Appreciate you taking a chance on requesting an actual conversation.

Pleasure speaking with you.

Thank you for sharing your deep knowledge of the whole Steamtown operation. I continue to try to figure out some formula that could bring back reasonable live steam operations so the place could both justify its name and the $ 6M/year we taxpayers pump into the place.

I'll keep searching. Hope springs eternal. Ross Rowland

I think we found some firm agreement that the major problem is the NPS and I'm saying that from the position as a former auditor, used to making assessments of operations, not with any particular animus. Most of the volunteers and staff I worked with over the years were decent and dedicated, and many were dispirited by watching the decay and strange expenditure decisions.

The problem is, as we discussed that the NPS is an incredibly insular agency, and it tends to promote within. That's more or less reasonable when you want "green jeans" who are familiar with the mandates of the system, although at times it produces people who believe they are completely unaccountable to the taxpayer and wear their antipathy, if not downright hostility to the visitor as a badge of honor.

For a Civil War focused facility, the drill is pretty consistent. There natural flora and fauna, antebellum structures, some contemporary buildings, various relics in the form of uniforms, personal items, armaments and such. If Gettysburg needs to post a maintenance manager, and there's nobody on their staff whose interested or ready, they can "post" the job and find somebody at another park who knows the drill.

With Steamtown, there's an expectation based upon history, and explicitly stated in the "Comprehensive Interpretive Plan" to provide a "live steam experience". Getting operating and mechanical crews familiar with steam and century old rolling stock is difficult, so there needs to be an impetus for internal development.

About ten years ago, and definitely by 2015-16, it was extraordinarily clear that a significant number of key mechanical staff were looking at retirement. New people needed to be hired and trained, but were not or could not be hired. Now, there's minimal operations and most senior staff will be gone by the end of the year.

Even on the operating side, which benefits from the presence of eager volunteers, the restriction in operations means holes in the experience base, especially in running excursions.

Only when I was forced by the circumstances I discussed to walk away, was I able to view the situation dispassionately and not through the lens of somebody crazy/enthusiastic enough to get up drive two hours to work for free.

I met some great and interesting people over the years, but I'm no longer hopeful, barring something acting deus ex machina.

I've been writing down some thoughts, mostly as a cathartic exercise. Perhaps I'll post them here.

I would suggest that money is a measure of efficiency and subordinate to issues of effectiveness. After all, failing to do the right thing, but staying on budget is no achievement.

Ross, you solve this and this will be your magnum opus but getting the state machinery to accept it will be like scaling Everest.

There's been several relationships between NPS and excursion operations, to varying degrees of success.

We've worked on three projects, of the three, the Cuyahoga Valley has been the biggest turnaround, working with a nonprofit operating group to move the trains on NPS property. The biggest change there was allowing events-based operations from outside for-profit entities to exist, and allow concessions. You'd have to dial back to about 1993 when the ridership was under 15,000 per year to appreciate how it's grown to over 200K pre-COVID and will likely recover again.

But there's still a natural conflict between NPS and operating trains. If you've signed on with NPS, the last place you may expect to end up is Scranton/Steamtown, and if you love Steamtown and want to operate a rail museum you have to deal with the procedures and mission of NPS. That mismatch is not unique, it happened at the state level at Cass, and very much happened at Texas State Railroad, came very close to shutting it down.

One of the biggest issues with direct government operations is the fact that 'most' if not all separate revenue into the general fund and expense into an operating/capital budget by operation rather than a net site budget subject to normal business decisionmaking. I'll never forget being in the Cass gift shop years ago in August and the shelves were really bare. 'we can't buy any more, we've run out of purchasing budget' was the explanation. The others include inability to advertise (you're competing with private industry) and working with special events (have to be competitively bid or outright prohibited on government property).

That whole deal seems incomprehensible to any business operator but is perfectly logical when you've been conditioned through government agencies and policy/budget restrictions. While government 'support' is welcomed to underwrite some of the capital restoration projects, at the operational level it can be incredibly cumbersome.

Randy you remind me of the story of the very successful creative guy who spent the first 10 years of his career working for the Federal gov't. The reporter asked him how hard it was within the Federal system to get a creative idea carried up the decision flag pole to get a green light to try it out.

His answer............" it was like trying to swim the full length of an olympic sized swimming pool and the pool is filled with peanut butter ""

As we've often observed about Steamtown,... to judge it depends on which lens you're looking through.

From a job corps perspective ( which was Cong. McDade's reason for creating it) it has been a resounding success.

From a steam locomotive restoration/operation perspective its been an abject failure.

Take you pick. Ross Rowland

@Randy Gustafson.

As for the location, nobody is conscripted into NPS employment and if they accept a "first available" location, there's always USAJOBS to post out.

Your story about Cass being "out of budget" is dispiriting. Historic gift shops are what are called "enterprise funds, that is government operated business activities dealing with end users. That they did not know about or could not obtain a supplemental appropriation is sad.

@Ross

I tend to think that McDade who was one of those guys that knew how to "bring home the bacon" and was presented with a problem (i.e. the failing Foundation) and did "something". I think if there was any intention that the jobs would be direct federal employment, it's been a failure.

Attached is a snip from a page of the FY23 "Greenbook". (Starts Oct 1, 2022).

It shows total FTEs at 47,roughly half of what it used to be. When you consider that some positions are the same-that is there will always be one superintendent and you realize that there has to be custodians, and interpretive staff, you realize that the mechanical and operating stuff must be where the reductions are. It appears they are looking for 6.447M this year, and since they have to account for inflation, I'm guessing that $500K increase isn't going to appreciably change the staff.

Supe...you're 110% right about Cong. McDade being very good about bringing home the bacon. Just look at that super complex highway interchange complex named in his honor on the outskirts of Scranton. That produced umpteen high paying jobs for all those years it took to complete.

No doubt in my mind that the 80/90 high paying jobs he saw as part of the allure of getting the SNHS created by his very well timed and clever piece of legislation magic ( got it attached to a " must pass" bill at 1 minute to midnight ) were a major motivator for him.

Let's say that in the 27 years since the "official" opening in 1995 Steamtown has employed on average 65 NPS FTE employess at an average annual salary of $ 50k/person. Well, $ 50k x 65 = $ 3,250,000/year x 27 years = $ 87,750,000. That's a SUBSTANTIAL shot in the arm for a city as economically depressed as Scranton.

The above doesn't include at least that much spent in paying for outside contractor services, utilities etc. so the total dollar injection is probably at least double the wages number especially when you include the economic boost from the tourist dollars generated by Steamtown's out of town guests.

No doubt that the City of Scranton has been a major beneficiary of Steamtown. Darn shame that the annual visitorship has plummeted from what it was when it opened but that's another whole can of worms.

There must be a way to combine the plus of the annual federal subsidy with some better private sector savvy to produce enough real steam operations to justify its mission statement.

Hope springs eternal. Ross Rowland

Don't overlook the increases in local tax receipts that NPS FTE employee's inject into the local governments and school districts.

"Don't overlook the increases in local tax receipts that NPS FTE employee's inject into the local governments and school districts."

In the grand scheme of things, 47 paychecks scattered about a multitude of school districts and municipalities are negligible, in an area with hundreds of thousands of residents.

About 35 years ago, the Greater Scranton area was busily starting an attempt to rebuild itself from the remains of the coal, rail and textile based economy that started to falter after the 1960's, mostly with politically initiated and subsidized projects. National Westminster (Nat West, later Fleet Bank) bank and the Red Barons baseball team were considered first mover, signature anchors for the greater Scranton area (Montage is Moosic, I believe) followed by Prudential Asset Management Company (PAMCO, to be renamed something like ten times while there). Other enterprises included the Suretrade.com (part of Fleet), the Steamtown Mall and Corning Fiber Optic.

Corning shut down before it opened. Suretrade was a victim of the dotcom bust of twenty years ago, The Red Barons left about a decade ago to become the Iron Pigs and Lackawanna County poached the Columbus Clippers to become the Railriders. Fleet I think was acquired by Bank of America in 2004, I'm not sure who occupies the building.

I worked at Prudential in accounting, IT and a compliance area until 1999. When then Governor Casey came to celebrate the fifth anniversary of PAMCO, the writing was already on the wall. Defined benefit pensions were already being replaced by defined contribution plans and the demutualization of "Pru" meant a smaller, leaner organization. Now, my few remaining former co-workers are permanent telecommuters for Empower, unless they want to relocate. One individual took an exit package and works at a big box now.

The Mall still exists, but there's not much there. .It was sold at bankruptcy a few years ago, a victim of city traffic and the rise of e-Commerce.

The record of state and local government finding the "next big thing" with grants, subsidies and abatements isn't very good.

For those who don't speak Governmentese, FTE is "Full Time Equivalent."

When you have new ideas, you do have to be diplomatic in what channels you use. It helps to grease the way up the chain of command. It even worked in the Army.

I now volunteer with the NPS (NOT Steamtown) and the people there do listen to me since I do things they don't have the staff to do, as well help with as the regular "all hands" stuff.

Phil Mulligan

BTW the AAA Red Barons baseball team was a Phillies affiliate. The Phillies got a new stadium and affiliate in Allentown, so the Yankees moved their AAA affiliate to Moosic. (If you look at a DL&W map, you can see Scranton is more associated with NY than Phila.) The team is called the RailRiders and you can ride the trolley to the game on Sundays.

I'm glad to hear that. That must be incredibly satisfying to be able to contribute in such a way.

One of the early suggestions the current friends group had was a very simple one-to try to take advantage of the ubiquitous and constant presence of internet enabled devices and put a simple QR code in front of one locomotive or other displayed item to provide a "deep dive" with a pre-recorded video into some technical or historical aspect of the item. The idea was not only relatively inexpensive, it could be an interesting test of new methods of visitor engagement as more and more are "digital from birth" and have hands welded to their phones.

The idea was summarily rejected as being "signage" that required eight levels of red tape hell.


"the AAA Red Barons baseball team was a Phillies affiliate. The Phillies got a new stadium and affiliate in Allentown, so the Yankees moved their AAA affiliate to Moosic. (If you look at a DL&W map, you can see Scranton is more associated with NY than Phila.) The team is called the RailRiders and you can ride the trolley to the game on Sundays."

Interestingly, that affiliation never bothered game attendees. There was more resentment at the attempted portmanteau of the names of the old Scranton Red Sox (a Boston affiliate) and the Wilkes Barre Barons (who were affiliated with the Chicago White Sox) into a tribute to the best known of the Kaiser's Aces.

Working at Prudential in the early 90's made it easy to attend games, so one year my cubicle had 41 ticket stubs. The old SVA even tried to develop a relationship with the Red Barons. The then GM the late Bill Terlecky had liked the idea and had his AGM work with us on it. I can't remember his name, but he was a font of ideas-including proposing having actual players come on Steamtown trains dressed in period uniforms, which sort of "a thing" back then. We took a "wav file" of a steam whistle to be sounded over the PA system. Unfortunately, it came out a whisper more than a blast.

Attendance was strong the first couple years, and peaked at 598K in 1992. They soldiered on until Governor Rendell signed off on a new stadium in the Lehigh Valley, in one of the finest exemplars of panem et circenses. A somewhat clear-eyed counterpart quipped after the subsidized relocation of rail car maker Hyundai Rotem to SEPTA's back yard; "You gotta' admire Fast Eddie, he's the finest Governor Philadelphia ever had, Coudersport's opinion may vary".

Drove through Scranton last week on the "President Biden Highway". If looks are any indication (and they probably aren't) the area looks better than I have ever seen it. First time was back in '77 when it looked pretty grim.
Ned