[PRCo] Re: West Penn Cars at PTM

[Greg King]

Hi Fred,

You are making perfect sense, this is along the thread of what I started
some months ago of what a museum should look like. Crich in the UK have got
it right, Ferrymead in NZ have got it right and the Sydney Museum (of which
I am a member) are getting it right. They have a street (in ferry mead it's
nearly all in street) with typical streetcar era street furniture, in the
case of Crich, they have a relocated town hall facade which is there library
and a reconstructed pub, In Sydney, we are in the fianl design stage of
relocating a four story YMCA building that had a National Trust
classification, the Facade will be built along side the main shed at the
lower entrence level where the cars run in street, you will be able to go
upstairs in the building etc. We also have a huge tram waiting shed and
signal box (interlocking tower) retored at the main junction that came from
right in the heart of Sydney. Not bad for a museum that started electric
operation in 1965 and had to move to a new site in 1988!

The point is, the whole atmosphere is important, like you said, streetcars
ran in streets, a line through the woods is fine, but why bother string wire
if it's just a line that the car runs on without the "big picture"?
Actually, one of the best museum lines I saw in the US was Kelly Park in San
Jose, the line itself is painfully short BUT, they have a recreated town
with relocated historical buildings and there are plans to extend the line.
Their best exhibit is old Fred!! His skill and craftsmanship in restoration
is a joy to behold. Anyone that is going to the West Coast should treat
themselves to a visit.

Cheers
Greg
> Ed:
>
> Glad to hear that Seashore is trying to get a grip on it.  The fear of
> bankruptcy does have the ability to wake up some people.
>
> Some of the things they probably still need to learn (and so do most
> museums) is that their crews should be straight out of central casting.
> They should understand how to run a car but they also need to be actors
> right out of 1920, or 1930, or 1900, whatever.  They also need to
> understand that the public doesn't want to know that this car has 4 101B
> motors and K35 control and straight air valves and a DH16 compressor and
> that it was built in 1915, and that it ran on property A until 1922,
> then on property B, and then that we bought it in 1951 ... are you
> throughly bored yet?  If not we can keep trying.
>
> I'm suggesting that we be capable of recreating 1900 or 1920, and how
> people lived, and why they used the trolley, and why they went shopping
> for perishable groceries at the corner store every day (because
> refrigerators were a 1930s thing), why you rode the trolley to work
> instead of your horse (old Dobbin didn't like standing in the sun for
> twelve hours like your car does) and why twelve hours (because it was
> simply accepted that people worked 60 to 80 hours a week).  And that
> they used the trolley to go to the cemetery on Sunday afternoon to lay
> flowers on Aunt Matilda's grave because that is just the thing you did
> on Sunday.  And I'm suggesting that, if needed, we even have people with
> props on the car ... the lady with flowers who gets off at the grave
> yard and the woman with a live chicken for dinner (caged of course), and
> the kid who gets on the car to peddle newspapers.
>
> Or am I not making sense?
>