(The following story by Mary Lynne Vellinga appeared on the Sacramento Bee website on December 6.)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — For more than a quarter century, the California State Railroad Museum has chugged along as one of Sacramento’s most touted attractions.
Never mind that many locals stop going as soon as their children move past the big-shiny-engine-loving phase. The museum remains a top draw, especially for families, school groups and travelers interested in California history. It gets more visitors than the Crocker Art Museum and Sutter’s Fort combined.
But that’s not good enough for Thomas Enterprises, developer of the downtown railyard. The company has pressed the rail museum to scale back its planned expansion into two of the historic shop buildings in the railyard.
It has questioned whether the performance of the existing rail museum justifies such a major expansion. Museum officials have been left defending their offerings and the museum’s potential to serve as a people magnet.
In 1999, when Union Pacific initially pledged the boiler shop and the erecting shop to the state parks department, the crumbling 19th century industrial buildings were hardly a huge asset.
Now, they’re the main asset Thomas Enterprises has to build on in the otherwise desolate railyard. It hopes to turn this handful of historic brick buildings into the centerpiece of its development – an entertainment, retail and cultural destination that will create the market for the office, retail and housing that the developer plans to build around them.
A Museum of Railroad Technology? Well, it just seems so 19th century.
Under pressure from the City Council, Thomas Enterprises is negotiating with the State Department of Parks and Recreation to reach a compromise. But as of this week, museum officials still insist they need two buildings for the museum. The developer has offered only the boiler shop.
The entire project goes to the City Council for a vote Tuesday.
Richard Rich, development director for Thomas Enterprises, said the firm is negotiating with the state Resources Agency and the California Department of Parks and Recreation, which would operate the new museum. “We’re starting to explore ways to get to an agreement,” he said.
Rich said he never meant to suggest that his company didn’t support a museum focusing on rail technology. It just wants to make sure the state delivers a world class attraction.
“The big (goal) is to triple visitation to downtown. How do we do that?” Rich said. “We do it with a mosaic of attractive elements. One of them is going to be the world’s best rail museum.”
Museum officials say they are more than willing to make sure the new museum will be more than a 9-to-5 attraction that people visit once a year. “If we didn’t constantly think of how to improve what we do, that would be suicidal,” said museum director Paul Hammond.
Both sides agree the key is to provide hands-on technology and an experience that fully engages visitors, rather than one focused on static exhibits.
Current plans include a studio where former workers from the shops can record their stories, an exhibit where museum-goers can “load” freight cars, and opportunities for people to climb in the cabs of a steam locomotive and a modern bullet train to take a turn as engineer.
Kathy Daigle, the Railroad Museum Foundation’s associate director, said technology museums generally draw more visitors than history museums. The current museum focuses on railroading history, not technology.
A marketing study commissioned by the museum predicts that a rail technology museum would attract 1 million additional visitors a year – more than twice as many people as its Old Sacramento museum draws.
“It will be a whole lot more interactive – much like the Exploratorium in San Francisco,” Daigle said.
At a recent council meeting, Ruth Coleman, the parks director, said the state would cull ideas from state-of-the-art museums, including the Abraham Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Ill.
Built for $90 million and opened in 2005, the Lincoln Museum uses high-tech wizardry to bring a 19th century president, his family and his society to life. The “Ghosts of the Library” exhibit features holograms of historical figures talking to visitors.