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

[Herb Brannon]

Sorry I mentioned a PRCo on the PRCo list. It could have all been sumed up by saying, "it was too expensive".
"Edward H. Lybarger" <trams2 at comcast.net> wrote:  Yup. He's right, y'know. 

-----Original Message-----
From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org
[mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org] On Behalf Of Fred
Schneider
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 10:19 AM
To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
Subject: [PRCo] Why don't we save your favorite car...

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.













Herb Brannon
   
  Greetings From America's North Coast