Re: An open letter to the Director & Trustees of the Colorado Railroad Museum

This whole business of how a museum manages its collection is much more complicated than it seems to us outsiders.

In 1985, my wife and I visited the Stuhr Museum in Grand Island NE. The "railroad village" part seemed kind of chaotic, but I enjoyed going around, looking at and photographing their various artifacts; sometime during our visit I was told that they had recently purchased a tourist operation, the Nebraska Midland Railroad, and were deciding how to make best use of it. My family (us plus the two daughters who had been born in the interim) made a return visit in 1995. The place was much neater, but the railroad artifacts were much less common; in particular I didn't see any of the NMID stuff (I didn't cause trouble by wandering past their rope and its "no trespassing" sign); when I asked about it, I was told that the NMID had not fit into their collection, and how they wanted to present it. I did not ask what was actually done with the NMID stuff - I had heard a rumor that they had burned the remains of an F&CC passenger car. I missed that stuff, but I understand that true museum historians expect a worthwhile exhibit to retain most of its "original fabric" and don't see much value to something that has been mostly rebuilt/restored, so reasonable people may have to "agree to disagree" about what to do with what looks like a junk yard to outsiders.