Collections and Connections

This and that:

The Messimer Collection has had its grand opening. Housed in the front of the museum, near the gift shop, the exhibit displays an abundance of Greyhound bus memorabilia covering three-quarters of a century. The exhibit also includes Trailways items, a full size front of an Abbott Trailways bus and photos of local transit buses provided by the Commonwealth Coach and Trolley Museum of Roanoke.

Located in the same area is a new display celebrating Roanoke’s “other” railroad, the Virginian Railway. Though much smaller than the Norfolk and Western, the Virginian competed neck-and-neck with the N&W hauling West Virginia coal to Norfolk. The two railroads merged in 1959. This area is not finished. We plan to do a formal opening once the storyboards are completed and mounted.

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VMT is in negotiations with two other Virginia museums regarding the N&W locomotives at the Virginia Scrap Iron and Metal Company property. Hopefully the remaining vintage steam locos can be salvaged through a cooperative effort. We’ll keep you posted.

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This week the museum unveils the Jim Hyams serigraph collection. Serigraphs are prints made using the silkscreen process. The result is highly detailed paints of an almost photographic quality. Afterward the screens are destroyed, limiting the print run to a small number, sometimes only one.

The collection is being displayed at VMT in conjunction with the Roanoke Arts Festival and will remain there through the end of the year. The transportation-related serigraphs were produced by some of the premier artists in the genre.

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Soon we will feature a locomotive cab inside our building. Norfolk Southern donated the cab after converting an SD-40 diesel electric into a “calf,” a unit that cannot be operated solo but is lashed together with other locomotives to provide additional power. The six-axle SD40 was manufactured by General Motors' Electro-Motive Division beginning in 1966 and became the best-selling locomotive of all time.

The cab should be in place early in 2009. It will allow visitors to experience the inside of a diesel loco. In the future we hope to add a locomotive simulator to our collection.

Take the Bus

VMT will debut another new exhibit soon. In fact, the Lawrence Gallery has already unofficially opened, though it still needs some finishing touches—narratives and signage are not complete yet. It showcases The Messimer Collection, an exhibit on bus transportation, along with a feature on the Virginian, Roanoke’s other railroad. Volunteers have done much of the work on the project.

The museum gratefully acknowledges retired Greyhound driver Harry Messimer for the donation and installation of his collection which features artifacts and memorabilia spanning over 75 years of Greyhound history.

The Messimer Collection features the top dog of the 20th century highways. Begun in the rugged iron ore country of Hibbing, Minnesota in 1914 by a Swedish entrepreneur named Carl Wickman, Greyhound Bus Lines would become the largest bus line in the history of the nation.

For 15 cents a ride, Wickman transported miners from the Oliver Iron Mines in Hibbing to the new residential town of Alice. Wickman’s first year profits were $8,000. Over the years his company would reach revenues of $1.045 billion with a fleet of over 3,500 coaches.

In 1921 Wickman’s coaches were nicknamed greyhounds because of their sleek profile and gray paint. By 1929 the galloping greyhound had become the company’s official logo. During WW II the bus line began to train women drivers due to the demand for men in the military. Those female drivers, along with their male cohorts, transported troops coast to coast.

The collection includes signs, photos, toy buses, ticket stubs, magazine clippings, safety and service awards, hats, belt buckles, maps, calendars, promotional, promotional items and memorabilia that were sold at station gift shops.

Historic items from Trailways, the rival that Greyhound finally ran down, and local fixture Abbott Bus Lines also have displays. In addition, visitors can learn about industry labor issues, the connection between Greyhound and Trailways and the train industry, and the role buses played during the war and civil rights movements.

We will let you know the official opening date and provide details of the Virginian exhibit a little later. Meanwhile, come run with the big dogs. The Lawrence Gallery offers an express cruise down memory lane.

Listening Again

Blogs without readers are sad, sad creatures. I have been writing this one since late February and appreciate so much those who bother to show up here time after time. Here is a look back at some of your comments. (Feedback regarding whether VMT should be a transportation or railroad-only attraction I will defer until an upcoming blog on that subject.)

Welcome back
When I took over the blog in February, several of you were kind enough to say you were glad to see it back on line—and those of you who weren’t glad were kind enough not to say so. Derek wrote, “As someone from Indiana who has never had a chance to come and visit but has many fond memories of 611, this is the place to keep up on the action. Please keep the updates coming! Would also like to get the newsletter.

From Indiana? Cool. I hope you can visit in person soon. As the May 12 blog points out, you can see a lot of other railroad stuff in addition to VMT.

Wishin’ and hopin’
Several people have shared items from their personal wish list. Chief among them is the desire to have more intimate contact with the outdoor exhibits. Martin said, “I personally would like to see the Virginian Railway 0-8-0 #4 be painted up and have the cab open to the public. “ Emmo213 dreams of being able to “actually sit in the engineer's seat of 611 and 1218 …. Maybe even have an air source hooked up so there's a noon-time whistle or something similar.”

Phillip thinks one of VMT’s biggest selling points is allowing visitors to “climb all over the collection,” even though “curators in their various ways would pull out their hair.” And Anonymous applauds “how the railroad exhibits are not roped off. There is something special about touching the artifacts that I have read about or seen on video for years.

Anti-q8 wishes we could get even more up close and personal. “It seems almost criminal that [the 611] sits idle, with little or no possibility of coming back to life. My kids love trains and are just in awe when they see a regular diesel engine. I can only imagine what they’d think if they could actually see 611 under power. With the steam, smoke and the driving rods, I’m sure it would seem to be alive and breathing.”

We all ache for that to happen. More likely to occur is Philosofik’s idea.

In conjunction with a map of area railroad attractions, he (or she?) suggests cell phone tours. “Basically, the map provides visitors with a unique local or toll-free phone number they can call at the various landmarks noted on the map. The phone call will access a pre-recorded message talking about the site they're viewing with as little or as much detail as you want. Each site could have its own extension in the phone so you could even track which sites get the most traffic.”

Cell tour calls. That’s a different kind of CTC.

Thanks for the Memories

Anti-q8 loved the comments I included from a staff member about the impression 611 makes on people. He reminisces, “My grandfather was a Pullman conductor on the Powhatan Arrow and the Cavalier back in the 40’s and 50’s. When my mom was in college at Longwood in Farmville, she used to deadhead home to Norfolk when her dad was on the train. She said that when they pulled out of the station, by the time they were at the town limit, they were almost at speed. I have heard that at one time on the flats between Richmond and Norfolk, the engineers tried to see how fast she would go but had to throttle back because they were afraid the track wouldn’t hold up; so they were never sure exactly how fast the J-series really was.”

Recollections like that need to be preserved and shared, Phillip mused. “What if the VMT set up a computer terminal where guests could record their recollections of riding behind #611 or any of the other vehicles? Then have them stored so others can view them and share their own. There are so many great stories out there, it’d be a shame to lose them to time.”

“Just the Facts”
An anonymous blog reader feels “more people would read it if you posted about what's going on at VMT. Ya know, like the exhibits, what's being done to restore various pieces of equipment, things like that. Just because it's a blog doesn't mean you have to try to be poetic. I personally want information, not poetry.”

Some folks like poetry,
Some folks like prose
Thanks for your view
Though it steps on my toes.
Here’s who I write for
When I have my druthers.
Sometimes it’s one group
And sometimes it’s others.
So when one column
Leaves you at the station,
Maybe the next will
Provide stimulation.

Too Much Talk, Too Little Action
Another Anonymous (or the same one?) also groused about a piece on stories: “Yes, there are so many stories. Why are we telling them on a blog that few read instead of at the museum itself? Perhaps the museum would be in better shape if it had been telling them there.”

“That few read?” You break my heart.

Isn’t that part of the reason for a blog? To talk about what we can do better, especially when readers join the dialogue, is a vital step toward putting new ideas into practice. Sometimes we throw things out there to get your reaction and to see if you have better ideas. We would love to do lots of things that we cannot right now due to a lack of manpower and money. So we do what we can and continue to dream, with your help.


It’s Everywhere
Finally, Barbara wrote to say, “Hello, I just entered before I have to leave to the airport. If you want here is the site I told you about where I type some stuff and make good money (I work from home).”

How about that—not even blogs are immune from spam.

Railroad Heaven

Have you thought about how large the rail footprint in the Roanoke Valley has become? We are a train lover’s Bigfoot, a rail fan’s gold mine. Those of us who live here may forget sometimes how much we do have to offer.

You can tour the Museum of Transportation and its extensive collection of locomotives, rolling stock and other artifacts. Adding to its value is its location within the former Norfolk & Western Roanoke freight terminal.

You can travel the David and Susan Goode Railwalk, filled with graphics, data and hands-on exhibits. Strolling alongside the mainline of one of the four largest railroads in America, you can observe all kinds of Norfolk Southern trains in action. At times you will see not only NS locomotives but also those in the livery of CSX, Burlington Northern Santa Fe and Union Pacific, among others.

Nearby you can find much more of Norfolk Southern’s regional operations to take in. A dual track hump classification yard with both receiving and departure yards on each end lies just west of downtown at Shaffers Crossing. Fueling and sanding facilities and a locomotive and car maintenance center are located there as well. Downtown the current NS office building, modern and sophisticated-looking, towers above the streets.

Across the tracks from VMT and the Railwalk stands Hotel Roanoke, the grand old lady built by Norfolk Southern’s predecessor, the N&W, for its passengers. On one side of that classic structure is the restored, Loewy-designed Roanoke passenger station. Within its walls lies the O. Winston Link Museum, featuring stunning photos of N&W steam locomotives against the vanishing rural landscape of this region.

Traipse over to the other side of Hotel Roanoke and you can gaze at two earlier Norfolk and Western office buildings, built when Roanoke was not just a regional but a national railroad headquarters. One structure now houses the Roanoke Higher Education Center where more than a dozen universities and colleges offer classes. The other building contains upscale apartment living. You can go inside the Higher Ed. Center and see the exquisite wood paneling and metal work that made this such an elegant home for railroad management.

Just down the tracks from the office buildings, hotel and passenger station you will find the sprawling East End Shops, where many of the locomotives featured in Winston Link’s photos were built. On one end, Norfolk Southern continues to perform heavy maintenance on GE locomotives, fabricate slugs and do some wreck repair. On the other end, FreightCar America manufactures ore cars for BNSF, coal hoppers for NS, BNSF and GATX, and double-stack container cars for Saudi Arabia.

The recent tour of “lost railroads” in the valley offered a reminder that there is still more railroad gold to be mined in this area. In addition, two other planned projects will make Bigfoot’s print even more expansive: the restoration of the Virginian Railway passenger station and the building of an intermodal terminal in Elliston.

How many places in America can you go and see in such close proximity the headquarters of one of the most successful and innovative steam railroads in history, the shops where some of North America’s most impressive locomotives were built, the collected work of one of America’s great railroad photographers, some of the classic locomotives he shot, the operations of a modern class 1 railroad bisecting the historic sites, a manufacturing center for new freight cars and (hopefully soon) a cutting-edge intermodal railroad center?

You can do so much railfanning here, drinking in the past and present and even the future, taking in the trains and the people and facilities that make them go. It leaves me wondering whether we are adequately marketing ourselves to the world.

Is there any coordinated attempt to “sell” to train buffs all we offer in the valley? Are visitors to the area introduced to the full range of interconnected rail attractions we offer? Do we have railfan maps of the area to hand out to tourists?

Scranton, PA has Steam Town, a somewhat motley repository of locomotives gussied up by huge amounts of federal government money. Perhaps we should call ourselves Train Town or Railroad Roanoke, or something like that (I bet you can think of a better name than the ones I just suggested).

Surely we can do more to promote our railroad riches. Looking around convinces me that we are a wonderful secret that has been too well kept.

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?

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."

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.

"Starlight" Moving On

This month will be your last chance to catch our temporary exhibit, "Starlight on the Rails," currently on loan from the Robert Mann Gallery in New York. The exhibit showcases nighttime railroad photography NOT done by O. Winston Link (though it certainly must have been inspired by his work).

This exhibit will be leaving in mid-April, to be replaced by two exhibits -- one on buses, the other on the Virginian Railway. Look for more info about those soon.

If you've been by the museum, you've probably seen a banner out front advertising the "Starlight" exhibit. If you were of an especially keen eye, you probably saw that this exhibit was supposed to have left us last year, but has been held over. However popular the exhibit has been (and people have seemed to enjoy it), we didn't keep it this long because of the mass appeal of nighttime railroad photography -- Roanoke already has a museum for that.

We kept it, to be blunt, because there were a hundred other things we had to do, and only six paid employees working in the building, two on a part-time basis. You'll probably hear some spin about how popular it is, but the reality is that when your roof comes off in a storm and your former Executive Director resigns, priorities shift dramatically, and taking pictures off a wall that HASN'T suffered water damage isn't that high on the list. Anyway, our thanks go to the Robert Mann Gallery for being so understanding. They've extended the loan of this exhibit well beyond our contract, and haven't once pushed us to get it back before we were able.

So, only about six or eight months late, "Starlight on the Rails" is leaving us to go back home to New York. Come on down and see it while it lasts. Sunday, April 8th will be the last day the Lawrence Gallery (where "Starlight" currently resides) is open before it changes over.

Come. See. Gawk.

Inaugural post!

Welcome to VMT Musings, the official blog of the Virginia Museum of Transportation. I'll be your conductor, cruise director, and flight attendant as VMT sets out to document its work and progress in the digital realm and beyond. Ok, enough fluff. Here's what's happening at the museum.

Currently, the museum is transforming itself, getting ready to open a new gallery which will increase the size of the museum by 33%. This new gallery will be our auto gallery (check back for posts with updates on and photos from the gallery), housing first an exhibit from the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) called, "From Mud to Mobility." This exhibit will chronicle the history of VDOT's work in Virginia, from the first paved roads to the creation of the Smart Road. We're hoping to have a soft opening for this exhibit by the end of March, so check back in for more information.

Also on VMT's to-do list is an upcoming bus exhibit. The Executive Director of the museum loves buses (and we all think he seems happiest behind the wheel of a bus), so this exhibit has a special place for him. It showcases a collection of model buses, photographs, bus maps, and other items.

Soon, the museum hopes to re-vamp its Virginian Railway exhibit. Currently, this exhibit is little more than a hodge-podge of boarding passes, time tables, and photographs -- this is hardly a fitting exhibit for one of the leading railroads of its era, and Roanoke's "other" railroad, beside the Norfolk & Western. Look for that exhibit later this year.

Last, but certainly not least, are our on-going restoration projects. The first priority goes to the car we call "President One." This car was used by the president of the Illinois Terminal, and offers quite a few amenities including a kitchen, dining room, state room, and bathrooms. The car still needs a lot of work. Look for photos soon!

So, you're asking yourself, "Self, what can I learn from reading VMT's blog that I can't learn from press releases or advertising?"

What we'll offer you here is the stuff that doesn't go in press releases. You'll be able to follow our restoration efforts on an almost daily basis as new work is done. We'll provide photo essays on what it takes to keep this place running. You'll be able to see the real damage done by the storm last summer that tore off our roof and still has most of the building without heat. This is the acoustic set -- the good, the bad, and the really quite ugly. Stay tuned.