Interpretive Challenges in Museum Management by James Alexander Jr.

This article shows how Jim draws upon his general management and writing skills to analyze and explain situations that are new to him, placing them in a broader context in which strategies for success may be developed. An earlier version of this was published in Locomotive and Railway Preservation Magazine in November 1994.

Visitors Bring So Many Perspectives

Pausing to explain an artifact to his tour group, a docent strains to make himself heard over the whine of a generator and the blast of a safety valve popping on a nearby locomotive.

The locomotive, a Pennsy G5, has not had steam up in over 40 years. What’s going on here? Some kind of mistake?

To the contrary -- it is but a minor illustration of purposeful interpretive planning. Such planning at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania takes both tactical and strategic forms.

The great railroad stations, like Grand Central Terminal, once fabled in radio as “the crossroads of a million lives” and “the gigantic stage on which are played a thousand dramas daily” are no longer the repositories of the human story associated with movement of people by train. In part, railroad museums now carry on this responsibility.

Railroads did more than carry freight and passengers. They affected and were affected by society. Their fate was inter-twined with the ebb and flow of progress. It Is the effort to tell this panorama of stories—of railroad building, technology, jobs performed, lives affected, a nation served—that we now refer to as interpretation.

Interpretation deals with the physical, the economic, the political, and the social, and it speaks to an array of museum visitors ranging from the avid railfan to the casual tourist.

Interpretation’s Many Forms
One aspect of railroading involves the physical surroundings. Railroad yards were often cold In winter, hot in summer, noisy, dirty; certainly not very safe places for casual visitors. In seeking to recreate this texture of railroad working environments, a museum cannot in conscience expose its visitors to all these elements.

But some well-placed sound does help set the stage, thus we have the recorded noises of a locomotive building up steam in preparation for its next run. Sound can come into play in other ways, too. This is a button-pushing society.

A family stops next to an early Consolidation locomotive. Several crates are at trackside awaiting pickup, with a sign saying “Imagine you are standing in a railroad depot in the year 1907. You meet a friend, the wife of one of the engineers on this division. What might this woman have said to you? Push the button to find out.”

Pushing the button starts a recording of a woman’s voice, telling what it was like to have a husband who worked all hours in all kinds of weather. Often over-looked, women were involved in many aspects of railroading, and museums need to tell their story. At the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania (RMP) there will be more buttons to push, activating sound tracks and videos, as well as computer displays.

Similarly the role of African Americans in railroading was part of the reality that needs telling. RMP addresses such issues in various ways.

At the most elemental level, interpretation involves placing informative signs by major artifacts, meeting the needs of the mildly curious. They must be worded succinctly and they should balance the technical with the broader context.

At the next level of advancement, docents can staff a locomotive or a caboose and explain what it did. The most skilled docents can do this in the first person, while others are effective In the third person. Museum guided tours allow an interpreter to introduce comparisons, themes and tell stories.

Even mannequins can be helpful in visually rounding out a story. A fireman with a large shovel in hand can convey the labor Involved.

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Special Audiences and Special Experiences It’s not what you think you are instructing, it’s how the recipient receives the message, so varying levels of comprehension must be be anticipated. Museums are increasingly putting themselves In the eyes and bodies of the beholder, reinforced by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania builds ramps, surveys passages for width, makes large-print handouts, and takes other steps to welcome disabled visitors. These include developing special guided tours for the visually impaired, with help from their advocate groups; adding closed captions to videos (and making these available to others); and making videos of rolling stock interiors when historical considerations prevent wheelchair access.

Tactile opportunities for the visually impaired are also very helpful. Such basic interpretation efforts are now commonly used in museums. The RMP also promotes special experiences. Several times each year the museum is abuzz with visitors wearing the Pennsylvania Railroad insignia on Pennsy Day -- or the Reading Company insignia on Reading Weekend. Slide shows, lectures, and exhibits of a particular line's working paraphernalia all add spice to the basic exhibits, reinforcing the museum's role as a focal point for recording and sharing experiences.

Museums are good places both to preserve history and to capture it as well. Retired railroad engineers visiting the museum are often inveigled by museum staff into participating in its oral history program. With their recollections on tape, the museum gathers information for research or use in audio presentation. The museum trains several staff and volunteer members in question-asking techniques, obtaining permission, and making recordings. Often these opportunities are unexpected and, as such visits of railroad veterans decline, the museum must be ready to seize every opportunity.

A museum visit can be enlivened by actors playing, for example, a track worker resetting spikes, a black porter talking about his perception of the railroad, or a railroad manager berating an engineer for letting his fireman loaf. Few museums can afford to pay real actors, though occasionally professionals perform skits during busy periods at RMP. One summer a local amateur acting company donated its services in return for later using museum facilities for a function. Real people bring added understanding to the visual impact of the museum's impressive old relics.

A very successful program by historian Rich Pawling, entitled "History Alive," features Pawling in the role of Captain John Hummel, a barge operator when railroad competition appeared, and of Mike Malloy, a trackman. Visitors are drawn into a presentation featuring slides, songs, sounds and backdrop. Powerful in researched history, the program is engrossingly entertaining as well.

Allied fields can aid in railroad interpretation. Since several of RMP's volunteers are talented artists, their renderings enliven old stories. We have a "meet the artist" series where a volunteer explains how to sketch, and provides youngsters with sample fill-in sketches showing locomotive parts.

Interpretation can also be more formalized, as it is during RMP's annual railroad history lecture. This year Dr. Theodore Kornweibel of the University of San Diego presented a lecture on the African American railroad experience. In cooperation with the California State Railroad Museum, the museum sponsors one of the two annual National Railway Preservation symposiums discussing issues of museum management and planning, operating practices and philosophies of interpretation. It is all part of a wonderful, unending mix of events characterizing an effective museum.

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