YES ... We're writing you about bathrooms

DearFriends,

Have you ever tried to use a portable toilet while changing a baby or toddler? Have you ever tried to move over 30 school kids through two portable toilets in 10 minutes?  Or, have you ever tried to usea portable bathroom during cold temperatures in the winter?

Allof these things can be done. But, none of them are graceful, dignified or verymuch fun when you are trying to enjoy a historical site with friends, yourchildren or your grandchildren.

 BATHROOMS! Really?

Yes, I am writing you about bathrooms.

Ifyou are reading this letter, it is likely that you have visited the MilwaukeeRailroad Shops Historic District and may have had to use the portable toiletswhile you enjoyed the site. While the portable toilets can meet our basic needsin the interim, they are not a permanent solution for a growing audience offamilies and school kids. They are, however, worth writing about in the hopesthat this historic railroad site might be improved with a permanent bathroomfamilies designed for families and school kids.

Themodern era has come to the Milwaukee Railroad Shops Historic District! A newbathroom facility will be built this summer thanks to a major federal grant.Installation of the new bathrooms will eliminate the need for portable,chemical bathrooms on a daily basis. However, we need to raise matching funds to help cover the constructioncosts of the new restroom facility. Grant funds are providing only 70 percentof the total construction costs.

Weneed to raise approximately $10,000 by August 1 to help finance the building ofthe bathroom facility and to furnish it with bathroom fixtures and babychanging areas. We will let the contract to build the bathrooms by that date.

Willyou help us?  You can help us reach our goal of $10,000 with your online contribution of $5, $10, $25, or more. The Siouxland Historical Railroad Association depends upon contributions like yours to continue to make the improvements to the buildings, structures, and grounds of the Milwaukee Railroad Shops.

We will be eternally grateful to you - and – you will be happythat you did – especially the next time Mother Nature calls while you visit theMilwaukee Railroad Shops Historic District.

To make your contribution online, please click on the button above.

Withthanks for your generosity,

MattMerk

ExecutiveDirector

Trains, Tripods & Snapshots Day Recap

Wow what a day. HOT with a capital HHH. Yet, even in all the heat it was still a great day. We had 1,019 visitors stop out and pay us a visit and the folks took lots and lots of pictures. Not only railroad related pictures but many people brought out their antique cars to be displayed also which made for some interesting conversation and some great photos.

On this bright shinny sun filled day Great Northern Railways Class H-5,4-6-2 pacific, steam locomotive #1355 , Old Ironhorse, looked awesome parked on the turntable. The Glacier Park paint scheme was just shinning to every ones delight and it made a fantastic backdrop for lots of family photo's. The sight was so good in fact that even the Sioux City Fire Department sent out a fire truck to have it's picture taken with Old Ironhorse.

Many of the volunteers dressed-up in railroad worker attire to greet the guests and give tours. Special appearances by many of our railyard characters provided even more photo opportunities. Sir Topham Hatt, from the Island of Sodor, was a big hit with many of the younger railroaders. He stayed with Millie the Milwaukee Shops Marine Corp Engine and together they greeted the youngsters and Millie let each one them blow her air horn! Crazy Joe and Arlo, a couple of our resident Hobo's, were on hand trying to convince the public that President Herbert Hoover had to go and that we must all stick together and vote for Roosevelt. Many spirited discussions were brought up on this matter.  They also serenaded one young lucky lady who was celebrating her 12th birthday with a rousing violin lead Happy Birthday song. The Polar Express conductor was on hand to help keep the Hobo's under control and to assist with the on-time operations of the motor car rides.

A new addition to the event was music provided by one of our new volunteers. A nice mixture of modern hits and old time railroad songs filled the air along with the smell of fresh popcorn and cotton candy.

The model railroad volunteers were showing off yet one more new line of operation on the Nebraska Central HO Scale model railroad. This new line runs a continuous loop through the mountain area of the layout. Their spectacular restoration efforts have now brought the number of possible operating trains up to six! These guys are amazing and just keep making this wonderful exhibit better all the time.

Check out the below URL link or click on our You Tube link to see a 9 minute video of  some of the highlights of the day.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8eX1mw_3qE&list=UUHDp4FX2WMvESYWaQhOf1Zw&index=1&feature=plcp

Don't forget to check out what other events are planned this year. Click on the SHRA logo located on the lower right side of this blog to jump to our web site. Thank you for supporting the railroad museum and we hope to see you again soon!

Railroad museum hosts shutterbug event on Saturday, June 30th

The Milwaukee Railroad Shops Historic District will host “Trains, Tripods & Snapshots” Day for families and amateur photographers to bring their own cameras and tripods to pose and photograph family members near train displays.

The event will run 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday. Regular admission fees will be charged for the event. Motor Car Rides ($2.00 per person) will be available as well. Visitors are encouraged to wear shoes appropriate to weather and ground conditions.

This year’s event will feature special guest appearances of railroad characters throughout the day; the outdoor exhibition of Sioux City’s landmark steam locomotive; a Vintage & Collector Car “Show and Shine” around the turntable green space, which is open to all types of antique, vintage and collector cars, trucks & motorcycles. This green space area will allow for the car owners to snap photos of their vehicles with the roundhouse and steam locomotive providing a backdrop.

Visitors will be able to use their own camera to snap photos that create lasting memories for Christmas cards, birthday announcements, senior photos, scrapbooks, and photo albums. Families and amateur photographers are welcomed to bring their own smartphones, cameras and tripods to pose and photograph family members near the train displays. This unique opportunity will allow parents and grandparents to dress children in railroad attire and pose them next to Sioux City’s landmark steam locomotive in an outdoor setting; utilizing the sun and the backdrop of the historic buildings, train displays, and Loess Hills to help frame the photos. The steam locomotive, the historic buildings and vintage rolling stock provide hundreds of photo opportunities to capture images of older children and other family members using the structures for textures and backgrounds.

Visitors to the Milwaukee Railroad Shops can participate in with an optional seminar on museum photography led by Chad Cable of annacable Photography. The clinics will be held three times on Saturday: 10 – 11 am; Noon – 1 pm; and 2 -3 pm. The Clinics will be held in the new Preservation Gallery and then finish outside on the complex. 

Trains, Tripods and Snapshots Day - Saturday, June 30th

Memorial Day Weekend Washout – sort of

The first big holiday of the summer season found the Milwaukee Railroad Shops Historic District trying to dry out. Wednesday night May 23^rd Sioux City had a gully washer of a rail storm come through dumping 2-3 inches of rain in the Riverside area. All this water in such a short time allowed for little soak in time and the runoff from the Losses Hills and Iowa Hwy 12 assaulted the rail yard leaving drains plugged up with debris resulting in water up to a foot deep in some area of the complex. The turntable pit filled half way up, the maintenance pits in the roundhouse had water in them and some low level flooding caused water to seep through the doors and on to the floor of the machine shop building. 

With more rain in the forecast for the weekend it was determined that for the safety of our visitors, due to all the high water and mud, that we would close to the public for the weekend in an effort to dry out. The Sioux City Journal posted the closing along with onsite television reports from local stations and the radio. The volunteers showed up Friday, Saturday and Sunday to assist with the clean-up and work on other projects.

Well, never let it be said that you can keep a good thing down. Even though the local visitors stayed away; the out town folks flocked in. Not knowing of our soggy dilemma our out of town visitors showed up in bunches and after traveling as far as 2-3 hours they did not want to go back empty handed so they braved the conditions and made the best of it. We could not find it in our hearts to turn away someone that had traveled so far so we gladly greeted them and invited them into the museum. As a matter of fact, our out of town visitor traffic was so high on Friday and Saturday that we had to call in extra volunteers to help out.

Due to the high water even the animals were searching for higher ground. In one instance this allowed us a unique opportunity to teach some of the younger folks about Mother Nature and her wonderful art of camouflage as can be seen by the tree frog in the picture below; hanging out on the hand railing of our open box car exhibit. 

Everyone made the most of the soggy muddy conditions and where eventually able to find some (almost) drier paths to navigate around the rail yard complex. For those that traveled to see us; thank you for coming up to spend some time at our railroad museum. We hope to see you back soon – under drier conditions of course :-).

NATIONAL TRAIN DAY 2012 – RECAP

The weather was perfect, the sun was out and families from all over showed up to enjoy the day. 1,210 people attended this year’s event. That’s a 38% increase over the 750 people that attended the event last year. 

Our efforts to become a tourist attraction for Sioux City and helping the local Riverside area of town and North Sioux City economically are also beginning to pay off. We had folks from Omaha, Sioux Falls, Kansas City, Fargo, New Jersey and Minnesota all stop in to enjoy the museum. After spending a couple hours with us they were asking for directions to local restaurants, gas and shopping areas to which we gladly directed them.

We heard many positive comments from visitors about our new sign along Hwy 12 making it easier to find our entrance and about the new concrete walkway entrance and the new exhibits that were opened to the public for the first time during this event. Many first time visitors were surprised at what we actually had to offer. One family said, “We drive by this place all time and see the old buildings, but never imagined that you had all this going on inside the walls of these buildings. This is really a special place.” 

One minor setback to the original program plan, due to some unforeseen technical difficulties, we were unable to pull steam locomotive GN 1355 out of the roundhouse for display on the turntable. However, an alternate attraction was developed as we started up our 1943 built 45 ton GE switch engine and used it to demonstrate the operation of the roundhouse turntable by driving it on the turntable and taking it for a spin and driving back off the turntable 5 tracks later. We did this twice during the day to the joy of hundreds that watched.  For many this was the first time ever seeing the actual operation of a railroad turntable and for others it brought back found memories of days gone by.

Dr. Rudy Daniels gave a 50 minute talk about how important the railroads were to the development of Sioux City and other area towns. The turnout out for this was very well attended in that it was standing room only in the Blacksmith portion of the Machine Shop building were the speech took place. Our new Downtown Sioux City Railroads Depot Exhibit made a wonderful back drop for Dr. Daniels as he was dressed in a Milwaukee Road Conductors uniform standing in front of a wood paneled re-creation of a depot office complete with a wood roll top desk, telegraph machine, pot belly stove, and other railroad depot memorabilia.

Thank you to all that attended and to those that missed out, come on down any time. We are now open 6 days a week (every day except Tuesdays) and please be sure to check out our Upcoming Events tab on our web site for future events.

National Train Day, Saturday May 12th, 2012

The Milwaukee Railroad Historic Shops and Railroad museum will be combining two events into one spectacular day. We are the feature attraction closing up a week long celebration as Sioux City Historic Preservation Week wraps up and we are once again joining the National celebration of National Train Day.

National Train Day marks the 143rd anniversary of the creation of the nation's first transcontinental railroad. On May 10, 1869, in Promontory Summit, Utah, the 'golden spike' was driven into the final tie that joined 1,776 miles of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railways, forever transforming the face and character of America. Special celebrations have been planned by Amtrak at many of its stations across the country as well as hundreds of additional railroad focused museums, tourism trains and historic sights. We are also lucky enough to be celebrating Sioux City Historic Preservation Week at the same time. This year’s theme is “Sioux City – It All Started Downtown”. In keeping with this theme we have built a new exhibit in the Machine/Blacksmith Shop called the “Downtown Sioux City Railroads Exhibit” featuring blueprints, photos and more highlighting downtown Sioux City during the railroad heydays of the early 1900’s.

Things to see and do!

• Hours: 10 am – 4 pm

• Admission: FREE

• Outside Exhibition of 4-6-2 steam locomotive Great Northern #1355 built in 1909

• Motor Car Rides: $2 each for kids 5 to 105 years old
                            $1 each for kids 2-5 years old

• Grand Opening: Machine/Blacksmith Shop – Downtown Sioux City Railroads Exhibit

• Grand Opening: Roundhouse Bay 1 (north end) – SHRA Preservation Gallery

• 2 PM in the new Downtown Sioux City Railroads Exhibit - Dr. Rudy Daniels will be giving a talk about downtown Sioux City rail services.

• Popcorn and Beverages will be available for purchase

* The Tri-State Crankers will have vintage cars parked on the grass around the turntable.

• Try our ALL NEW self-guided walking tour book for a new in-depth look around the complex. Cost is only $3 each. Also, $1 of each book sold goes directly to the building restoration fund so you can help us continue to make this complex a must see attraction.

• See the amazing progress in the restoration of the 75 ft x 15 ft HO scale Nebraska Central Model Railroad in the Railroad Civil Engineering Display Hall. Currently operating 4 trains on large continuous loops.

• Experience the 30 acres of this railroad locomotive and rolling stock servicing and repair center. Built in 1917 and employing over 500 people at the peak of its operations.

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to experience this one of a kind historic district and railroad museum. It’s a well kept Sioux City secret ……. So don’t be left behind!

For more information about the Roundhouse complex visit our web site at: www.milwaukeerailroadshops.org