Telling Stories

Stories. Everyone loves a good story. From tiny toddler to old codger, from high school dropout to Ph. D., we all get hooked by stories.

They capture our attention and tickle our imagination. They entwine us in their plots. They captivate us with their color.

Think of the speeches, lectures, and sermons you’ve heard. After you had forgotten the talking points and the statistics, you remembered the tales about people and places and hopes and hardships.

To me, one of the most significant observations made in the museum consultants’ study of VMT is the importance of exhibits that tell stories. Information isn’t enough. Facts and figures are fine, but it’s the narrative that engrosses the visitor and makes the museum experience spring to life.

We’re already doing this in some areas. The new Advance Auto gallery does not merely offer a lineup of old cars. A curving roadway with guard rails, traffic markers, Burma Shave signs and a country gas station add drama. Helping to thread the story together are the VDOT displays, “From Mud to Mobility,” which track a century of highway development in Virginia. The context turns a static exhibit into a story.

The “African Americans on the Norfolk and Western” exhibit opens a treasure chest of firsthand accounts told in print and on video. Together those reminiscences piece together like a jigsaw puzzle to create a poignant and powerful picture of courageous men toiling with dignity amid an unjust system. In the same room, “Working the High Iron” carries you on a visual journey of the history of the N&W.

What other stories lie among the artifacts, ready to be given a spellbinding treatment?

How about coal? It was N&W’s lifeblood and the Virginian Railway’s almost sole reason for existence. The two roads raced neck and neck from mountain to ocean, each straining to transport the black gold faster and more economically than its rival. The Virginian even electrified its line between Roanoke and Mullens, West Virginia, a plot twist graphically illustrated by the hulking EL-C 135 electric loco still standing in the museum’s rail yard.

Coal’s story is implicit throughout VMT, from the HO scale tipple diorama to the giant tenders of the steam locomotives. It needs to be told more explicitly: how the coal was mined and transported to market, how the mines fueled the success of the railroads—literally and figuratively, where the coal went and how it was used. Such storytelling underlines the importance of restoring endangered equipment such as the three vintage coal hoppers rusting outside the museum.

Another storyline is the saga of the different railroads which ran through Virginia. Where did their tracks go? How did they compete and cooperate with one another? Where did they each end up during the years of merger mania? What developments led to Virginia becoming the headquarters of two of the “Big Four” rail giants remaining in America?

A ready-made tale of now and then lies as near as VMT’s back porch. There you can stand on the old freight docks, surveying the weathered survivors of steam and early diesel against the backdrop of a busy modern rail line, that of Norfolk Southern. What a great vantage point for telling how railroading today is alike and dissimilar to yesterday. For explaining how locomotives and rolling stock have changed. For depicting the goods that provide modern railroads’ revenue. You can see history and current events rubbing shoulders just steps away from where you stand.

So many stories to tell … these are just a few. What tales do you hear being whispered at VMT along the galleries and out in the yard?