[PRCo] Why don't we save your favorite car...

[Fred Schneider]

OK GUYS, BACK TO PLANET EARTH.

The thread about saving a 3800 is a railfan thread...

I'd like to have a 3800 too.   I would also like to ride the night  
sleeper on the Indiana Railroad from Indianapolis to Louisville.

I'm a railfan.  Everyone on this list is a railfan.   I'm also a  
realist and an economist.

It takes something like $100,000 to put a building over each car in  
today's dollars.   The building also has to be insured, heated,  
protected from fire.  Someone had to pay for the land on which it  
sits.  After you've bought that sucker, I think we can conservatively  
say it costs $2000 to $3000 a year just to keep a roof over that car  
even if you don't run it.  (I've not looked at the PTM budget when I  
spout these numbers and it would be difficult to segregate old land  
purchases anyway.  I do have a rough idea what the blimp hanger  
cost.)   That figure probably escalates at somewhere around 5% every  
year.   That is just a roof and walls.   I didn't factor in other  
overhead such as staff costs to paint it, its share of the reference  
library, it's share of the alarm system, it's share of the paving  
costs, it's share of Scott Becker's salary to raise money to fund  
related improvements ... want me to keep going?

The public has to pay that money.  The railfans are not paying it.

And the public doesn't give a rat's ass about a 3800.

The public thinks the sound of the air compressor is the engine that  
makes the trolley go.

The public calls it a choo-choo.  I listened to a lady last weekend  
huffing and puffing to her child.

The public doesn't know the difference between a train and a trolley  
car.   Read what Linn Moedinger has to say about the Strasburg Rail  
Road in the last issue of Trains magazine.   He notes that he (and we  
too for that matter) are no longer in the reminiscence business  
because there are no longer people left to remind of their youth.    
Trains and trolleys are so far into the background that we no longer  
get people coming who want to be reminded.  They are no longer  
bringing their children.   They aren't even bringing their grand  
children in larger numbers today.   Now we are in the education and  
entertainment business.  AND IF WE FAIL TO GET THAT RIGHT, WE DON'T  
MAKE MONEY.

Railways to Yesterday has a beautiful rebuilt York Railways car.  The  
original was a four-motor car.   The car they brought back to life  
from a hunting cabin is a two-motor car.   I know that.   They know  
that.   They public doesn't know nor care.

PTM's 4398 is a high speed car with a ramped floor and a Washington  
City roll sign in one end.  As a high speed car, it did not have a  
ramped floor.   There was never a high speed K-control car in  
Washington.   That part of the system always used HL-control, low- 
speed cars.  The public neither knows nor cares.   The Washington  
sign brings in money.   It helps to pay for our toys and supports the  
library.

You could put a brand new bus in your museum on steel wheels, call it  
a trolley car and the public will believe you.

We are in the entertainment business.   Our employees need to  
understand they come from Central Casting.   And fortunately, at PTM,  
all but about two or three do understand.

Some of us on this list have had private discussions about  
rationalizing museum collections.  I suspect that some of the cars at  
PTM will disappear because the public won't support the weight.  It  
will happen after their supporters die.  I'm sure that will be true  
at other museums.   We know that the number of railfans is declining  
and therefore they cannot possibly support all that has been  
collected so far.

So it doesn't really matter if a 3800 wasn't saved.   Car 3756 runs  
about as fast as a 3800.   Philly 5326 came from the same decade.   
That's good enough.   It beats paying $3000 now to save a 3800 and  
which could escalate to $6800 a year in ten more years.   And yet  
some museums, which I'm resisting naming, still haul in sheds and out  
buildings from around the country with the idea that they are going  
to restore them in the future.   I think the odds are probably 9 to 1  
against it.

What does matter is that we have a collection of reasonably  
representative cars over time that look nice, that the property is  
presentable, that the rest rooms are clean, that the public always  
has a new experience when they come back a second or third or fourth  
time, that we treat them well and make them feel like we want them as  
our customers, that we don't bore them with trivia about motors, that  
we do tell them about how the industry fit in with the people in the  
community.  I think I've pointed out before that about 1 to 2 percent  
of PTM's visitors (except on days like the 4398 roll out) are  
railfans and 98 to 99 percent are the general public.   The fact that  
98 to 99 percent are the general public is what makes it possible to  
get millions of dollars in grants from foundations.

If you are having trouble understanding the concept ...

My father, who remembered being passed by an Ohio Electric interurban  
car on its last legs as he drove along the National Pike near  
Zanesville Ohio in his aunt's 1927 Chevrolet died at age 90 ten years  
ago.   Bob Brown and Harry Bartley, who were founders of PTM, were in  
my father's age group.

The last charter member of both groups that merged in 1935 to form  
the National Railway Historical Society is James P. Shuman.   Jim is  
struggling to hang on to life in a nursing home a half mile from  
where I'm typing.   He was born in 1914.  Makes him 94 now.   He rode  
the Indiana Railroad, the Cincinnati and Lake Erie, the Dayton and  
Western, the Lake Shore Electric.   He was a personal friend of Bill  
Janssen, George Krambles, Bob Mehlenbeck and many of the other now  
deceased members of CERA.

I was the young kid on the block.   I missed the Lehigh Valley  
Transit.   I only got to ride a few blocks on West Penn at age 12  
with my dad chasing the car.   I did ride both Pittsburgh interurbans  
at age 13 and I rode a little of Quebec Ry. Lt. & Power and Montreal  
and Southern Counties at age 13.   The kid on the block, who saw a  
few things at the tail end of their existence, and who saw Pittsburgh  
Railways PCCs with the red paint washed off the top of the cream, is  
now 68.  And if I'm lucky, I've got 10 or 15 or 20 years left.  But I  
didn't grow up knowing the industry in its prime.   I grew up seeing  
it in decay.   Same with steam ... I rode at 75 mph behind a couple  
of Pennsy K4s in New Jersey but they were chartered trains that  
caused PRSL to reach deep into the power inventory when they just  
didn't have enough diesels in 1956 to handle the five Grocers Picnic  
trains in one day.