VMT Blogger Is Back

The New Kid on the Blog

February 26, 2008

Blog. It’s just one of the many other-worldly words that computers and the Internet have added to our language.

But blog? It sounds plodding. Boring. Neanderthal (“Blog take spear, kill velociraptor for dinner”). It’s short for weblog, I realize, but it rhymes with slog and clog and flog, which are not the best company to be keeping.

Blog sounds like something you might unhappily find stuck to the sole of your dress shoe.

However, I am getting off-track, which a railroader should never do. I will blog on.

Since this is my first attempt as the new blogger on this website, perhaps telling you a bit about me would be good. At least then you will have some idea who’s writing the stuff that interests or irritates you.

I have been a pastor and a free-lance writer most of my adult life. Three wonderful women brighten my world, a wife and two grown daughters. I can now speak credibly of the infamous midlife crisis in the past tense, and I have the hair—or bare—to prove it.

Sports, movies, books, photography, music and theater all clutter my imagination at times. Especially music. I collect it, listen to it and occasionally make it, though somewhat sloggishly.

My music pursuits have recently intersected my transportation interests. I have collected the lyrics (so far) of about a thousand railroad songs from the near and distant pasts, several hundred of which I have in audio form as well. More about that at another time.

About a decade ago I worked intermittently as a tour guide and workshop leader at the Museum. Now I have begun editing its quarterly newsletter. By the way, if you don’t receive a copy and want to, please e-mail us an address. Preferably yours.

And I play with trains. I started out in HO, then discovered my level of patience and fine motor skills did less damage in large scale. One of these days I plan to actually build and operate the layout which now exists only in my post-midlife brain. It will depict southwest VA about 1959, when the last steam was passing the baton to the diesel-electrics. Back then I would watch with wonder those N&W beasts snaking through my boyhood backyard.

I’m no expert on transportation, railroads, model trains or museums. However, I get excited over them all and I passionately believe in the treasures and mission of the Virginia Museum of Transportation. I will preach the gospel of VMT as well as try to learn from you.

As I muse about Museum-related topics, talk back when the mood strikes you. Your comments will make for a better blog, and I will have evidence that I’m not just mumbling to myself. And if you can’t slog through my prose without getting your brain clogged up or your interest bogged down, you are welcome to flog me.

At least in print.

Freedom's Eve

On this day, New Year's Eve, in 1862, millions of African-American slaves in the United States held their breath. The next day, the first day of 1863, would be so much more than a new year for them. They'd had new years before, but all of those just turned out to be the old year all over again. 1863 would be different. When President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, it did not immediately go into effect. It would not do so until January 1st, New Year's Day, of 1863. And so, on New Year's Eve, millions of slaves held their breath. The piece of paper is not what would free them. What would free them is the commitment by the United States that the piece of paper represented. Now, some 145 years after what came to be known as "Freedom's Eve," civil rights remains a huge issue. These are wounds that do not heal quickly. But this is not why I write this.

Of all the railroads on display at your Virginia Museum of Transportation, one very important one remains absent -- the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was at its peak in the decades leading up to the Emancipation Proclamation and Freedom's Eve, and it was a model of cellular organization. Station Masters, the benevolent men and women who would hide escaped slaves in their homes, knew very little of the full route of the railroad. Instead, they would know of nearby "stations" and "conductors" to help guide the "passengers" to freedom. And while some may have actually traveled on an actual railroad, most went by foot in the dead of night -- a railroad of walkers.

There are plenty of books and resources on the Underground Railroad that can go into far greater detail with much greater reliability than this blog can or will attempt to do. For now, we spend this anniversary of Freedom's Eve in quiet and meditative remembrance of 2007, and with fierce and unyielding optimism, we look forward to 2008.

Happy New Year to you all.

Ding, Ding, Ding Went the Bell

DC Transit #1470 has not moved under its own power in more than forty years. Given that it drew its power from overhead wires and a trolley pole, this isn't terribly surprising. In 1985, the Roanoke River overflowed its banks in what the area still infamously remembers as "The Flood of `85."* Directly alongside that river was the Virginia Museum of Transportation, located then in Roanoke's Wasena Park. #1470 was likely completely submerged. The water level rose as high as the rafters of the old museum building, and the trolley certainly wasn't that tall, so we're making the inference. We don't know for sure. In any event, the wheels were underwater for days. Now we skip ahead 22 years as we try to move DC Transit #1470 again.

The idea was simple -- we would pick up the street car, pull out the rails, and set it back down on the other set of rails underneath. If we had actually done this, we might have been alright. However, with the Zoo Choo desperate for space given its rather commodious turning radius, we opted to move #1470 a little more to the east to give the train some clearance. This was the rub.

We're estimating the weight of our street car to be in the neighborhood of 30,000 pounds. While that was within the lifting capacity of Allegheny Construction's big crane, it was not within its capacity due to the angle by which the crane was forced to operate (there are some messy physics involved that I won't bother going into). So the new plan was to lift the front end of the trolley with the crane, and pull it forward using a large tow truck (services generously donated by the Commonwealth Coach & Trolley Museum) until it had cleared its upper rails and the front wheels could be set down on the lower rails. This part went [relatively] smoothly. Now we get to the ugly part.

Next we would lift the rear end of the trolley, and drag the whole thing forward some more with the wrecker until those rear wheels cleared the upper rails to be set down level with the rest of the car. Remember how I told you that those wheels had been underwater for days? Well, it seems they never got cleaned up, and the wheels that carried that street car from Alexandria to Glen Echo every day for years refused to let it move the first foot forward today.

Enter: The Tow Truck

By this point, our one-hour moving project had already ballooned up to the three-hour mark. It was decided that a fair lead could be rigged (since the tow truck couldn't maneuver in the tight space to be directly in front of the trolley) to the side of the tow truck, beneath the crane, in front of the street car. The resultant system of pulleys more closely resembled a Rube Goldberg device than a wench.

Picture this: the tow truck sits to the right and about a car length forward of the trolley. The line comes from the tow truck, immediately out to the left (toward the street car), through a pulley fastened by a chain to the rails themselves, to the front of #1470. We created a Tetris piece out of steel cable. Now to engage the wench, pull the trolley forward, and set its rear-end down.

At this time, I'd like to let you know about a new exhibit at your Virginia Museum of Transportation. This museum is now home to the only combination narrow gauge-standard gauge rails on earth.

Rather than pull the trolley forward, the force of the wench and the resistance of the street car joined to bend the steel rails in toward each other, pigeon-toe style. Time for another new plan.

The distance the car needed to move forward was only about three feet. It had been pulled the rest of the way earlier with its front wheels in the air. The daredevils with Allegheny Construction lowered the rear end of the trolley onto blocks they'd put on the lower rails, forward of the upper rails. Then it was just a matter of shoving the upper rail segment out of the way, pulling the blocks out from under the street car, and lowering it finally down to the earth.

And so it was. After five hours, our street car had moved twenty feet forward, and two feet straight down. In the process, we rendered useless a pair of steel rails, dug massive holes in our playground from the tow truck's path, and cost Allegheny Construction about twenty man-hours in donated time and services.

Why settle for the easy way, when the very hard, destructive way will do?

*Every small community refers to natural disasters in this way. It's quaint, which is another way of saying that no one understands it, but it seems charming, anyway.

Carol of the Bells

I couldn't help myself. I read over some of the old posts here, and noticed a trend -- we complain about money a lot. I'm not saying there isn't a good reason for that, nor that there isn't some interesting stuff there. Just an observation, that's all. So, in our continuing effort for consistency, here's another rant post about money.

Hark! how the bells, sweet silver bells, all seem to say "Throw cares away."

Last year, we sold a locomotive (a sentence I never thought I'd use before I started working here). By the calendar, that happened this year, but as far as our finances are concerned, that was last year. Anyway, if not for that sale, we'd have ended up in the red. This year doesn't look a lot better, and we're all out of locomotives to sell.

Christmas is here, bringing good cheer to young and old, meek and the bold.

The situation isn't terrible, as we've still got some chunks of local money and other donations coming in, but the outlook is not good. Citizens of Virginia are well-aware of the budget crunch facing the Commonwealth, and the murmurs in Richmond say that there will be no state funding for non-state agencies. As a tax-payer, I can't personally fault this sentiment, but working for a struggling non-profit, it's a dark cloud. It's also worth noting that your Virginia Museum of Transportation is the Official Transportation Museum of the Commonwealth. That designation isn't just fluff -- it came directly from the legislature in Richmond years ago. While the title is nice, it does not make us an agency of the state. Ergo, when goes the money, so goes the show.

Ding, dong, ding, dong -- that is their song, with joyful ring, all caroling.

The City of Roanoke hasn't been much help, either. We expected and accepted that long ago, so this is no great surprise. Our funding from the city is at an all-time low, but the city has its own budget needs, too.

So what does that mean for the 44-year old caretaker of Virginia's transportation heritage?

One seems to hear words of good cheer from everywhere, filling the air.

It means we've got three possible futures.

In the first, we receive a substantial donation from a major player, to be continued in perpetuity. The B&O Railroad Museum receives substantial funding from CSX. They get a lot of donations, too, of course, but this is an example of what a large corporate partner can do. Last year, Norfolk Southern very generously contributed tens of thousands of dollars to us. This year, they're again doing so with the caveat that we now match their donation. However, in neither case was the money enough to get us through a year. We're no less grateful; merely honest.

In the second, we become a state agency. This is probably the most ideal course for us. State funding ensures our continuation, and provides resources beyond our current means. This would resurrect our restoration, curatorial, and education departments -- three neglected and presently inactive areas of our operation forced into dormancy by a lack of funding. It would also help us cross the hurdle we've been stuck on for a while, and get out of the rather regional focus we have in our collection and exhibits. At its last meeting, the VMT Board of Directors voted to pursue this course, but their consent is not the only cog in this wheel.

In the third, we continue as we are. The only end game for this particular circumstance will be the closing of our doors. We could get by a few more years, but if we made it to a 50th birthday, it would surprise everyone involved.

O, how they pound, raising the sound, o'er hill and dale, telling their tale.

Virginia's Explore Park just shut down, largely for the same reasons. The brand new Art Museum of Western Virginia has not yet opened, now costing nearly double its initial $40.5 million price tag. The History Museum of Western Virginia resembles a ghost town. Despite some [reasonably] successful events and increased attendance, your VMT in the same trenches.

Gaily they ring, while people sing songs of good cheer. Christmas is here!

During the holidays, everyone has a hand out, asking for toys, clothes, money, food, time, prayers, and company. There's never enough to go around, this is true. What we don't seem to realize is that this holds true during the rest of the year, too. We just don't notice it unless we stand outside in a Santa suit and ring a bell.

Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas!
Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas!

And we're back

After too long, we're back and better than ever, coming in over your FM dial. That last part's not right, but we're back nonetheless, so let's get you caught up on some recent events at your Virginia Museum of Transportation.

On October 27th, we hosted our first annual Iron Horse Tug of War, a joint fund raiser with Special Olympics Virginia. We were fortunate for some fantastic weather, coming off three consecutive days of rain. Six teams competed in the event, pulling our #611 in heats. We very nearly killed the first team. Despite tugging with all they had, they weren't able to budge the engine an inch. After some investigation, we discovered that one of the tender brakes failed to disengage, so the team was pulling a 800,000 pounds of steel with its brakes on -- ouch. After releasing the brake, we had no difficulties at all, and #611 rolled back and forth easily. Below are some photos from the event, taken by Mr. Martin Moorefield.

We had not seen these blue skies since early this week. We were glad to have them for the event.













Local band Key West played for us through the event.














The competitors and spectators line up as the final preparations are made.














Teams pose for pictures after the awards are given out. Awards were given for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place teams, as well as the last place team which earned the "Caboose Who Got Loose" award. Our thanks go out to Creations in downtown Roanoke for helping us with the awards plaques.








Just two weeks later, we hosted a lecture and book signing by Rush Loving, Jr., author of The Men Who Loved Trains. This event was the first in a series of collaborative efforts involving the N&W Historical Society, the C&O Historical Society, the Blue Ridge and Roanoke Chapters of the NRHS, the O. Winston Link Museum, and of course, your Virginia Museum of Transportation. Attendance was, admittedly, light. Despite the small crowd, Mr. Loving fielded excellent questions, and took a tour of the museum after signing copies of his book. We thank him for his time, and hope to have him back soon.

In other news, the first step in bringing the Zoo Choo to VMT is underway. Next week, we hope to receive the track upon which the train will run. Because the Mill Mountain Zoo will be replacing its train, they opted to keep their track in place, and simply purchase a new train. Their old train comes to us, along with brand new track that we'll lay down in our rail yard outside. We'll be renovating the Ellett Station, and old combination freight-passenger station formerly used on the Virginian Railway, as our ticket office. Check back for more information on this in the coming weeks.

There's one last topic brewing that needs to be addressed, but this isn't the right post for it. Look for another post soon on a more serious subject. I'll give you a hint -- it starts with "M," rhymes with "honey," and is synonymous with "somethin' we ain't got."

A sight not seen in some time

Roanoke celebrates its 125th anniversary this year. This means that Norfolk Southern, after a fashion, also celebrates its 125th anniversary this year. As part of the commemoration of the latter, two of Roanoke's glory girls may be showing off their stuff at Norfolk Southern's Roanoke Shops.

Norfolk Southern is hosting an open house at its Roanoke Shops on September 8th. The term "open house" is a misnomer as the event is open by invitation only. Nonetheless, the open house at the shops is a big deal, and to emphasize it, #611 and #1218 may be making an appearance.

Now, the event is closed to the public, which is too bad, really, but not surprising. The shops are in various states of repair, and safety concerns should and do prevail. These concerns only grow as the number of attendees does. However, your Virginia Museum of Transportation will offer exclusive photos of those engines at the shops, if they are part of the event. The photos will go up on this blog. The sight of a J Class steam engine on the turntable at the Roanoke Shops has not been seen in over a decade, and might not ever be seen again.

We're holding our breath, crossing our fingers, and knocking on every piece of wood we can find.

Pb and Progress

Lead is in the news. It is an intriguing element by itself, really. It is highly malleable, but a poor conductor of electricity. It resists corrosion, but tarnishes in the open air. It was discovered by the ancients, used in everything from drain pipes to metal coins. Later uses included gasoline, glass, and paint. As environmental concerns grew, lead's usage shrank. Some even suspect that lead poisoning may have had a role in the decline of the Roman Empire. The latest toy recalls will likely bring about all kinds of new importation practices, quality assurance standards, and inspection procedures. I'm skewing pretty far afield from what we would consider germane, so let me hasten to the point.

Lead affects your VMT in two different ways. In the first, there are three coal hoppers sitting at the west end of the museum. While further research needs to be done, we currently believe them to be some of, if not the oldest surviving steel coal hoppers in the country. However, one quick look by even the least educated rube would lead one to question how well they're surviving. All are almost totally mussed in a rusty crust; trees have just bust that robust and rusted crust, leaving us nonplussed.

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

In any event, we've begun collecting bids to restore at least one of the hoppers, but our efforts ground to a halt when we discovered -- you guessed it -- lead on the skin of the cars. The cost of sandblasting a car of that size, priming it, and repainting it, comes to about $8,000 (assuming no metalwork is done, and these cars need a lot of that). That's also assuming there's no lead. Factor in the various safeguards that have to be taken to handle and dispose of the blasted lead, and the price per car jumps to nearly $20,000. For those of you wondering why those cars still sit at the end of this building untouched, you've got your answer. Meanwhile -- please forgive the cheap plug -- we will happily accept donations toward the restoration of what could very well be America's oldest surviving steel hoppers.

So, I said that lead affects your VMT in two ways, but I've only named one. The other one is rather unsettling.

Up until a few months ago, the museum's gift shop carried Thomas the Tank Engine products. If you purchased any from us, or know of people who may have, PLEASE CONTACT THE MANUFACTURER TO DETERMINE IF YOUR PRODUCTS HAVE BEEN RECALLED. But there is some good news here, too. The museum's gift shop no longer carries Thomas products. Instead, it carries products from parent-favorites Melissa and Doug and our new friends, The Whittle Shortline Railroad. The latter's wooden trains are all made in America, and as their website boldly states, their paint is 100% lead free. Anyway, this is less about merchandise, and more of a general notice to our patrons and customers.

It's not at all difficult to see progression in a museum. In this one, for example, one can see steam give way to diesel, horses give way to internal combustion engines, and motive technology itself move from journal boxes to roller bearings. And yet, the same lead in the paint on our hoppers that threatens the environment forms a barrier in the glass of our computer monitors to shield us from radiation. Mankind is on a time line of progression, taming the very elements of nature to meet his demands.

Neat, huh?

We're still here

July is a peculiar month for Independence Days. We employ the plural form here because in addition to the United States, Venezuela, Peru, Belgium, and Argentina all celebrate their Independence Days in July. Moreover, Canada became a nation in July, and Idaho and Wyoming became states. So July is a month full of anniversaries of new beginnings. Your Virginia Museum of Transportation has an odd sort of anniversary coming up, too.

It was a dark and stormy night in July, you see, when Mother Nature visited the First Bank of VMT, withdrew 10,000 square feet of roof and deposited 1,000 gallons of rain water. This shut down the museum for two weeks in the heart of our busy season. At nearly the same time, our former Executive Director resigned under controversy about misappropriation of funds. Many of our volunteers jumped ship, and we couldn't really blame them.

But, here comes July again and we're still open. On a personal note, this comes as a bit of a surprise to this blogger, and to many people, I have no doubt. In the past year, we lost our roof and our director, our Director of Education resigned, a man ran into our building with his truck, we had to call the bomb squad not once, but twice, saw our phone and internet lines cut for more than a week, had a small electrical fire in one of the walls, had a burglar break into the museum looking for cash, and discovered the ugly reality that was our exploding debt.

That's a lot of doom and gloom for one paragraph, so let's not belabor the point. In the same year, we've repaired that roof, hired a new Executive Director, paid off every penny of our debt, developed new and healthy relationships with other transportation museums and organizations, seen our volunteer corps grow in size from a handful to dozens, acquired a miniature locomotive for kids and adults to ride, and opened a brand new gallery showcasing automobiles from nearly every decade of the Twentieth Century.

The point is, we're still here. That makes it an anniversary worth celebrating.

Merrily we roll along

Friday, June 15th was a big day for the museum. We didn't have a ton of visitors. We didn't raise a bunch of money, or receive anything new to the collection. What did happen, though, was a sight too rare in our time. #611 moved.

We've been ramping up to our big tug of war fund raiser for a few weeks now, and in order to make sure that #611 could not only still roll (as we all knew it could), but that it could do so safely (of which we weren't quite so sure). So, on June 15th, we decided to try it out.

Our thanks go out to Robert Young's Towing for helping us with this project. We absolutely couldn't have done it without them.

Someone let the monkeys out

No, Oops is still up on the mountain. We're talking about the other small, energetic primates -- kids.

With school out for the summer, VMT is entering its busiest time of the year. We'll see as many people through our doors in the next two months as we've seen since the year began. It's a favorite time for us, not just financially, but also because the fun of this place really comes out when kids are here.

The old rail fans (affectionately known as "old farts") are some of our best customers, but a large portion of our museum is devoted to providing fun and educational experiences for children. We have a playground, hands-on exhibits, trains the little devils darlings can climb on, and a transportation safety room geared directly toward them.

One new experience in the works is a train simulator so that kids and adults can get a sense of what it's like to sit in the cab of a locomotive rolling down the line. We're hoping to install this simulator in the cab of one of our diesels sometime soon, though the all-important dollar, the hinge around which our museum turns will dictate the time table for that.

Not to forget the kids during our tug of war fund raiser, while the adults are pulling on #611, the kids can pull on a 1950 Studebaker Land Cruiser. We might even let the parking brake out for them.

Clerical Oversight

VMT used to be a city museum. This is an older bit of history, but it bears mentioning because it has to do with this story. VMT got its start as the Roanoke Transportation Center and Railroad Museum in May of 1963. At that time, it was an odd assortment of priceless locomotives and rather ordinary wagons and a four-year old Jupiter IRBM. The whole thing sat in Roanoke's Wasena Park for 22 years before a flood wiped out most of the complex.

The museum relocated to its current home on Norfolk Avenue, with its new and current name in tow. A curious matter of billing never quite caught up, though.

While in the city park, the museum's water bill was paid by the city. This made sense as there was no way to discern how much water was being used by public fountains and bathrooms and how much by the museum itself. Fair enough. But when the museum reopened downtown, the city continued to pay its water bill. One might think that this was an oversight that would be corrected in a few months, or maybe a year. Try 22 years.

In the early spring of this year, the museum received a notice from the water authority that threatened to turn off our water for a past due bill. When we called about this, the water authority told us that the bill had been paid by the city. A phone call to the city confirmed this, and shed light on a clerical error more than two decades old. The museum changed its name prior to moving from the park, so the bills showed the same name and got sent to the same address with the city's Parks and Recreation office. Apparently, nobody in that office thought this was odd. More accurately, 22 years of city officials in that office didn't think it was odd.

We finally started paying our own water bills this year, and we thank the tax payers of Roanoke for their generous contributions over the years. They quite literally kept the water running.

To attempt to describe the railroad's presence and influence in the city of Roanoke over the years is to attempt to describe a rainbow to a blind man. Roanoke still bears the marks of its illustrious rail heritage, much as an older man may still show some pocks from his pimpled youth.

A quick look around town will confirm this. Consider The Great 611 Steak Company*, a local restaurant adorned in the colors and images of Norfolk & Western's own #611. The Norfolk Southern shops still dominate the city skyline on the other side of I-581. There are dozens of bridges and overpasses for trains. Shaffer's Crossing is the largest rail yard in Virginia west of Richmond. Some of the most popular events in the town's history have been when locomotives came into or left this museum, much like the fanfare that accompanied their births at the shops down the street.

One other rail tribute lives in Roanoke. Actually, it lives above Roanoke at the Mill Mountain Zoo. The Zoo Choo, a miniature train, has operated at the zoo for more than half a century, happily transporting visitors around the zoo whilst bombarding them with views of the valley that are truly unmatched. The Zoo Choo is every bit an institution in Roanoke.

Last night, it was announced that the Zoo Choo is moving.

The train is owned by the Roanoke Jaycees, but has chugged along atop Mill Mountain for more than 50 years. The zoo asked the Jaycees to remove the train as they wished to purchase a train for themselves, no longer wishing to split the revenue from the Jaycees' engine. Looking for a new home, the Jaycees contacted us, and we said yes.

To place the train here requires a healthy bit of construction that we cannot guarantee to be completed for next year (the train will move out of the zoo in November of 2007). A track pattern resembling a dog bone will be placed outside in our rail yard. At several points, it will cross the tracks on which its larger cousins rest. These sections will be made removable so that we can move the pieces in our collection as needed. This means elevating the entirety of the mini-train's track and filling with ballast and wood.

One consideration is to relocate and repaint the old Ellitt station which sits outside the museum for use as the ticket booth. Another would be to purchase tickets inside at the front desk or gift shop, though the station idea is obviously preferable.

The Jaycees would operate the train, hiring all the engineers and maintenance workers. The terms of the financial agreement would be as they were with the Mill Mountain Zoo -- VMT and the Jaycees will split the net return.

This is a fitting home for the Zoo Choo. When the museum was located in Wasena Park, it operated a miniature train of its own. That train, however, was actually a tractor with a fiberglass shell over it, far from the sophistication of this entity. Moreover, the zoo will not be without a train forever. The zoo already has plans to purchase a train that it would own and operate itself, so the Zoo Choo will yet live.

One of the single most common requests at VMT from visitors is for a train ride. Since Norfolk Southern's main east-west line sits right behind the museum, this is nearly impossible. However, the Zoo Choo is an excellent compromise and will provide a fine base of operations for the next fifty years of its life, riding the rails in the shadows of the giants that inspired it.

*VMT collaborates with The Great 611 Steak Company. A receipt from the museum is good for 10% off your meal at the restaurant, and your meal receipt is good for 10% off admission to the museum.

Graffiti is an interesting thing. In some areas, it's used simply to deface property. In other areas, it marks territory. In yet other areas, it can be effective, and often moving artwork. But graffiti at VMT is another thing altogether.

When we were kids, a fun thing to do was to carve our names into trees or picnic tables or benches or anything that could be chipped away with a young boy's pocket knife. I think we can all remember desks in our schools which bore the names of students from years past, letting us know that they "were here."

What have these two paragraphs to do with one another? When synthesized, they lead to the subject of this post.

In our railyard, we have a large collection of locomotives, baggage cars, dining cars, cranes, and other rail equipment. Located directly beside Norfolk Southern's main east-west line, this equipment picks up a considerable amount of dust and dirt kicked up by the nearly constant passing of freight trains. Add to this the pollen of spring, and what's created on the sides of these metal monsters is a thick plaster of dirt out of which is carved with bony fingers the markings of who "was here."

What follows is a photo essay of our graffiti. Note its different purposes. Greetings, dates, relationships, and even religion. Also, please note that we haven't cleaned these in a little too long.

Alas. A love lost before it began.

Hello, yourself. Come on in and write on things. No, really, it's cool.




The date of this scribbling is 6-2-06. When I think about how many times it's rained since June of last year, and that this is still here, it's almost sickening.



This is easily the best of the lot. One wonders if the person enjoys the food, (and if so, what kind of pie) or the number and the person just can't spell.


In addition to his playhouse, PeeWee also had hopper cars.


A rat fink? Really? It's like Sinatra came back from the grave just to insult Gideon. Who says "rat fink" any more?


The family that vandalizes together...



Religion is not absent from VMT. Neither is Jesus.


This panel doesn't seem all that remarkable...


















until you find out that the panel is eight feet in the air on this piece. How did they get up there?

Big doin's

The Roanoke City Council voted unanimously to give the Nickel Plate Locomotive #763 to us. This kick-starts the chain of events involved in making the sale finally happen. The Ohio Central Railroad Historical Society will pay us once we have written confirmation that Norfolk Southern will move the engine for them. With all of that in place, #763 will pull out of Roanoke for the first time in about forty years.

Meanwhile, the Advance Auto Parts Auto Gallery is nearing completion. The museum will be closing to the public this Sunday, April 22nd, to host a private event for Advance's team members in honor of Advance's 75th anniversary. After that, the gallery will open the following week. We're not sure when the grand opening will be as there's still a lot of work to do, but the public will have access before the month is out. How wild is that?! And it's only seven months late... pesky storms.

On a slightly personal note, this blogger just returned from a trip to the Museum Store Association Conference and Expo in Denver, Colorado. Coming out of the contacts made and research done there, look for a unique product line to be introduced this fall in VMT's store, Destinations. These items won't be available anywhere else, so be sure to check back for more information.

Finally (ah... finally), the museum may be acquiring a U.S. Army Cobra helicopter for display outside the museum. The hope is to place it about twenty feet in the air in front of the building with its running lights on to attract attention. Unfortunately, and for obvious reasons, we can't keep the rotor running. One flock of birds with bad depth perception and we've got a mess.

Stay tuned for more, and some pictures of our fearless leader trying to operate a Zamboni machine in a shirt and tie!

Change is a-comin'

We've got some fairly big doings happening right now worth mentioning. Our featured exhibit, "Starlight on the Rails" has finally come down and is on its way back home to the Robert Mann Gallery in New York.

Though the Lawrence Gallery which housed that exhibit here is closed, we're excited to report that our Auto Gallery will be opening this Friday! Ok, let's put aside the glamorous press release stuff and talk about what's actually going on.

The Auto Gallery was supposed to open in October of last year. After the roof came off, everything got put on hold. Gallery openings, annual fund raising drives, newsletter mailings -- everything. Resultantly, the Auto Gallery got pushed back and pushed back while the "Starlight" exhibit got held over and held over. Now, entering the final quarter of the museum's fiscal year, with a firmer grip on finances than at any time in the museum's recent history, things are finally back on track (if you'll forgive the pun).

The Auto Gallery will not be finished by the time it opens on Friday, but it will at least be presentable. It houses nearly a dozen automobiles ranging from the 1900s to the 1980s, along with a set of license plates covering almost every year of Virginia's auto history, a set worth more than $5,000 in itself. The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) donated a substantial collection of photographs, signs, and other materials for the first exhibit in the gallery. All of these things will be up and running on Friday.

What isn't ready is the building itself. Because the Auto Gallery is contiguous with the rest of the museum, though divided from it by a fire wall, a certified fire door has to be in use. We don't have one of those (though Advance Auto Parts has generously donated the funds for such a door's installation). Also, the gallery is in a portion of the building that still retains most of the original rolling doors from the building's construction in 1918. That's right -- these doors are almost 90 years old. While they keep people and animals out, that's about all they keep out. This museum has never been properly renovated, and as a result, air gets in everywhere. Heating and cooling costs harken back to your dad telling you not to leave the front door open with the air conditioner running. Dad was right. So, those doors have to be replaced, either with new doors or walls or a combination of the two.

We won't have all of the signage done yet, either. Thanks to the efforts of the VMT Intern, we have well-researched, engagingly written signs for each automobile, but they're still not back from the printers, and the clock's ticking.

What this means is what we call in the biz, "a soft opening." We'll have a grand opening once the whole thing's ready, but as of Friday, all guests entering the museum will have access to this gallery. Hopefully, a room full of beautiful automobiles will serve as a substitute for a room full of railroad photography.

And what of that room? This summer, we hope to have not one, not two, but three new exhibits in that room. We've posted about two of them before -- the Grayhound Bus exhibit, and the Virginian Railway exhibit. The third exhibit is devoted to Star City Motor Madness, an annual antique car celebration held in Roanoke (and, not without mention, a generous contributor to the museum).

Anyway, come out Friday. See the cars. See the trains. See the three-block long museum run by four people. Marvel.