Depends on if you're a museum or a tourist line. The Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania needs to get people through the door but Strasburg needs to get butts in the seats.

Did I say anything about tourist lines?

Monticello Railway Museum's version is built on an ex-NKP flat car. We re-decked the car with treated 3 x 12 bridge timber (the kind used on road bridges that have wooden decks). The posts utilize the original stake pockets on the car, and are 4 x 4 treated posts. The sides are 2 x 10 treated lumber, bolted to the posts, and topped with two handrails made up from pipe.

The buffers are indeed based on a Miner buffer arrangement, of which we have one example, on IC Baggage car 518. As Bulby noted, its made up of plasma cut parts and available shapes welded together and bolted to the car. I like what NCRY did with their buffer arrangement. Simpler than ours, and I particularly like the partial tube diaphragms. We're using chains. In our case, the car is usually coupled to our Rock Island commuter car, which was never equipped with diaphragms, but used chains instead.

Our intent wasn't so much to allow folks to go between cars while moving, but to get away from using the kluged up "bridges" to get from car to car. Putting them in place required stopping, manhandling them in place, then back again before you depart. That made for a pretty high hassle factor for our volunteers. Nor was it ever convenient when a summer rain would spring up mid-trip, and folks want to get out of the rain. The car is fairly popular, particularly when steam is pulling the train. Most seem to prefer to stand, but there is a limited amount of bench seating in the car.







Again, after seeing what Niles Canyon did, their arrangement looks simpler and just as effective.

Kent

With regards to "bleacher" cars, the Western Minnesota Steam Threshers Reunion group at Rollag Minnesota has a number of repurposed stock cars set up that way.

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The railroad runs in a loop so passengers are always looking inward at the showground (the railroad running pretty much on the perimeter). Power is either a Porter 0-4-0T (apparently stored) or former Soo Line 0-6-0 #353. Neither engine is jacketed, to comply with the Minnesota State boiler code (visual inspection and UT's on an alternate yearly basis).

Michael Seitz
Missoula MT

Please. Show me the general pattern where that works in the real world. Not a bizarre one-off, not propped up by public funding or deferred maintenance or other leaching or looting. Show me this significant array of solvent, sustainable, "oh so authentic" museums.

What makes RRMPA a bizarre one-off is being across the street from Strasburg. That's cheating :) and really, Strasburg props it up by agreeing to combo fares. Put it in York, alone, and see how it does.

We're all in the entertainment industry whether we are a museum or a tourist railroad - if we're a museum we are a bit more constrained by the reality of the past, but if the past is colorful and we can have good stories to tell it doesn't make much difference.

A museum that has no butts in seats or walkins through the door isn't contributing a thing to society. It's a private collection with pretensions.

dave

One of the biggest factors in increasing the walkins through the door at VMT over the past few years has been the addition of train rides during special events. This has tied directly into the butts in seats issue.

Adding to the list of Class 1 railroads that had passenger gondolas, N&W had 3, they survived until somewhere around 1978.

http://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=94290