I'd like to leave my 2 cents on local "preservation" efforts. Now, you can flame up this post until Otto locks it, but the recent thread on the BCK #43 has got me in a tizzy and I gotta do what I gotta do. All I want to say is that from my perspective, generally now, most historical groups (of whatever interest, but with regard to local railroads or stations) can't seem to get anything really worthwhile done because they act as a team of individuals. Everyone has their little pet projects that don't seem to come across as a total group effort that everyone can get involved in to the better of the origanization and public. If it were me, I'd collect less junk and instead of having 20 things that go nowhere, maybe I'd try to concentrate my limited money and volunteer effort into some smaller, more "doable" ideas that can actually get done. I guess, on a personal note, and maybe from being an only child, I just don't understand, and never will understand the group mentality. I've always been one to come up with a plan and then decide to do it, or not, not to go into group discussions, and have a million different ideas floating around, from pie in the sky to practical, only to have nothing of substance really get done.
Local groups do have a problem with protecting their collection from vandals & weather, mostly due to the lack of a permanent home for all the stuff that's scattered all over town, and yes I know how hard and expensive it would be to acually house it all somewhere, but maybe their should have been a plan in place for this years ago?
On a side note, the cancellation of the excursion trip to Cleveland out of Buffalo this year was a major dissapointment for me and my family, screwing up the end of our summer and a week vacation from work, and convincing me that the last thread of hope I held out for historical groups was to be cut and that you can't rely on them for anything they say they will do. I layed down almost $800 for that trip, planned around it, hyped it up to my wife & my 10 year old, and looked forward to it all summer only to have it blow up in my face, yeah we got the money back but we arn't too happy about how that whole thing went down and there's no way I'm going to get involved with another trip again.
-B in B
Local groups do have a problem with protecting their collection from vandals & weather, mostly due to the lack of a permanent home for all the stuff that's scattered all over town, and yes I know how hard and expensive it would be to acually house it all somewhere, but maybe their should have been a plan in place for this years ago?
On a side note, the cancellation of the excursion trip to Cleveland out of Buffalo this year was a major dissapointment for me and my family, screwing up the end of our summer and a week vacation from work, and convincing me that the last thread of hope I held out for historical groups was to be cut and that you can't rely on them for anything they say they will do. I layed down almost $800 for that trip, planned around it, hyped it up to my wife & my 10 year old, and looked forward to it all summer only to have it blow up in my face, yeah we got the money back but we arn't too happy about how that whole thing went down and there's no way I'm going to get involved with another trip again.
-B in B