Pretty good ideas, I like the "spilling of bowls" and sounds of grumpy passengers if you don't make a hard brake reduction. 3 minutes is all we get, unrealisitc, but with museum visitors attention spans falling, its an eternity, especially when there will be a line up of visitors wanting a change at the simulation.

I'm going to assume that the passenger cars have at least the LN brake schedule so graduated release is possible. Coming to the station stop I'm going to suggest a white line below the hogger's window (as in the water stops) so the visitor knows how far and when to apply the brakes. Run past the white line, the visitor is told that the fireman has to carry buckets to the to fill the tender! ;) Luckily, the CNR 6400's Vanderbilt tender has three water lids in case the hogger overshoots the line by a few feet.

Rian

Rian,
Don't forget, these are mostly "newbies" and young ones at that, do not get hung up in being exact about what style brake system, etc. etc. Very basic stuff; we know if you open the throttle too fast, you get wheel slip, if you open the brake valve too fast, stuff flies around in the passenger cars, if you don't feather it off as you come to a stop, you get a hard stop with more stuff flying around. That's pretty much as much as you can do in 3 minutes, and it does provide enough challenge to a new person, with still a possibility for them to get a good score--you want some good scores, that makes it more fun.
Yet this is enough of a challenge that the visitor will realize that it takes some talent or experience to run a train.
You want an "Oh shoot, I only got 50 points" and the next person in line is saying, "My turn! Watch this!" Don't forget that, if you're doing your job right, you will have repeat visitors bringing in their friends/relatives, and they will want to "show off" for them.
Yes, a real railroader will say, "it's not realistic!" but it is enough so for one who's never done this before. Don't get hung up in the technology, tell the story!
My philosophy of museum management has been that we are "Subversive Teaching"--we invite folks into our museum to have fun, and while they're having fun, we slip in some knowledge.

PS, I like you Fireman with the buckets scenario! That's the kind of fun responses that work.

Hello David,

I like the idea of "points" while this was not discussed in our meeting with the simulator company, there has to be some way to "quantify" the outcome of the visitor ie: some way of telling them how well they did. I'll mention it. And yes, I think its important to identify the parts of the cab but not to confuse the visitors with too many parts to operated in a certain order.

Its very easy for railrodders to forget themselves when designing an interactive for children and adults. KISS "Keep it simple stupid". Just keeping to the idea of air brakes, if visitors want to learn more about them, we got more comprehensive and visually stimulating info for them.
I'm getting the idea that some Rail museums lost the "story" and therefore children and adults can't relate to trains? Maybe I'm wrong with that statement? But with the dying off of the first generation rail preservationists and railfans, it seems to be a slow attrition in Canada. (This is actually part of my Master's thesis)

Regards,
Rian Manson

Rian,
Yep, although I am naturally mechanical, and would love to be doing that kind of stuff, back when I was active with some operating museums & a railroad, I felt it was more important to be with the patrons and public helping to interpret their experience. If you can't instill an interest in railroading to new folks, then you will slowly, but surely die out.
Good luck with your thesis--I made the mistake of creating a far to complicated thesis project (it would have made a good Doctorate, I've been told) and never finished. Granted there were a few other factors, like sick & dying parents; fortunately I landed a curator position without the Masters, but it remains one of my un-achieved "bucket goals."

Rian - I don't know how it is in Canada from an insiders perspective but down here most of our volunteer nonprofits started out as social clubs and didn't even think about a story - they just got a lot of metal stuff when it was available from wherever, and held onto it, ran it when they could. "Story? No thanks, we're busy bailing wiring the engine back together so we can play with it. If you're interested we can tell you all about the technical details but don't know how it relates to your life."

Some of us are starting to try to reverse engineer a story based on some rational mission with defined borders. It isn't easy - a lot of large mechanical artifacts don't help but have been around forever and become sacred, no matter that they no longer run and don't contribute to the story or brand or mission as a static display......... perhaps professionalism is seen as threatening?

Dear David,

Where do I start, well, when it comes to rail museums, locomotive societies, there is no physical border between our countries just like the Northern Pacific, CP, GTW, NYC...etc. I'm pretty young in this business. I was raised in a railway town and had a family who worked on the CPR, so it was natural that I would be associated with it somehow. As somebody who was born in 1981, everyone else in the rail societies/museums are quite older than me to the point that we are losing them and nobody else is moving in. One concern I have is that some volunteer organizations can run themselves out of business if they can't work together and be open to new ideas. I've been in a rail museum where there has been and still has an acute case of micromanagement where simple doable projects were rejected because they weren't part of the "plan" by one or two people. While I look at it after years of not being there, I see only three things that happened: passenger cars still have leaky roofs and rust, an 1920's hart otis car was scrapped (why? your guess is as good as me), and yes, the museum decided to start selling off their rolling stock to help pay the salary of their museum manager who is now the treasurer too. (Can you say conflict of interest?? unethical?? and who is hurt in the long run is the visitors, the rolling stock which will keep on rusting, and volunteers who are leaving.

Crap like that when I see it makes me shout that there is no more time to behave like that, the volunteers will no longer be around and new volunteers may volunteer for different reasons and preserving railway heritage may not be on their list. I had an idea of designing a cost-effective canopy that can be locally funded to protect outside displayed rolling stock from the elements. When I suggested it to a museum, their answer was: What? That would detract from the locomotive!, people won't see it driving by!... My response: ok...sure...have fun keeping track of the corrosion.

I remember a great TRAINS Magazine article called "Is Stuff Enough". And to summarize, it said that for children today to care about preserving railway heritage, they have to relate to railways. Why should children, teenagers care about something that doesn't matter to them. Some people relate to trains when they tie them up at a crossing.

Another problem I have is that there is no real professional academic historians. Academia still views train history for "Buffs" (I hate that word!!) This is something I'm trying to do with my work. I was very lucky to help produce a paper about technological transfer between globalized countries in the 1950's. This paper is soon to be published by the Smithsonian Institute of Scholarly Press. Now there's are a bunch of amateur rail historians who I know and have been doing this before I was born, but they can't remove themselves from the traditional historical narratives and techno babble tombstone history that only railfans would appreciate.

I take my hat off for these firs-generation railway preservationists, because we wouldn't be writing right now if they didn't fight to help preserve something that was extremely important to the fabric of the community.

So if a train simulator helps with what I said...all the better! ha ha.

Oh and I forgot about one little small thing that railway preservation and exhibition has in spades...it's really really fun and exciting!!! And if you can communicate that excitement to your visitors and treat your volunteers like gold, you got a powerful story machine right there!!

Railways were the prime mover of the 19th and 20th century, it has it's highs and lows with bringing us globalization, the global village, exploring gender roles, immigration, capitalism, standard time (we still live by the railways!) Unions, pneumatics and cybernetics with signals and interlocking, victory in war depending on a war of supply, and contemporary issues of moving freight and new rail passenger revival.

Wow, this turned into a long rant...
Regards,
Rian Manson

Rian:
Much of what you are asking to do (A "virtual" or "simulator" experience of a 4-8-4) has already been developed by the "Train Simulator" community. I myself have constructed a portable train simulator. It is essentially, a PC computer, Oversize monitor, keyboard, sound system and a commercial half-scale control stand inside a cabinet. I have taken it around to a half-dozen train museums, and many Train Shows and Open Houses. It's been a popular exhibit with both kids and adults. I have seen kids as young as six years successfully operate it, albeit with the program difficulty set on beginner level and an adult to supervise. The control stand is set up to match modern "desktop" controls. However, it's possible to set up a variety of steam locomotive backheads and run the train by touching controls on the screen with the mouse, or by using the keyboard. A bonus is that you can create trackage to replicate local areas of interest.
Dan Rohrback

Rain,
Oh boy, we would have some fun talks, what you describe is very typical, sadly, of my experiences--and trust me, it's not only in Railroad Preservation. My Thesis was to have been a study of plinthed Steam locomotives; their long-term survival both as just artifacts and as interpretived displays.I had too many variables to deal with (weather, level of care, etc. etc.) and the travel required also became too expensive. Oh well, that was decades ago. I also was going to have to do mountains of paperwork to include "human subjects" in my thesis--this just because I wanted to interview public figures (park administrators and workers).
While I was working as a restoration specialist for one of the major western RR museums, I did a report showing that protective covers (pole barns) over their equipment would pay for themselves in 10 years just by preserving the paint jobs. They still have no covers.
I ended up being a curator for some general history museums for the City of Oroville (5 museums), but under a "cost cutting" administration, my position was deleted, and now the city relies on the volunteer docent group to run them. Decisions are being made by folks that have no background in preservation nor history, and the docent organization is falling apart. I keep having to tell myself that "it's not my problem now." Of course, there wasn't/isn't any viable work in this area for a Museum Curator, and I'm turning 63 this year, so I am out of the field now. With 10 acres, and tons of "stuff" moving is out of the question!
So, I am very supportive of your choice of a career, and encourage you to not let "the old guard" get you down! Funny thing, when I was the restoration specialist for that museum, I wrote a regular column on museum practices for their newsletter--basically usually telling them to "stop playing trains." One of the Directors, who was very supportive, told me one day, "I don't know how you get away with writing this stuff, maybe no one is reading the newsletter!"

I've been thinking about this, and learning or being reminded by some of the comments. Yes, this is a fruitful 'intersection' with the train-simulator communities. And yes, one of the problems there is something a 'museum' version has to be able to handle in spades: relative complexity vs. rapid or developing boredom on the part of the 'visitors'.

As an example: there is a 'space shuttle' simulator at the U.S. Space and Rocket Museum, which my son loved to run over and over and over when he was about 5. This is, of course, radically oversimplified in terms of vehicle and control dynamics, has none of the environmental or simulated-failure capacity a normal simulator would provide, and uses s version of 'follow the diamond' targeting -- without explanation of what the purpose of lining the elements up is -- all the way from high altitude in through flare and touch.

Meanwhile -- in the early days of the Shuttle program, I remember the New York Times science editor Jules Bergman trying the 'actual' Space Shuttle simulator, programmed and intended only for 'real' pilots. He crashed and crashed and crashed, and on something like his 35th attempt he actually crashed the simulator so hard he broke it (!) Perhaps needless to say, a 'typical' museum goer is going to give up in disgust if the drink from a firehose that is firing or running an actual train is too forceful...

One way to approach this is to have the ability to 'autopilot' everything except one function -- say, the train-brake application -- "assuming" that the other control actions are being made both knowledgeably and 'optimally with respect to what the right braking action would call for" (and show anyone interested what systems were being modulated, how they were modulated in time, and what the ideas behind the actions were.) Once you have the brake successfully mastered, you can start to take over some of the throttle, or the valve gear, in addition.

Now of course there's little time at a museum for all that, and people standing in line arguing with folks transported with joy over running steam won't make for glowing Internet museum 'experience' reviews. What I wonder is whether it makes sense to develop a phone app that can work with a simple set of cheap controls, and stream data from a central location, and allow each visitor's smart device to do the 'visuals' for what might be a great many little 'cab stations' -- relatively quiet, too, if the audio is through headphone devices and not speakers in the One Big Cab. (Note how this is different from either a 'train simulator' app or an actual museum program that only responds to one group or 'user' at a time while others have to wait a turn...

One other possibility that hasn't been discussed is the 'safety' responsibilities of an engine crew. One of the original GUI-based 'learn about practical electrician work' programs -- I think it was developed by IBM -- rather hokily required you to throw a virtual breaker before doing any of the exercises; if you forgot, even the 50th time you started one of the exercises, simulated lightning and short buzz took you 'out' of the session and reminded you that electricity has teeth. I found that highly irritating (perhaps that says more bad about me than about the programmers' approach!) but it would allow introduction of things like calling signals or watching for open switches or (horrors!) a banner test with the museum's logo on it... [please restrain any sarcasm about putting less-favored museum personnel faces on 'weed weasels']

It appears that museums are trending towards "virtual collections" and touch screen displays. I'll take the real deal any day. I can do virtual stuff from home.

The opposite of "virtual" is "real", not "analog".
The opposite of "analog" is "digital", not "electronic".
The opposite of "electronic" is "tube", "relay-based", "physical" etc. depending on context.

I could barely contain myself when a signal maintainer compared the modern computer controlled signal systems to an "analog" old-style relay. The relay could only be 'on' or 'off'.

NOT SO FAST!

Relay logic is not 'electronic' but tubes are the DEFINITION of electronic, in case you weren't aware. The 'opposite' might be what used to be called 'solid-state', where the charge carriers aren't just electrons being modulated by fields -- there are new and fancy analogues like 'proton currents' for biological systems that use ions as charge carriers, spintronics, etc. and of course the happy world of optical switching for signals. (And to contrast 'physical' with 'electronic' is just plain weird...)

The principal difference between analog and digital is how the modulation is done -- both are usually 'electronic' in context, but one is continuous and the other coded (requiring a transform of some kind to be represented as an effect in the 'real world'. Both digital and analog systems can be purely mechanical, of course (read 'The Difference Engine' for some interesting ideas on this) but in practice analog mechanical systems are much more useful (and interesting) than digital mechanical systems. (An interesting crossover is the general field of automata that use multiple cams for bistatic control, where the cam goes from 'open' to 'closed' as in relay logic but with a continuous contour for mechanical reasons).

Dave's point is in part that an 'analog' reproduction of virtual sex is more applicable to "reproducing* reality" in context. There are all kinds of potential difficulties with achieving 'fidelity'* (again with the puns he makes) via digital means... I won't go into the technological details* needed to realize such a system, but with adequate sampling frequency on the right control inputs (and the right density of actuators, etc.) you can produce the same environment... interestingly enough, the bandwidth for 'full sensory immersion' (excluding olfactory which is chemically modulated and not particularly amenable to most actuator stimulation directly) has been calculated and it is about 750Mb/s. (Channel separation and modulation are much easier to do in digital domain than analog with this sort of information density)

The opposite of 'virtual' is better phrased as 'actual' (or some synonym) particularly since 'real' is in the word that normally immediately follows 'virtual' in most discussions of this subject specifically including the current context. (There is also a role for 'augmented reality'* in this context ... but that's already being practiced in quite a number of 'analog' ways and no few digital.

I could also make the point that 'digital' does not imply binary or bistatic logic; that just happens to be the most convenient and flexible form. The moment you introduce something like a Strowger switch into a relay configuration it stops being 'binary'. That is not to say that I don't share your mirth at someone who thinks a relay SYSTEM is "analog" even though much of the transmission modality is analog.

(*these are all greivous puns for those with the wrong sort of upbringing or mental tendency...)

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled thread on virtual train control.

Thanks for the reminder on VR train control.

In my humble opinion virtual means; "almost...but not quite." I can see at my university some students living an "almost life". I myself believe if you can't engage the visitor with the real thing, then something is wrong with your interpretation. Nothing beats an artifact with a simple cool story to tell (that's it!) no augmented reality, no fancy interface that breaks down! I've seen a few big museums lose people with overstimulating exhibits. I once seen a blind man go from sadness to overjoyed when a friend on mine took his hand and ran it along the big ends of our 4-8-4 6400. The smell and tactile interface with his hands and nose gave him an appreciation of how the locomotive would look like at track speed. It was something to see, and was inspiring. There's a reason since 1967, the locomotive hall has been the most popular area of he museum!

Now to this VR business. The virtual reality project is not a train simulator with a mouse and computer screen. This project requires the visitor to put on googles and he physically is walking through the environment. You can actually reach out with your hand and turn valves and handles in 6400, although it will be a CGI rendered experience. The sounds will be real, the heat real (heating element with fans) You can walk around 6400 while she is in steam. One problem solved is the elimination of of hogger's seat because if the visitor wants to sit down, he'll fall on the floor. ;)

Very cool. What technology are you using for detection of gesture and reach -- structured light? And how will you implement tactile feedback for the haptics of reaching out and opening or closing a valve?

Quite a bit of this is covered in the discussions at IxDA, which I strongly recommend you have somebody join if you're seriously implementing this.