Most of my management career has involved transportation of the nostalgic kind, typically as the general manager or executive director of a rail-themed museum. The proof is in my collection of prized achievements represented in this web site’s Archives page. They bear witness to the fact that my name and reputation is little known outside of that small enclave of enthusiasts, who attempt to preserve the heritage of America’s railways in their spare time.

There have been a few blessed departures from the norm that have allowed me to pursue my broader interests in history before returning to a more stable method of occupational therapy, aka a job, where I have made a reasonably decent living. One of these departures was the opportunity to devise a fund raising plan for the repair of the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Wauwatosa, WI. And this week’s message relies heavily on the case statement I prepared for its members in order to tell the story of my own fascination with a campaign to repair something of greater celebrity than anything I had ever worked on before.

My knowledge of Wright was limited and my awareness of the Greek Orthodox faith and the prominent facility Wright designed for this Milwaukee based congregation was even less. Fortunately a host of background material was readily available, most prominently in the form of John Gurda’s book New World Odyssey: Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church and Frank Lloyd Wright.

What I learned from this and other sources is that near the end of Wright’s career he accepted a commission to design a new worship facility for the members of this devout, ethnic community. It struck me as being an interesting collaboration between a man, whose vision and innovative talents transformed our perception of physical structures, and a people of faith, whose vision was for an internal transformation of heart and soul.

Wright’s Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church

Wright drew on elements of Greek orthodox history to conceive of a structure resembling a Byzantine church molded from modern Midwestern materials and placed in an affluent suburban landscape. But Wright did not live to see his vision take form. He died in 1959 prior to the groundbreaking ceremonies that launched the construction of this fabled building, which eventually gained the stature of other famous Wright designs by being listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Wesley Peters, the first apprentice Wright ever hired for his Taliesin Fellowship, took over as chief architect for the church project. John Ottenheimer, a fellow architect whose role at Taliesin included serving as the entity’s archivist, preserving all of the documents, plans and drawings created by Wright and his colleagues, served as the on-site architect to insure the faithful implementation of Wright’s vision. And it was directly from John that I was able to learn about the issues related to the building’s initial construction and the subsequent need to repair one of its signature features.

Wright’s design was essentially that of a circular structure with a domed roof. The section of exterior wall immediately below the roof was called the dome support band. It was to be comprised of 261 solid glass units set into the concrete wall. It was an attractive feature meant to allow the ambient light to filter into the church’s interior, but it proved not to be either feasible or affordable. Instead a hand blown, hollow glass alternative was manufactured and inserted into the wall between pairs of steel rods, installed to provide the necessary structural support.

At the time of construction the prevailing attitude among the Taliesin staff was that this type of fix would need to be corrected at a later date. This was affirmed in a 1974 report from Ottenheimer to Peters following a visual inspection of the facility. Clearly visible to him at that time was the accumulation of water inside some of the hollow glass spheres, for which he identified three causes: the extreme seasonal changes in the exterior temperature, the lack of proper humidity control inside the facility and the “… limitation of technology and budget at the time of construction.”

Corrosion between two glazing units

By the time I got involved another forty years had gone by and the need to take corrective action was even more apparent. Approximately 50 of the hollow glass spheres were noticeably cracked, trapping moisture inside the units, corroding the steel support rods and eroding the concrete walls.

Of all the principals from the Taliesin Fellowship who were involved in the construction of the church, John Ottenheimer was the sole survivor. His concern for the structure was still palpable during our conversations and e-mails. And it was during these exchanges that I learned about his passion for perfecting a viable solution that would also provide a desired continuity with Wright’s original vision.

Ottenheimer’s concept for a new glazing unit

Ottenheimer’s proposed remedy was to replace all of the 261 hollow glass spheres with stainless steel cylinders, having the same 12” diameter and inserted into the gaps created as each sphere was removed. Convex glass lenses, capable of withstanding the seasonal changes in temperature, would then be affixed to each end of each steel tube forming a glazing unit, which, when properly sealed, would prevent further water damage from taking place. This innovative, though untested design, would also add strength to the dome support band should any of the original steel rods fail.

Sample lens manufactured by Lucid Glass to Ottenheimer’s specifications.

Manufacturing the cylinders would be the easy part. The 522 lenses needed to cover both ends of the 261 cylinders in the dome support band would prove to be the most vexing part of the operation if it were to succeed. And the person on hand with the skills to craft these exquisite elements was someone who had proven her worth to me in a previous collaboration, the restoration of the Badger No. 2 fish-stocking railroad car for the Mid-Continent Railway Museum. Catherine Lottes, owner of Lucid Glass in Milwaukee, was highly experienced in the manufacture of specialty glass items and the plan was for her to create the prototypes for the lenses during a proof of concept phase, which would allow the design to be refined, if necessary, before production would begin on the remainder of the lenses.

The best estimate for the design, manufacture and installation of the completed glazing units was $550,000. I rounded this up to an even $600,000 based on my experience that the best laid plans of mice, architects and engineers always exceed budget. To raise such a sum was beyond the means of the small congregation alone and that meant opening up the fund raising campaign to encourage gifts from outside sources capable of making significant contributions. And this posed a different kind of problem.

People are reluctant to give to a religious organization for fear that their money will be used to promote a group’s sectarian doctrine. To mitigate this impression we set up a fund to be administered by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation for the singular purpose of paying for the building’s repair and maintenance. This step was intended to assure every donor, who wanted to repair and stabilize a Frank Lloyd Wright building, that the funds would remain independent of any religious programing. But it was important to me that the fund retain its identity with the Greek orthodox tradition and here is where my own creative instincts – or maybe cleverness – kicked in to merge the sacred with the profane to give the campaign its dual personality.

In classical Greek the word kairos was used to indicate a moment in time when a decision had to be made to insure an idea’s success. It was in fact considered to be the supreme moment for a person to act. And it was taught by the philosophers that a truly informed person “rarely misses the expedient course of action.” Similarly in the orthodox tradition there is a moment before the Divine Liturgy begins when a deacon whispers to the priest, Kairos tou poiesai to Kyrio, “It is the supreme moment for the Lord to act.”

Church interior

It was easy for me, then, to christen the fund being held by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation The Kairos Fund in recognition that this was to be the supreme moment to take action in order to protect the structural integrity of a building that united Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision with the sensitivities of the orthodox community. My hope was that people would perceive the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church to be a place of worship as well as a cultural asset. Unfortunately, it was not to be. I failed to bring the most important step in this project to closure, the acceptance of the congregation to take on the full responsibility for the campaign’s ultimate success. And so my own supreme moment in time came to an inglorious end. The restoration of a 1907 steam locomotive awaited my willing though meager talents.

The whole episode did allow me to develop a better appreciation for the career that I have pursued in historic preservation by renewing my faith in why we do what we do. Spiritual values may be eternal but all physical structures, whether designed by the best architects or we mere mortals, are subject to deterioration and can only survive through proper care and the immediate remediation of serious defects. Wright’s celebrity was not enough to make his designs immune to the inevitability of decay with the result that of the 400-plus Wright designs that were actually constructed nearly one-fourth have subsequently been demolished, their brief moment in time all but forgotten.

Wright’s signature title embedded in wall

Sometimes you just get lucky. That is the only way I can explain one of those rare, unplanned opportunities, which help make a career a little more compelling than the humdrum routine of a manager’s daily life. My good fortune occurred during my tenure as the executive director for the Minnesota Transportation Museum. And it was because I had accepted that position the year before that I received a phone call in 2001 from an acquaintance of mine, a celebrated railroad artist, who wanted to donate some of his artwork to the museum.

It was extremely easy for me to say yes without any hesitation even though I was initially confused about why the offer was being made. This call was, after all, from my favorite of all the then aspiring painters who drew their inspiration from rail related themes, and I wasn’t about to turn him away because of my own skepticism about his largesse.

You would have had to have known Ted Rose to understand my doubt. He was not an easy man to get along with and his reputation as an artist was not built on any glimmer of a charitable spirit. He was well known as a water colorist, had a large client list, and could be the crown prince of artistic curmudgeons when you said or did something he regarded as being lame or, even worse, stupid. Most important of all, he was not to be questioned when he made a suggestion about the display of his artwork. But I felt lucky, once again, to have the opportunity to run the risk of offending his visionary sensibilities.

The occasion was his recent creation of a series of paintings to illustrate a children’s book about a rather horrific and historic incident known as the Great Hinckley Fire. More specifically the focus of the story was the deeds of an African-American porter for the Saint Paul & Duluth Railway by the name of John Blair. The year was 1894 when a monstrous firestorm engulfed the region surrounding Hinckley, Minnesota, where the dry accumulation of debris from the logging industry provided the fuel that became the source for the devastating conflagration.

If you have never heard of this event, you are not alone. When Ted called to talk to me about it, I feigned a fabricated awareness in order to disguise my ignorance. I knew about the Chicago Fire that had decimated a fair amount of that city several years prior to Hinckley. But that was only due to the fact that it was the topic of a Tyrone Power movie I had once seen on television. And thus far the Great Hinckley Fire had failed to attract the attention of any Hollywood producers, directors or screenwriters, even though this particular catastrophe was of such epic proportions as to qualify as another Steven Spielberg blockbuster.

For me, however, the offer of the paintings proved to be the proverbial perfect storm for staging a museum exhibition in a museum lacking such rudimentary aspects of a truly cultural asset for the benefit of the local community. It combined the artwork of a prestigious contemporary painter, the compelling story of an important historic event for the region we were in, and the rare opportunity to showcase the positive role of African-Americans in early railroad operations. The importance of this last point was magnified by the location of MTM’s railroad museum, the former Great Northern roundhouse in St Paul. The location was strategically located to the north of what had once been the vibrant Rondo neighborhood, a black community that was obliterated to make way for I-94 to pass through the Twin Cities. We were about to make amends, however meager the result.

More elements that coalesced in this project to help make it a creditable experience was my acquaintance with a director for the Pan African Community Endowment Fund administered by the St Paul Foundation, who directed a fair portion of the Fund’s money towards the project as an exhibit sponsor. And I had a colleague on MTM’s staff who shared my passion for breaking out of the routine of our daily jobs to make something beautiful happen.

Much of the credit for the exhibition of the Ted Rose artwork illustrating the bravery of railroad porter John Blair goes to Wanda Sims. She was the project director for the renovation of the Great Northern roundhouse into a viable museum destination and welcomed the chance to help put something inside the structure that would lend credibility to the claim that this was, indeed, a history museum. It was through her contacts that we were able to assemble the rest of the financial backing needed to cover the cost of the exhibit and the opening reception. And together we enticed the participation of knowledgeable people from other museums, historical societies and the University of Minnesota to serve on our exhibition committee, allowing a business manager and a construction superintendent to make use of others’ expertise in achieving what we were not exactly trained to do.

The opening reception was by invitation only, consisting of a guest list that included in equal parts prospective donors I had been courting during my brief tenure as MTM’s executive director and donors to the Pan African Community Endowment Fund. Most of these folks had never set foot on any of the MTM properties. This was a groundbreaking experience for me as well as the organization I served, which puts me in mind of a comment I almost made when asked by an MTM board member during our preparations what kind of people would be attending the reception. I thwarted my cynical self’s ambition to say “black people” and opted for the more benign reference to “people of substance.” But in truth, when the doors to the roundhouse opened to welcome our guests to a most elegant setting inside an industrial structure, I was pleased to see the mixed ethnic composition and gloated (internally) at the compliments we received for the statement we were making about our role in bringing to light a hidden gem of railroad history, the powerful contribution of the African-American community.

The one sad note to this whole episode was the inability of Ted Rose to attend and share in the accolades of this wonderful event his gift generated. I was to learn a short time later through a mutual friend that Ted was dying of cancer. And the following year he was gone.

Ted was an obstinately unique fellow. He found beauty in industrial landscapes, favored the railroads whose imagery and history we both sought to popularize with the general public, and eschewed any attempt by anyone at fawning admiration of his talents. He remains my favorite railroad artist and I would encourage anyone who is curious about sampling some of his work to search the internet for Ted Rose artist. There you may get a glimpse of the genius behind the ornery personality that helped infuse my career with a moment of glory as sonorous as the colors of his artistic palette.

New Year’s Day! It is time for me to start thinking! And to help me break out of the lethargy of both the long holiday season and my avoidance of writing any new web log messages, I am resolved to start anew by launching into a series, which may tax my memory a bit, but still provide me with sufficient material to get me through the rest of the winter.

I am in the process of cleaning out my office files and have been delighted to re-discover some of the ephemera I have hoarded over the years, thinking that my projects had value. Today they do as they will prove to be the source of my inspiration to write about deeds done and the results of my labors. It will also allow me to enhance this website’s archives page as each of the projects I write about will be listed there in recognition that a manager can do more than pay bills and files financial reports no one will ever read.

Invitation’s Front Panel

So you are cordially invited to join me, appropriately enough, with this first message in the series describing the creation of an invitation to the 2002 members’ meeting for the Minnesota Transportation Museum. At the time MTM was an amalgamation of disparate transportation sites recreating historic travel aboard streetcars, a steam boat, buses, and trains. I had been MTM’s executive director for a little more than a year and was trying desperately to create a unified organization covering five sites spread out over a hundred mile stretch from Lake Minnetonka in the west to Osceola, WI in the east.

Invitation’s Back Panel

MTM was divided into operating divisions with the derivative word divisive being an apt term to apply to how they functioned, or failed to do so, as a supposedly single entity. Except for the accounting system, everything else was decentralized to the point of being grossly inefficient and ineffective, especially when it came to marketing and fund raising, things that I was hired to improve. One of my first projects to help overcome the problem was to create a single promotional brochure, which will be described in a future message in this series. Another was an attempt to restructure the annual members’ meeting; a poorly attended, unimaginative affair that will be forever associated in my mind with my predecessors serving wine in a box as an attempt at class.

I am a strong proponent of finding something new to offer any audience. And for the members of MTM the something new involved three things – location, program and the all-important food service.

Location was the easiest of the three criteria to fulfill. The former Milwaukee Road depot in downtown Minneapolis had recently been renovated as part of a hotel/conference center. It fit my heart’s desire to find a place that had cultural significance along with a transportation affiliation. The Courtyard at the Depot was a perfect fit for this and for its tie-in with the program.

You can see on the invitation that our special guest speaker was Hennepin County commissioner Peter McLaughlin. And that night he unveiled the initial plans for MTM to participate in the development of a new museum in cooperation with the county to repurpose the former monolithic Sears Building on the city’s south side into a transportation hub – another future web log message. The program also contained other elements I think are important for a volunteer-driven, non-profit corporation; accountability in the form if a (brief) financial report and the bestowal of awards celebrating the work of the member/volunteers in order to boost morale, celebrate examples of what we want from our volunteers and to encourage further participation by knowing that you may someday be publicly acknowledged for your efforts.

I wanted the food service to be just as special as the choice of location and the surprise elements of the program with its awards and the announcement of a new initiative. To do this and to keep the cost manageable we held the meeting after the dinner hour, allowing us to offer specialty desserts as opposed to a full meal. And since MTM was too poor to cover any of the costs from its general fund you can see that there was a price for admission and we replaced the ubiquitous wine in a box with a cash bar.

Requiring members to pay to attend had one other benefit that I will admit to all these years later. It prevented a certain element within the membership from attending, comprised of those folks who thought their meager membership dues entitled them to enjoy everything museum related for free. But not that night. The quality of the event was matched by the quality of those who attended, whether they be members, staff or invited guests. The camaraderie reached across divisional lines and for a brief moment I thought I was looking at a new era in the history of the organization. But that was not to be, which is another story for me to tell another time.

Response Card
Front Panel

Turning my attention back to the invitation, here are a few more tidbits that went into its design in order to create an attractive piece and avoid some of the major pitfalls inherent in a dysfunctional organization. There was a lot of pertinent information to convey in a small space, which we achieved without losing a pleasing presentation to attract the eye to the extensive content. The colors chosen were representative of the colors found on the historic equipment that served as icons of the MTM operation, but toned down in such a fashion as to express warmth intended to enhance the concept of this being an invitation worth responding to.

Response Card
Back Panel

You will also see that on the upper inside panel of the invitation we used the image of a streetcar at the Como-Harriet station, on the back panel we used a scene from the train ride at Osceola, and on the back panel of the response card we pictured the steamboat Minnehaha cruising the waters of Lake Minnetonka. It was extremely important that we feature all three of these pre-eminent operating divisions within MTM so that no one appeared to be favored over another. That is one of the challenges of trying to bring unity out of disparity. Equitability must appear to be effortless, but I never found this unappreciated, highly valuable aspect of management to be so. It comes with its own price and no cash bar.

This week’s message comes with an illustration, a scan of the front cover of the latest edition of the Railway Gazette. I mentioned this issue briefly at the end of last week’s message in conjunction with the open house at Spec Machine, where people could learn about the work taking place on the running gear of the former Chicago & North Western steam locomotive No. 1385. Now I want to make the magazine the feature of what I have to say this week in order to express my thoughts on what it represents as part of that campaign.

The decision was made at the start of the fund raising campaign for the locomotive’s restoration to make sure some news item appeared in each issue of the magazine related to this project. This allowed us to keep the project a current topic of interest, especially as we were encouraging people to donate to help us meet a $250,000 challenge grant offered by the Wagner Foundation. But it also allowed me to fulfill a second and longer standing goal, that of using the December issue as a special, expanded edition focused on a single topic.

These special editions have always been something of a challenge to complete. The emphasis on the depth and length of the content required us to find someone, whose personal research met our need. That person also had to have some ability, let alone the discipline, to write about a topic based on research that was little more than a hobby for them. Our own history with No. 1385 and the museum’s archives provided us with the materials needed to meet this challenge. And it allowed me the opportunity to exercise my own latent gifts by being both writer and editor of the text.

Without asking permission of anyone, I used my access key to the museum’s office and in a covert operation removed the 1385’s files from the archives. Having them safely stored at my home office made the research part of the process a little easier to perform. And the materials were always on hand during these early morning writing sessions, which characterize my work. Since my childhood days, afternoons have been meant for play. The serious takes place before 10:00am.

The special edition Gazette we did in 2011 was a fairly singular effort. The content was based almost solely on what I could find in the archives, offering a broad overview of the locomotive’s history since its purchase for the museum. I quoted heavily from prior issues of the magazine and scanned previously published images as our only means of illustrating the text. But it led us to a follow-up article by one of the original engine crew members, who operated No. 1385 during Mid-Continent’s first year (1963) at its new home in North Freedom. It was gratifying to have some participation from a person who had hands-on experience with the locomotive during those early days.

Interim Gazette issues reported on work taking place with No. 1385’s tender and cab. The next special edition of the magazine again relied heavily on the museum’s archives to tell the story of how the locomotive came into pre-eminence as Mid-Continent’s star performer after seeing very little service since its 1963 debut. The article revealed the back story that led to the locomotive’s involvement with the Prosperity Special, a public relations event staged by the Chicago & North Western Railroad. The plan was to use one of its former steam locomotives (No. 1385 being the only one functional) to pull its modern equipment to destinations along its rail network as a means to showcase the company’s impact on the economies of those communities.

This was 1982 and the plan worked well enough that the powers that be at the North Western asked if they could also take No. 1385 to Boone, Iowa that same year as part of the town’s celebration known as Pufferbilly Days. At each location the steam locomotive was the principal draw and it inspired the North Western’s officials to negotiate further with the museum’s leaders to allow them to run No. 1385 the following year on a much expanded tour over a larger part of its system. The locomotive subsequently became the gem of the museum’s collection and Trains Magazine dubbed Mid-Continent the “Midwest Ambassador of Steam”.

For our more immediate purposes the special edition about those first excursions in 1982 produced an unsolicited photo essay by another one of Mid-Continent’s members, who happened to take photographs of the locomotive during one of its moves on the North Western. This gave us our first opportunity to published previously unseen images relevant to the story we were trying to tell. It also sent a subtle message that, yes, we would like to have others help us tell the story in order to generate more enthusiasm for the campaign.

Fast forward to this most recent special edition Gazette reporting on the excursions which took place in 1983. Once again the museum’s archives were the primary source of information with regards to correspondence and newspaper articles. But there is a dearth of photographs to be had amongst these documents. Fortunately the word was out about the intended topic and Mid-Continent members came forward with those rail fan pictures they took when they chased the train along portions of its well publicized route.

This type of buy-in by those who wish to participate in telling No. 1385’s story is a much welcomed addition to our efforts. The open house at Spec Machine, reported on in last week’s message, is another example of the desire by others to help promote the project. If you visit the museum this summer you will see new displays in the depot which support this campaign with more history and images about the North Western and its steam fleet. And there is an enhanced web page easily accessible on Mid-Continent’s web site which provides current updates about the restoration work taking place on No. 1385, now focused on the work taking place at Spec.

The growing sophistication of the campaign to restore the locomotive mirrors the expanded use of No. 1385 during the glory years of the 1980s when it could be seen in operation over ever increasing miles on the North Western’s system. The locomotive became the image of Mid-Continent. The number of people engaged in staging these events can only be described as innumerable. And the attendance at Mid-Continent’s North Freedom venue increased.

Growth is imperative for any operation that wants to stay in business. And for me the content of this special edition of the Gazette offers the evidence that growth is taking place once again as measured by the number of people involved in the program, the extended reach of the message, and the subsequent financial benefit we see through an increase in the number of donors contributing to the campaign and the size of their gifts.

We are a long way from seeing a completed steam locomotive in operation at North Freedom. The running gear work alone is estimated to require another two years worth of full time work. But progress is being made and the collateral benefits are being seen as we continue to promote the campaign to restore this valuable relic listed on the National and State Registers of Historic Places.

If you are not a Mid-Continent member but would like to obtain a copy of this issue of the Gazette, you can purchase them by calling the museum’s office at 608-669-1385.

My career as a producer of television commercials was short lived, but personally rewarding. The results can still be seen on the internet thanks to the ethereal archival qualities of You Tube. On my own Archives page you can access the link to three of these commercials which comprised a series entitled Make the Connection.

Built on the lessons learned and described in last week’s message, the series was designed to both publicize the Mid-Continent Railway Museum and to help orient people on what to expect once they arrived on the property. All with as little cost as possible.

We knew from our simple customer surveys that two-thirds of the museum’s daily visitors were there for the first time. And of those who had been to the museum before, their prior visit was likely as a child in the company of their parents or as part of a school field trip. Now they were back with their own children in tow. The time lapse for them meant that things had changed enough to be almost as new as for our first time guests.

The Depot was the first commercial in the series. The content guided people into an authentic 1894 structure as the starting point of their visit, where they could purchase a ticket for the train ride and find the museum’s underutilized gift shop.

The Train Ride was released a few weeks later. The live action shots showed people boarding the train from the depot platform, listening to the information imparted by the conductor, and enjoying the scenery along the route. Showing people setting inside a passenger coach was an important statement as so many callers to the museum’s office asked if the ride was aboard a full sized train.

The Collection was third in the series. A simple goal of this piece was to answer one of the most often asked questions by guests once they had arrived on the property: Where’s the museum? (The most often asked question was about the location of the restrooms). An operating railroad museum is by nature an outdoor museum. People accustomed to seeing artifacts displayed inside a big box were confused by the layout, so the video sequences and the text used in the commercial gave people permission to walk among the equipment parked on sidings and to explore the sheds housing the wooden car collection.

All three commercials reflected the strategy used with our radio ads; a slow pace in the voiceover delivery supported by soothing background music to literally underscore our image as a safe, relaxing and enjoyable experience for everyone in the family. For the musical score we used Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, an idea inspired by the soundtrack from the movie Out of Africa.

Production costs are always an issue and they drove the decisions on how to structure the commercials so that each one told their respective stories while maintaining a consistency that linked the three together. The hope was that without looking at your television screen you could hear the narrative and the music and know it was about Mid-Continent.

We opened each commercial with historic photographs drawn from a private collection of postcards on loan to the museum and accessible through its website. Then we transitioned to live action shots composed to look similar to the postcard image. Filming was done by a local television station who knew about our minimal budget. So to help keep the costs down they did the filming for all three segments in one day. And since we wanted to have the first commercial ready before the museum opened for the summer, we were forced to do the filming during the pre-season when the attendance was limited to senior citizen and school groups. The sparse attendance was not the full impression we wanted to make, but it was affordable.

Matching the historic black and white images with the color video of current operations gave us our unifying theme of what railroading was like in the past and how it can be experienced today. It also gave us our tag line: At the Mid-Continent Railway Museum, make the connection.

One departure from our usual print and radio advertising was that we kept the content generic, meaning no dates or prices were mentioned in the text or shown on the screen. This gave the commercials a longer shelf life, which allowed us to amortize the costs over multiple seasons. The commercials were also more flexible as to when they were shown and could be used each summer or as filler between special events.

For me a personal goal was to set a standard for what the museum needed to be doing, educating the public as well as entertaining them. So the commercials were also meant to have an internal impact by motivating the members who lead the organization to think in terms of the visitors’ experience as opposed to the member/volunteers’ self described impression of being by the members for the members.

This ulterior motive may have been too high of an expectation for me to project onto three short commercials. What we created, although aesthetically pleasing, may have been more of what I wanted the museum experience to be instead of what it really was. But you can judge that for yourselves. You can follow the links from the Archives page to view the commercials and then visit Mid-Continent’s own website to find out when the next train departs.

In my opinion it is well worth the effort to make that connection.