Help wanted in Preserving the Knowledge to Preserve!

During the Friends of the C&TS work sessions this summer, we're going to extensively document how specific tasks are performed during the course of several restoration projects. We're looking for several volunteers that want to help us. We are calling this role the Project Archivist.

For a long time, we've extensively documented what we've done, and during each session, we have chroniclers who take photos of the activities and describe what was accomplished during the work session. The Project Archivist has a different goal. The end result is a detailed document of how the work was performed; what to do and what not to do. Sometimes, using video will help show how the work was performed, and we might embed a link of the video in the document. Essentially, we are trying to preserve the knowledge needed to preserve the unique artifacts on the railroad.

The ideal background for this position would be someone who is good at taking photos, maybe a little video, and can describe the technical activity being performed. Maybe you haven't ever done this type of restoration work before, but you'd like to learn. Or maybe you are less interested in doing the actual work, but you want to help the team in any way you can.

Why are we doing this? We want to help future volunteers understand how to do certain tasks, be more efficient, and reduce frustrations on stuff that they haven't done before. Take, for example, installing Rio Grande box car draft gear. If you've never done this before, the first time it's going to take you a couple of hours, and you'll probably invent some new 4-letter words. But if you've seen someone else do it, there's a good likelihood that you are not going to suffer the same frustrations and be done a lot sooner.

If you are interested in learning more, email me at drgw0579 @ comcast.net. I can share with you what we've done recently.

Bill Kepner



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/07/2021 03:48PM by drgw0579.