John Craft posted:
That's why your "we are not a museum" comment surprised me so much. Because your landlord goes to great lengths to claim that they are, indeed, a museum.
John, you are putting words into Stephen's mouth. What are your motivations for this?
Stephen's posts make perfect sense when you compare the Loop to other railroad museums. If you look at Sacramento, the RR Memorial Museum in Altoona, or the RR Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg, you see museums in which interpretation is done through stuffed and mounted equipment. At those museums, you pay admission, go inside their gates and see static equipment on display. Their equipment doesn't operate.
If you go to Golden, Baltimore, or Scranton, you would see more stuffed and mounted equipment... unless you happen to visit during the right weekend. If you happen to visit on the right weekend, then you might be able to ride... provided all the tickets weren't sold out in advance.
Now, compare those railroad museums to the Loop. There isn't any static equipment on display at the Loop. Instead, day in and day out, visitors are being moved up and down the mountain. Trains operate over steep grades and through tight curvature.
So, yeah, the Loop is a museum --a "living history" museum-- where the interpretation is done through the actual operation of a railroad. At the same time, it is not the typical "museum operation" that only operates limited excursions on occasional weekends.
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Chris Webster
[www.speakeasy.org]