Re: Ridgway Museum 2012 events

We have tons of stuff to do; the order and rate of progress depends on the number of volunteers, unexpected opportunities, space and, of course, money. We are a small, fiscally conservative educational museum and work at the rate we can without going into debt of any kind. Top of the list, of course, is finishing Goose 4 this year and running it at the CRRM Goosefest. Our next long-term restoration project is D&RG Business Car C, which was built by Jackson and Sharp for use as a kitchen/commisary car for Mr. Dodge. IIRC, Business car A eventually became the EDNA, B was destroyed in a wreck, and C was later remodeled into a Post Office car, and finally into an outfit car. We intend to restore it as the original kitchen/commisary car built for the use of D&RG management. This will take several years.

There is the never-ending process of painting and lettering, and we have probably 250,000 pieces of RGS company correspondence to catalog. We continue to add to our roster of local RGS and D&RG/Ouray Branch employees (we now have in excess of 3000 names, available for examination online). Due to our limited display space, we are planning to enter the 21st century with touchscreen-activated short programs that will allow us to tell many stories from the same wall space.

We may publish a volume two of our book of short chapters of local narrow gauge history. Volume 1, which contains 37 of these short (about 600 words each) articles has sold more than 700 copies so far in 2 1/2 years and should sell steadily for years to come. A second volume probably won't happen for another couple of years, though, due to time priorities. We work with a local publisher at a very attractive rate, in return for doing all layout ourselves, and our museum editor is pretty involved with a couple of other projects right now.

Lots to do for many years to come. Additional projects will be acquired when they become available.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/14/2012 10:18PM by jgp1843.