daily, brutally challenging steam operation with 3 (sometimes 2) steamers serviceable - one on the train, one ready to fire up, and one undergoing some form of repair.

A smaller operation running steam one day a month, just puttering around, with lots of mechanical ability to fix anything that breaks before the next monthly date, one may be plenty.

Provided the expectations raised are like the ability to meet them, no problem. Unmet expectations, definitely a problem.

Ross - I can only hope that economic realities bring about the loss of marginal operations, and those unable to evolve, before they tar us all with a bad brush. Just this year there have been a couple narrowly averted potential disasters that, apart from dumb luck, could have shut us all down. Sharing resources to make several operations less marginal and offer a better visitor experience could move some organizations out of this camp into something that could prosper, and benefit us all instead.

dave

You are so right Dave that one bad incident could shut the whole show down. I was an eye witness not too long ago to an operation (not by any means on a marginal property) that came so close to a tragic ending it still gives me the shivers. Fortunatly the carrier had the good sense to purge those responsible for the mis-management and to make other "adjustments" to insure that it won't be repeated at least on their property, but it certainly illustrated to me how scary steam can be in the wrong hands!
Let's hope our guardian angel stays with us!
Ross Rowland

Gentlemen (I did't see any replies that appeared to be from ladies): I truly thank you for all your replies. I'll get back in a few days to comment on them, when I'm not so tired. My daughter and family just bought the house next door to me and it is a real fixer-upper. Guess who's doing all the grunt work? I haven't worked so hard since I was going dead on the law several days straight when we were running SP2353. At least the railroad has a 12 hour time limit; fixing-upping doesn't! Whew.

Jim Baker

Gentlemen: Well, I’ve now had some time to digest all your great comments. I’ll reply here to those that I thought had the most relevance to my situation.

Scott Cessna had a good comment in regard to having a good collection/accession policy. We have one, but in my opinion, it is either too broad, or is being interpreted too broadly by those in charge. If you get right down to it, practically anything that ever moved on a rail could be included. I’ll encourage our Board to try to get more specific.

Several people, Bob Kutella, bobyar2001, John Bohon, Ross Rowland, and Mark Bassett said essentially said that an operating locomotive is the way to go but mentioned a number of cautions about doing so. The main thing seems to be PLAN, PLAN, PLAN. I totally agree.

In fact, we did put an engine in operation 10 years ago. It took us 10 years to get the job done, and then we operated for five years. It turned out that the planning wasn’t all that great, and we didn’t have enough money to really let people know we were even there, let alone running steam. Our annual ridership was less than Mark Bassett’s, and we’ve got over 3 million people within a 2-hour drive. We’re a ways out of town, but certainly not in the real boondocks like Ely. Our 5th annual inspection revealed a crack in the firebox, that I suspect was there for the five years we were running. So, yes, we do have some experience in running steam, and we are aware of some of the pitfalls involved. There are a number of things that we’d do differently, if we ever get the opportunity to do it again.

I’m very familiar with Mark Bassett’s operation; I was there for about 10 days in May, and worked in the shop with his crew. A great learning experience.

Les Beckman suggested that we have two, or possibly three operational locomotives, so we’ll always have a back up. I couldn’t agree more! In our past operation we had to cancel a few trains, due to repairs that needed to be made. Also, a couple of times we had people wanting to charter the engine, but we couldn’t do it because the locomotive was in the middle of its annual inspection. At this time, we have two engines that appear to be good candidates for putting into operation. And, we do have an “expert” lined up to give us some starting “guesstimates” on what the project(s) will cost.

But to the answers to my original questions, it appears that the answer is that an operational locomotive is preferable to a display one, but with lots of caveats.

Thanks again for all your input.

Great collection of responses.

I'll share one more. There's another side here that a great deal of the public comes to a rail museum expecting something, anything, to just MOVE.

It doesn't have to be steam, necessarily, although that is nice if you can actually pull it off. It doesn't have to be all the time.

We just finished a recent ridership survey with a client with the name "railroad museum" in the title. They have pretty good attendance, but they also operate a regular schedule.

Fact: 83% of the visitors came for a "TRAIN RIDE", only 11% called themselves railfans, and only 4% came as educational/history.

As long as your survival and/or grants are tied to actually having people in the door with attendance, and keeping volunteers motivated with participating in something that moves, it's a significant issue to move from a static display to actual operation.

FYI, in the same survey, 43% really preferred steam and were willing to pay higher ticket prices to get it.

WOW! Real numbers - thanks, Randy. Keep 'em coming.

Makes that little saddletanker that is cheap to fuel and relatively easy to maintain seem as if it might be a reasonable priority.

dave