JMann Wrote:
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> When I visited the Illinois Railway Museum I
> talked to one of the people there about the barns.
> He made a great point. He said "the best way to
> drive away volunteers is to have them restore a
> piece of equipment then 10 years later ask them to
> do it all over again because it was left out in
> the weather." The barns pay for themselves many
> times over. It's not just the labor involved but
> the materials too. Knowing a piece of equipment
> will be safely tucked into a building when
> restored gives more incentive to get the job done.
> Anyone who has spent any time restoring a piece
> of railroad equipment knows the amount of hard
> labor that goes into the restoration of just one
> piece. The IRM collection is huge and has an
> amazingly large number of fully restored pieces.
> Without the barns it would look like a scrappers
> lot like so many other collections. I wish we had
> big barns in Niles Canyon like what the IRM has to
> protect our equipment. Indoor safe storage is
> always on the dream list our organization.
>
> It's true that having equipment stored in barns
> makes it difficult to photograph but it is also
> just as difficult to photograph equipment stored
> in a multiple track yard. Try taking pictures of
> the equipment stored on the middle tracks of the
> NCRY yard. It's not very easy.
> The IRM is pretty good at pulling different stuff
> out on different weekends giving you a chance to
> photograph your favorites. From my standpoint I'm
> very impressed what the IRM folks have done and
> think it is a model for other museums to follow.

In 1977 I helped restore a diesel locomotive at a mostly-electric museum, including a beautiful paint job. Even though it had belonged to a formerly-electric railroad, the train-haters refused to allow it to be kept inside because it wasn't a trolley car. Eventually, the people who worked on that kind of thing left in disgust (for more reasons that that), and that locomotive today is nothing but a rusty hulk. But at least you could get a picture of it ...