Railway museums are taking the Weight Watchers ap-proach to survival. For the first time in the 50 years of organized preservation, mu-

seums are reducing their collections by selling, scrapping, or trading locomo-tives and cars. This is a reversal of the North American railway preservation movement’s “hunter-gatherer” stage. Nothing was more important than ac-quiring whatever was disappearing be-fore the scrapper got it, says John Smat-lak, vice president of collections for California’s Orange Empire Railway Museum. The result was equipment col-lections that outgrew indoor storage ar-eas as well as the owners’ ability to paint, clean, and interpret these large artifacts.

Saved from a sudden death, many pieces experienced a slow one, as years outdoors in the elements took their toll. Roofs leaked, floors and walls buckled, and what had once been well-worn but serviceable pieces became ruins requir-ing expensive and time-consuming resto-

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How railway preservation is getting leaner

by Aaron Isaacs

© 2010 Kalmbach Publishing Co. This material may not be reproducedin any form without permission from the publisher. www.TrainsMag.com

shape up

Santa Fe No. 543 arrived at Illinois Railway Museum after the California State Railroad Museum trimmed its collection. Trains: Jim Wrinn

Slimming down to

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rations. Unsecured sites led to vandalism. To the lay visitor, museums resembled junkyards, and even the best usually had a back lot of unattractive deteriorated pieces. “I liken a lot of railroad museums to orphanages, where all the orphans are starving,” says Nevada State Railroad Museum Director Frank Ackerman.

Occasionally, a piece that was too far gone would be scrapped, but the culture common to most volunteer-based mu-seums prevented the thinning of collec-tions. Activist volunteers vetoed de- accessioning pieces.

That has started to change. Museums are becoming more professional and less like clubs. They are adopting collec-tions policies that define their collec-tions as regional. This has led to non- regional pieces finding their way to museums closer to home.

As museums mature, they are realiz-ing that resources are finite and it’s time to do less, but do it better. The loss of a home or other reasons to relocate have led to downsizing. Electric City Trolley Museum’s move to Scranton, Pa., caused it to shed streetcars. Golden Gate Rail-road Museum was evicted from San Francisco’s Hunters Point Naval base in 2006. On an emergency basis, the mu-seum moved in with the Pacific Loco-motive Association’s Niles Canyon Rail-way across the Bay, but first scrapped or disposed of several pieces.

The California State Railroad Muse-um in Sacramento went through a ma-jor downsizing even while expanding its site. For years it stored equipment in the leased yard behind the former Southern Pacific Sacramento shops. The museum successfully negotiated to acquire the Erecting Shop and Boiler Shop, but the deal included vacating the yard. This led to the disposition of more than 30 piec-es, which the museum did by selecting appropriate recipients. From Santa Fe’s fleet of historic locomotives inherited

years ago, the museum sent Fairbanks-Morse diesel No. 543 to the Illinois Rail-way Museum. Why? The diesel spent its life switching passenger trains at Chica-go’s Dearborn Station.

The most recent homeless case is the Lake Shore Electric Railway museum. Originally known as Trolleyville USA, this was the private collection of Gerald Brookins, who built it in North Olm-stead Falls, Ohio. After his death, the family sold the park in 2001 and the pur-chase agreement set a five-year deadline to move the trolleys. After false starts, the collection was moved to a city-owned warehouse on the Cleveland wa-terfront. The reorganized museum, still with a heavy Brookins family presence, attempted to purchase a lakefront site to join attractions, including the football stadium, science museum, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame & Museum.

Unfortunately, the timing was wrong. The recession hit Ohio hard, and fundraising faltered. The museum sold its 30-car collection and dissolved.

Other museums decided their col-lections were too big to properly store and maintain, and decided to downsize, including the National Railroad Muse-um in Green Bay, Wis., and the Muse-um of Transport in St. Louis. The result was more than 20 pieces were de-acces-sioned, most of which went to new owners. Thus, MOT avoided the need for one large storage shed, while still telling the story it wants to tell.

The Trolley Museum of New York is parting with streetcars and rapid transit cars by scrapping or donating them to other museums. All had suffered from years of outdoor storage.

Because almost all rail museums have a regional focus, non-regional pieces are apparent. Returning those pieces to museums closer to home has happened more often in recent years. Perhaps the best example is the group of

big wood interurbans from the British Columbia Electric Railway. When BCE quit in 1958, six of the cars survived, but five went to the United States. In re-cent years, all five have returned to cities in British Columbia where they used to operate. All have since been restored and, with one exception, are under roof.

The homeward-bound movement, combined with the tightening of collec-tions policies, triggered the large equip-ment swap between the Western Rail-way Museum in Rio Vista Junction, Calif., and the Western Pacific Railroad Museum, located across the Sierras in Portola, Calif. The WP museum wanted to shed non-WP equipment.

Western Railway Museum decided to de-emphasize steam locomotives, while concentrating on Northern California traction. From 1996 to 2006 it shed eight pieces, while erecting a storage building that puts 85 percent of its collection un-der roof. Often the new owner of a piece is able to devote more resources to re-storing it. One former Western Railway Museum piece, Robert Dollar Co. No. 3, a 2-6-2T, had been sitting partially disas-sembled for years. It went to Niles Can-yon Railway, where it runs regularly.

Museums always need money, and Orange Empire Railway Museum con-verted non-regional pieces into cash. It sold San Francisco “Iron Monster” streetcar No. 162 to the San Francisco Municipal Railway and BCE interurban No. 1225 to the city of Surrey, B.C., and used the proceeds for a storage building.

Will the downsizing and homeward-bound trends continue? Probably. There is certainly no shortage of derelict roll-ing stock in museum back yards. All it takes are the brains to think through the decision and the guts to act. 2

AARON ISAACS is editor of Railway Museum Quarterly, the publication of the Association of Railway Museums.

Robert Dollar No. 3 steams again because of downsizing. Trains: Jim Wrinn

© 2010 Kalmbach Publishing Co. This material may not be reproducedin any form without permission from the publisher. www.TrainsMag.com

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