Today we'll start again with what everybody else was doing. It was cold and dreary, and most visitors seem to have decided to stay home. But our volunteers always have things to do, so they're as active as ever.
Progress is obvious on the south extension of the parking lot. Eventually, the main visitor entrance will be at the south end of the parking lot, rather than the current northeast corner, so this is an important step forward.
Dave is rolling out the gravel.
Next, let's go over to Barn 10 and check out Victor and Bill's progress on the B&O wagontop boxcar. It's sandwiched inbetween the other cars, so photography is difficult, but the lettering looks great.
And then progress continues on the Pennsy bobber.
New siding is being installed.
At this end, siding is stacked up for replacement.
Inside, paint is being stripped in preparation for repainting.
Sorry, they don't always look so grim. Must be stage fright or something.
Outside, the track crew are busy fixing a switch leading into Yard 10. These guys have to keep working in almost any kind of weather.
Max seems to have worked himself into a hole. At least John Jr. is there to supervise. Actually, fiber optic cable is being installed to provide better communication between the office and the Schroeder Store and (future) Visitor's Center, for things like card readers and other important business data. Underground where you can't see it, our 1950's Main Street will be very much up-to-date.
Over in the car shop, work is starting on another MD car door.
The first one has been installed on the 213. It looks great!
The second one seems to have been made to lower standards. I can't understand it....
This ridiculous thing wound up on track 40. It's being scrapped for parts, I believe.
In employment agency news, the so-called "new cat" has found a steady job, so he won't be hanging around annoying Mr. Socks and asking for handouts. One of our volunteers had a friend who keeps horses, and needed a cat to keep mice out of the horse barn. So Tim managed to lure him into the cat carrier, and the cat now has a full-time position where he will be appreciated. He's certainly not the only individual to find a job through IRM!
I would have liked to do some painting today, but it was too cold and damp. So I spent most of the day working on seats in the 309. These seats, for some reason, have given more trouble over the years than the other three cars combined. Anyway, after some more disassembly, lubrication, adjustment, and replacement, most of them are working pretty well.
New shims for the seat backs. For some reason, it generally seems that the seat backs have shrunk relative to the frame, so that the brackets come out of the tracks. It's complicated, too hard to explain over the internet. Sorry. You have to try it for yourself.
And then I spent some time trying to see if we could get the cab heaters working on some of the wood cars. The cars used portable cab heaters that would be hung on a bracket on the train door, as seen below. I checked out the electrical circuits on the 308 and 309, and they seem OK. After more trouble than it was worth, I found a cab heater that looked fine and passed the megger test. But it turns out the plugs are not the right type; this one must have come from the North Shore or CRT. I'll just have to keep looking.
Finally....
I joined the Museum in 1974. Recently I made a list of about thirty names of people I met back in the seventies who are still active at the Museum. Many of these guys have been members longer than I have, and many of them I see almost every week. A couple of them whom I hadn't seen for a while wandered by while I was in the shop, so here's an impromptu old-timers reunion:
From left to right: John McKelvey, Bill Wulfert, Les Ascher, Wally Osty. Bill is out every week, and John shows up almost every day. And of course there were several more that I saw at other times today: Norm, Tim, Al, Joe, Bob, Gregg.... Beyond these, there are some, such as Randy Anderson, Steve Iversen, and Pete Schmidt, who are still very attached to IRM but live too far away to come out very often. I doubt there are many organizations of this sort in existence that can boast of similar loyalty.
4 comments:
Hi Randy. First time commenter, long time reader.
The section regarding the group of your fellow volunteers from the 70's brings up an interested point. Being that most of the museum's volunteers appear to be on the "seasoned" side, is there any concern about attracting enough of the younger generations to eventually replace them? I'm sure that it's a big concern with the brass over there, especially considering how the museum is completely dependent on volunteers. Similar to the problem our American workforce is having with all the baby boomers starting to retire. That's a huge void to fill.
Doug Kuchars
Doug: You raise a very valid concern, but actually I think the Museum is doing a good job of attracting younger volunteers. They didn't appear in this post, but we've seen them before. That's important, and of course we could always use more people of any age. But the younger volunteers represent the future of the Museum, and perhaps we should be asking ourselves what we could be doing better in this regard. On the other hand, retired people constitute a huge pool of potential volunteers, and as more people retire we have more to recruit from. So I feel cautiously optimistic about the long-term prospects for the Museum.
I might also point out that other organizations of various types face the same problem: people say "We're all getting old, we're all going to die, who's going to be left to keep this museum/club/chorus/orchestra going???" But they somehow manage to survive, usually. As I say, there are always new retirees coming along who have time on their hands.
But this is indeed a question of vital importance. I'd love to hear other people's input.
I'm a young person. Not an IRM member, but not not a railway museum preservationist. Every time I visit IRM it seems to be in good shape with volunteer age. The steam department looks like a different generation than when 1630 went cold years ago.
There is a huge amount of youth in the Steam Shop which is good. There is also a good dedicated group of younger preservationists that work with me in maintaining the fleet of Electric Cars. We always encourage more volunteers especially younger so they can learn what the older ones have done right and wrong over the years. I feel that's the other part of the "Educational Corporation" that we are. That we also educate our work staff especially in skills that aren't around these days.
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