Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 30, 1993 TAG: 9308230265
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The museum has emerged from a difficult decade marked by strife among board members and the disastrous flood of 1985. The strife soiled its image. The flood resulted in its move from Wasena Park in Roanoke to the Norfolk and Western Railway freight station downtown. It also left it with a huge debt, now at $350,000. A lagging economy made fund raising difficult.
Lately, museum backers have basked in the unaccustomed warmth of a favorable spotlight wielded by Roanoke Mayor David Bowers. He has suggested the museum be allocated $1 million over several years for improvements from a possible city bond issue.
Voters would have to decide; the first infusion of money would be at least a year away. But museum officials are so giddy at the prospect of help that they recently staged a news conference to announce a six-year, $4-million improvement and expansion plan.
That work is largely contingent on obtaining federal funds from the state - funds for which the museum hasn't yet applied, much less been chosen.
The excitement of the museum's supporters may be the flip side of their desperation to see a Roanoke cultural asset finally get its due.
``I truly believe we can become a premier museum,'' says Kay Houck, the executive director. ``We make no bones about it. We look pret-ty bad.''
The most pressing need is to build a cover for the rail cars, locomotives and other equipment that are deteriorating outside. The museum director envisions the work as a multistep process to begin no sooner than fall. Houck predicts that this, plus improved inside exhibits and expanded education programs, would result in a 30 percent increase in the museum's annual admissions, which she puts at 40,000 people.
Would that be enough to make the museum the tourism and economic development weapon its staunchest backers have always claimed it could be? Probably not. But a presentable museum would constitute a valuable link in the mayor's plan for polishing downtown Roanoke as a tourist attraction. Or so the mayor says.
He ties it to the reopening of the Hotel Roanoke, the opening of a convention center, the construction of the Gainsboro-Second Street bridge across the Norfolk Southern Corp. tracks and a linear park along Norfolk Avenue, perhaps served by a trolley car.
``My vision is that someone would be able to come to a convention, stay at the Hotel Roanoke, go across the tracks on the new skywalk, eat at the City Market, take a walk down the linear parkway to the expanded Transportation Museum and spend an hour and half or so looking at the exhibits and reading about the history of the railroad and Roanoke,'' he says.
The vision is not entirely original. Elements of it first appeared in Design '79, a Roanoke city improvement project. And longtime museum board member Beverly T. Fitzpatrick Jr., the city's vice mayor, endorsed some of the same things in 1985.
The mayor says nothing will happen unless he and museum officials can persuade other people and politicians to support them.
And even then, the mayor's scheme by itself won't be enough to boost museum attendance dramatically, says Walter Gray, who heads the California State Railroad Museum, one of the top railroad museums in the country.
``A good convention center, a good hotel and a good transportation museum are no guarantee of success,'' says Gray, who says he visited the museum in Roanoke a few years ago and turned down an offer to run it. The key is to chain them together to almost force visitation while building community involvement. Conference-goers seldom have much free time when they're in
town. Most spend their leisure moments together, socializing over food and drink. Only 1 or 2 percent choose to visit museums, Gray says. Thus, it is imperative for meeting planners to include time and incentives for visitors to browse around town. ``It's almost required that they cross-pollinate this thing so everybody who buys a room at the Hotel Roanoke is entitled to half-price admission to the museum, or that the museum fee is factored in, so everybody who's a hotel guest ... is admitted free,'' Gray says.
The California museum draws more than 500,000 visitors per year and gives a big boost to the neighboring Old Sacramento historic area. Its day-trip customers spend $3.6 million annually in Sacramento, according to Marketing Director Nancy Kramer, and vacationers contribute another $6 million.
The story it tells includes the opening of the West and the Gold Rush of 1849. But, Gray says, the way it's told makes the difference.
He and other experts agree that Roanoke has its own worthwhile railroad story, and that the museum's collection of rail equipment has merit. But the old method of shining up a few locomotives and waiting for admirers to appear is passe, they say.
``The folks in Roanoke have to realize they would be pursuing a slightly different kind of place than your traditional museum,'' says Bill Withuhn, curator of transportation at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of American History in Washington. ``You start with the care of the collection, but it's what you do with it that will draw the tourists.''
He knows what the museum has been through. Exhibits borrowed from the Smithsonian were damaged in the flood. He sent a staff member to help with the rigging work when a locomotive that had been washed from its moorings was lifted back into place.
''It would be a wonderful thing to see that museum grow and prosper,'' he says. ``They've got a very good collection, and the roots of Roanoke should be recognized.''
\ The most popular attraction inside the Sacramento museum is a Pullman car exhibit that rocks and moves as people walk through. Beds are turned down, and lights seem to flash past the windows. Also popular is an interactive game in which visitors try to identify various pieces of railroad equipment.
Outside, a Central Pacific rail station, circa 1876, has been rebuilt. Next to that is a period freight depot from which rail excursions depart on summer weekends, drawing 70,000 riders per season. About 100 miles away, the museum operates Railtown 1897, a state historical park and steam railroad in the Sierra Nevada foothills. It draws 60,000 people per year, 35,000 of whom ride the train.
All of this costs big money - $45 million has been invested in the Sacramento facility since 1976, Gray says. The museum receives $2.3 million annually from the state and $500,000 or so from cooperating associations. Its budget this year is $3.1 million. A $31 million addition, to be called the Museum of Railroad Technology, is nearing approval, Gray says.
Compared to this, the Virginia Museum of Transportation seems a small potato, indeed. Its annual budget is $290,000, not including a $110,000 appropriation from the state. The state money is targeted for education programs, Houck says. Still, it has a place, and so do its dreams,
provided they are realistic, Gray says. Others agree.
``They're already doing many things right,'' says John Ott, executive director of the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, whom Houck visited earlier this year. He and others say the museum deserves much credit for having survived dissension, a natural disaster and the financial strain. ``What they're trying to do is move from the railfan to the more professional operation.''
The process began years ago and contributed to the public sniping of the mid-1980s. More professional cannot mean more stuffy, Kramer says. ``The first line in my daughter's job description is to touch everything you can and make a lot of noise doing it,'' she says. ``Museums haven't been real accepting of that.''
Her goal as a marketer is to ``welcome and nurture families and give them a memorable experience, so when the parents are in their 50s and writing checks to their favorite causes, they'll remember the special times they had at the museum and what it did for them and their children.''
Railroads have a powerful hold over our memories and imaginations that won't be broken if the story is told well. That means relating it through the experiences of individual railroad workers, Kramer says.
One thing that hurts the Roanoke operation, and others like it, is its wide focus, Gray says. ``I have a strong prejudice against generalized transportation museums,'' he says. ``Customarily they've been railroad museums masquerading as something broader. You can't have a focus on something as diverse as transportation.''
The facility began in 1963 as the Roanoke Transportation Museum, a city- backed collection of rail equipment and vehicles in Wasena Park. It was turned into a private, nonprofit corporation in 1977 and changed its name, with state approval, in 1985, hoping to enhance its image and increase its attendance and financial support. The switch hasn't been completely successful.
``You walk through and you give them full credit for being a germinal museum that's been in existence a fair amount of time, yet it's still trying to focus itself. I didn't get any overarching sense of why it's there, what the purpose is or how these disparate elements tie together,'' Gray says.
He even recalls an outer-space display or two. ``That's transportation only at arm's length, even for the most committed enthusiast of this approach.''
Managing such a varied collection inevitably results in a museum's doing nothing particularly well, he says.
If the museum narrowed its focus to railroads - and particularly to the Norfolk and Western; its famed, Roanoke-built locomotives; and the transition to diesel from steam - its message would have more power.
``The story of railroads and Roanoke are synonymous, to a great degree. The largest industrial installation and employer in that town is the Norfolk and Western. The story is salable.'' But don't expect each nickel that goes
into the museum to return a dime, he says. The museum's mission is not merely monetary. Railroads brought Roanoke and the nation to the place they occupy today. That's a valuable thing for the community to remember and pass on - with care.
``It is unwise to throw a million dollars at an ill-defined problem,'' Gray says. ``Take a couple of hundred thousand dollars of it and develop a plan for the museum with a high degree of community buy-in, so the next dollar can be spent for a specific purpose to develop the museum.
``Be prudent, be careful and spend the money wisely.''
Houck already knows a good bit of this. She says she already has decided to make families one of her target audiences. She also wants to make the museum appealing, and even fashionable, to all levels of Roanoke society - including supporters of the fine arts.
``It ain't so sexy to be the transportation museum,'' she says, with a laugh. ``It's not the highbrow thing to do, but it's a fun thing to do.''
It's also one of the most Roanoke of things to do. You can't talk about the city without talking about the railroad, and you can't talk about the museum without talking about the people who were, and are, the backbone of both - something that couldn't be lost on the populist mayor.
``I think you need to appreciate that the working man loves this museum,'' Houck says, ``and we are a working-man's town.''
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