Heritage Railways As Museums: Occupations and Landscapes Colin Divall

Feature Heritage Railways

Heritage Railways as Museums: Occupations and Landscapes Colin Divall

By their very nature, all heritage railways techniques might be borrowed from other to be several miles long. They are recall the past, but not all operators nor museum sectors in order to improve spatially ordered presentations of the past all visitors are deeply concerned about the visitors’ engagement with, and that draw heavily upon the visual way this past is presented. To draw upon appreciation of the past? conventions of the technological sublime a definition1, 2 proposed some years back and the picturesque—two terms I employ by Peter Ovenstone, museum railways are at greater length in my book written with those that take seriously the task of Museum Railways and Mimesis Andrew Scott, Making Histories in collecting, preserving and operating old Transport Museums3. Simulation extends equipment and infrastructure to present a At their best, museum railways’ to offering visitors a ride, and in this sense vision of ‘the past.’ It is with such heritage infrastructure and operating trains make museum lines use ‘living history’ railways that I am concerned here. How up a complete package of sensual and techniques, although there are, as I shall do they represent the past, and what kind historically ‘authentic’ experiences, argue, strict limits to the re-enactment of of past is represented? And what creating open-air museums that happen the historical social order. Overall, the ideal is mimesis, the ‘staged authenticity’ of a facsimile of the past brought to life which visitors are invited to enter and experience4-9. My criticism of museum railways is not that they fall short of the mimetic ideal— that is impossible, and most preservationists know it—but that like many other sectors of industrial archaeology, they are more concerned with physical conservation than elucidating the social parameters of industrial development10. Recreating the past (accepting for the moment that this is possible in some sense) should not just be about an authentic physical environment. It is also about making the past come alive—taking the empty stage setting of a railway and animating it with historical characters. Preservationists tend to give this less thought. Of course, all museum lines need staff to run trains, but they only do the jobs needed to allow visitors to travel. True, operating is a kind of experimental archaeology in which old skills are demonstrated11, 12. But important though this is, it hardly exhausts what can be said about the social history of transport. Operating staff are not true ‘character interpreters’— costumed performers impersonating historical railway workers. No-one explains to visitors about the way the job was done in the past, what working conditions were like, etc. The heritage railway as museum—a package of sensual and historically ‘authentic’ experiences with this ex-Southern Railway Light Pacific under steam on Swanage Railway in Dorset, England (1996). (Author) Does this matter? Certainly museum

4 Japan Railway & Transport Review 30 • March 2002 Copyright © 2002 EJRCF. All rights reserved. railways often overplay their strengths a pattern of circulation through the major the chance to find out anything to the when they claim to offer an authentic parts of the exhibition—the railway. The contrary, visitors leave museum railways experience of travel in the 1950s, or fact that visitors move as passengers helps continuing to believe those bits and whenever. But such boasts should not sustain a particular understanding of the pieces of much older ways of be taken too seriously and visitors should past. More particularly, the past is understanding railway work that have be credited with some common sense. prefigured to provide for an survived in popular memory. These ideas It seems unlikely that they really believe uncontroversial reading—social and and images were always selective and that everything they see, hear and smell natural harmony are key themes. partial. Thus, if I am right, without is as it was. Perhaps visitors knowingly, Playing as passengers is a ‘natural’ role realizing it, preservationists and visitors even playfully, engage with the so-called for many visitors (many, but not all); tend to see ‘the past’ through lenses that authentic experience, acknowledging its something that is done without being provide a misleading image of the inevitable shortcomings while at the thought about. But travel is also a highly historical social order. As David Wilson same time taking the opportunity to let socialized activity, relying on formal and has remarked14, they tend to reproduce their imaginations work. These are all informal norms essential to the smooth, an image of railway work ‘taken on board hypotheses that badly need investigating. industrialized processing of people. So through books, magazines, poems, On the other hand, it seems wise to apply the fact that visitors ‘naturally’ fall into seaside holidays and films— a a precautionary principle, to the role of passengers suggests that mythologized account of working class acknowledge that mimesis is potentially despite railways somewhat reduced life... idealized, by boys both small and a very coercive and conservative form of importance in everyday life, these basic large on a thousand platform ends exhibition. The highly evocative sensual rules of railway travel are still quite throughout the 1950s and 1960s.’ The experiences of smells, sound, etc., widely known. Most people do not need result is a partial representation of the associated with moving trains all help to to be told to buy a ticket, to wait on the past that smoothes over the tensions, anchor the ‘reality’ of the spectacle even platform or in a waiting room, to get into conflicts, ruptures and transformations of as visitors know they are not literally and out of carriages at stations, etc. history as it was played out, for example, travelling in the past, making it difficult This is of great value to museum railways in the railways’ industrial relations. For for them to engage critically with the because it means that the public does not example, Wilson argues that in Britain the partial nature of the past represented by have to be closely supervised in what is heroic image of train drivers deflected the ensemble. It is all very well knowing potentially a very dangerous public attention away from their harsh that one is reading a historical novel, but environment. But it also means that working conditions14. Such claims raise unless one knows about the history of the visitors literally and metaphorically see the important issue of the politics of period it is impossible to say where and the railway only from one perspective. occupational identity, and in particular how the novel departs from the truth. Railways have always been highly of the way in which this might still Preservationists and visitors alike may fail regulated and ordered spaces; there are contribute on museum lines to an image to reflect upon deep-set assumptions many areas to which the public has of social harmony which, at the very about the past, seeing it in terms of myths normally had no access—ticket offices, least, is a simplified picture of the truth. that bear only a passing relationship to track, locomotive footplates, signal historical ‘reality’ (a concept not without boxes, etc. Museum lines faithfully its own problems). Some of the more reflect this exclusion, and so much of the Place and Landscape important of these myths relate to the ‘arcane and complex mystery of the nature of railway work and the meaning railway’ remains hidden or partly hidden The relationship between museum of the places and landscapes through from passenger-visitors’ gaze13. railways and the locations through and which trains travel. This means there are few chances to learn to which they convey their passengers is at first hand about a whole range of another important aspect of their railway occupations—what skills are narrative structure. Here I build on the The Journey and Railway Work involved, what working conditions used idea that museum railways trade on long- to be like, how the post fitted into the standing and deep-set cultural images Most visitors to museum railways take a railway hierarchy, etc. Much more associated with tourism. Although trip on the train and so engage ‘the past’ research needs to be done on this, but it modern visitors cannot experience the in a highly directed fashion; a journey is is possible, probable even, that lacking railway in exactly the same way as their

important aspect of the way museum and self-reliance’ in its invitation23 to lines are presented. By becoming ‘experience first-hand scenes of Amish redefined in terms of the tourist gaze, families working fertile farms just as they railways become absorbed into a had a century ago.’ picturesque rural landscape and thus divorced from their history as parts of A Future for the Past on 16, 20 industrial society . This process is Museum Railways clearly evident with the archetypal heritage railway, the country branch line How then might museum railways move or secondary route. Culturally—and for towards a more critical popular history? that matter, politically and By reworking their visitors’ experience of economically—railways transported the the railway itself, museum railways could values of industrial modernity through provide opportunities for visitors to and into city, town, suburb and develop skills in decoding the social countryside alike21. Historically, meanings of the spaces and landscapes however, the railways own cultural through which they pass24. practices downplayed this alien invasion, As I have already argued, the most and so too, in a modern idiom, do even significant feature of the narrative the most museum-oriented of heritage typology of museum lines is the more- railways. They present an image of the or-less unconscious constraints placed on railway as an organic part of a pastoral visitors as they circulate as passengers. idyll. Their publicity often stresses the While free access to the likes of signal- ‘happy coincidence of landscape and boxes and locomotive footplates is not line,’ emphasising the pleasurable possible, opening up more of the railway The Keighley & Worth Valley Railway in northern connotations of the countryside through and enabling visitors to circulate through England makes much of the scenery through which it passes, including the old mills seen here— which they pass, whether it be the it in novel ways would be one way of picturesque monuments to former industrial glories. starting to reconfigure their experience (National Railway Museum) Keighley & Worth Valley Railway’s ‘evocative West Yorkshire scenery’ in the and thus their comprehension of the past. forebears—most obviously, a museum north of England or the Strasburg A brief comparison with the circulation railway is now more clearly itself a Railroad’s transformation of the gently through country houses is instructive. A destination, the journey an experience to rolling landscape of Lancaster County, museum railway is rather like a country be consumed—the ways in which a line Pennsylvania into ‘spectacular farmland.’ house in which access to the servants’ is defined in relation to place and This pastoralizing movement extends to quarters and the service part of the house landscape draws upon a long history of station buildings and certain other is denied or glimpsed only from afar. Yet tourist imagery dating back before even structures, such as signal-boxes. These just opening up the railway equivalents the earliest main-line railways. Chief become redefined as examples of rural like the ticket office, goods agents’ office, among these were notions of the vernacular architecture, another aspect signal-boxes, etc., would not be enough. picturesque, the definition of locations of the picturesque gaze, rather than The order, in which the parts of a house as landscapes or places as to be gazed acknowledged as standardized or semi- or railway are met, informs a visitor’s upon or consumed aesthetically. standardized industrial products22. perception of their meanings and the Defining locations in terms of a historical Other kinds of image projected by social order that sustains these meanings. gaze—that is, as heritage—was another heritage railways help displace their For example, to see the servants’ quarters important facet of this process, and not industrial character. Associations with first and then move upstairs to the living only in Britain. The railways contributed historical places or landscapes are fairly rooms of the master and mistress has a heavily to the evolution of such images common, a strategy also inherited from different impact than the usual reverse from the late 19th century through the old companies. The Strasburg flow. In the former case, the living rooms posters, travel literature and other forms Railroad, for example, combines are more likely to be understood of advertising4, 15-19. historical tradition and the American rural primarily as places that had to be serviced The process of naturalization is an idiom of ‘hard work, discipline, frugality rather than (as with the normal

6 Japan Railway & Transport Review 30 • March 2002 Copyright © 2002 EJRCF. All rights reserved. circulation) places of gracious living4. Then perhaps museum railways could offer alternative patterns of circulation to the journey. For example, visitors might be given the chance to arrive at and move around a station as someone wishing to dispatch or collect livestock, goods or merchandise by rail. Even at the small country stations typically found on heritage lines, this would involve a very different set of sites (and sights). Thus, a visitor might enter the station through a separate yard gate, visit the goods agents’ office and then move onto the interior of the goods shed or out to the yard sidings. This would at least start to bring home The world’s first heritage railway—the Talyllyn Railway in N. Wales, run by volunteers since 1951 and seen here the fact that well into the 20th century in the mid 1990s with Talyllyn hauling carriage. (Author) railways were important carriers of goods for any but the most local of journeys. of shelter and respite for the gangs of One possibility is a much greater degree Another possibility would be to allow labourers who worked on the track, is, of intervention at the point of transition visitors to move around a station from the in its very crudity and location removed from the modern world to the constructed perspective of different grades of railway from the usual public view, a good sign ‘historic zone.’ More by accident than worker. For example, seeing a booking of its occupants’ historically low standing design this boundary is usually more office first from inside, looking out through in the railway hierarchy. blurred with museum railways than with the ticket window at passenger-visitors in The fabric of railway buildings could also many open-air museums. For example, the booking hall could be a first step in be valuable in giving a sense of historical while visitor facilities such as cafés and developing a basic historical appreciation change, but only if the dominant ethos shops are usually located in historic of the distinctive culture of railway work of ruthlessly rebuilding back to earlier station buildings or in new buildings that is lacking on most museum lines. appearances is modified. Several disguised by neo-vernacular architecture, Again, the lad-porter would have known museum railways are prepared to break once inside there is no mistaking the a different set of spaces at a station from with consistent mimesis to the extent of modern nature of the economic those of the more senior traffic grades of restoring individual stations to a transactions that take place. This helps signalman-porter, signalman or condition representing a different period to rupture the illusion of mimesis and stationmaster. Even the smaller stations from the rest of the line; what none does serves, perhaps, to emphasize the often retain buildings that serve as signs is deliberately leave a station, or a part financial realities of maintaining the of trades not commonly acknowledged by of it, with the minimum of intervention railway25, 26. Yet for all this, as visitors museum railways; the lampman or boy so that, just as with the Lynton and walk from their cars into the station and was very familiar with the small hut— Barnstaple coach exhibit in the National buy tickets at the ticket window they often set away from the main buildings as Railway Museum, the multiple layers of cross from the site’s outside to its inside, a precaution against fire—where he filled physical evidence could be used by moving from ‘the present’ to ‘the past.’ signal lamps with oil. visitors to explore the changing patterns Here is the best point for greater There are also spaces away from stations of usage and ownership24. intervention, perhaps initially by way of that could be opened up in a controlled There are many difficulties to introducing an orientation centre. way despite the increasingly legalistic these ideas, and they will not all prove Visitors might, for example, purchase their framework of health and safety. For feasible, even on the best resourced and admission tickets in a modern structure, example, non-operational signal-boxes motivated of museum lines. But looking or an older but clearly adapted building, could be fitted out with visitors in mind at how other open-air museums interpret offering the chance to think about the (as one or two already have). And the the past suggests some ways forward for history of the railway, its workforce and very humble permanent-way hut, a place railway preservationists. its relationship to the surrounding places

seems likely that this casts confusion in the experience of the journey so that visitors’ minds since there is no way of greater emphasis is given to the wider knowing what is and what is not landscape and places served by the line, historically ‘authentic.’ A multi-pronged and less to the element of transport and approach, like that often found in living- the physical features of the railway itself. history museums, particularly in the USA This would mean integrating the railway and Australia, is needed. Perhaps into the totality of the landscape by costumed staff could be made more recontextualizing it as a site originally aware of the circumstances of their built to serve particular social needs. For historical roles and become proactive in example, the Keighley & Worth Valley explaining these to visitors. Indeed there Railway was built, largely with local is an argument for saying that operating finance, to develop textile manufacturing staff should not be costumed since and engineering in two Pennine valleys. Now listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway in India still allows visitors would then be less likely to think Although much of the physical evidence visitors a far greater degree of access to the arcane that what they are seeing is ‘authentic.’ of these industries and their communities mysteries of railway work than most heritage lines in northern countries. (Author) In any case, since many operating staff has disappeared, enough remains to be cannot, for reasons of safety, act more able to think about a more contextualized and landscapes. Only then would they fully as interpreters, other ways must be interpretation of the railway’s history. The pass onto the terrain of the railway itself. found to explain their jobs. One terraces and old mills strung out along Naturally, the form and content of these possibility is the introduction of third- the West Yorkshire valleys are physical displays would be of the utmost person interpreters at major sites and on reminders of the reasons why these importance if they are to be attractive to trains whose role would be answer railways were built and operated. visitors and are not simply to reproduce queries and offer visitors a fresh How might the physical and the social the kinds of myths heritage railways perspective on what they see—or perhaps be reconnected for visitors? Some already trade on. The most valuable role more importantly, do not see. Dressed museum lines around the world have the exhibitions might perform is in ways that break the mimetic illusion already started to do this. Live or taped encouraging people to think about and that place them firmly in the present, commentaries on the train could give historical re-enactment as a form of play; the challenge for interpreters would be basic information on the history of the this in itself might alert visitors to the to provoke and facilitate the reworking railway and its relationship to the different ways the past can be represented of visitors’ experience. surrounding communities and landscape. and call their attention to the partial nature Museum lines should think more There is always the danger of nostalgia of the representation they are about to carefully about how to interpret their pervading these commentaries, but this witness. Providing insights into the history wider spatial histories; after all, they are is not of course inherent in the technique. of the railway in its museum phase would linear industrial sites operating over A less intrusive—but by that very fact be an essential aspect of this. routes that are often well over 100 years arguably less effective—method is to give A lot more thought also needs to be given old—the line and its surrounding passengers a leaflet or booklet on the to intervention in the historic zone itself. locations are palimpsests of the social train. Off the train, the whole battery of The presentation of the past here is and physical changes during this time. techniques used to interpret other historic already theatrical in some degree, and Preservationists should help visitors sites could be adapted to museum so it would not be a big step conceptually decode in new ways what they—literally railways. Leaflets, taped commentaries to offer more drama as a way of and metaphorically—see before them as and interpretation boards to self-guided introducing topics and perspectives and, they journey along the railway, tours are some attractive possibilities— most importantly, a sense of historical uncovering the layers of meaning that especially if these were to open up spaces process and change that elude mimesis. exist in and on the ground. This might hitherto closed to visitors. Guided tours The roles of first- and third-person be done by adapting theories and might also prove feasible. interpreters also demands careful techniques from other areas of Ecomuseums provide a more radical consideration. I have already mentioned archaeology, becoming in the process model—or perhaps more accurately, a the very limited sense in which operating leaders in the industrial sector4, 10. variety of models—of what might be staff behave as character-interpreters; it Part of what is needed is a reworking of achieved. The ecomuseum movement

8 Japan Railway & Transport Review 30 • March 2002 Copyright © 2002 EJRCF. All rights reserved. has always been explicit in its holistic Making Histories in Transport Museums— This article was first presented at the international conference ‘Slow Train Coming: Heritage Railways in comprehension of place and landscape that when a museum railway succeeds it the 21st Century,’ held in York in September 2001. as bearers of identity. In the judgement ceases to be a museum of railways alone. of Peter Davis, ecomuseums attempt ‘to I conserve and interpret all the elements of the environment ... in order to establish Acknowledgement 14. C. D. Wilson, Preserving Identity? Railway Work the thread of continuity with the past and in a Heritage Setting, Conference on I am grateful to the publishers for permission to Occupational Identity and Railway Work, a sense of belonging.’ Ecomuseums are reproduce material from Making Histories in National Railway Museum, York, 1999. Transport Museums. truly history museums without walls, 15. K. Chatterjee, Discovering India: Travel, History although since some focus needs to be and Identity in Late Nineteenth- and Early Notes Twentieth-Century India, in Daud Ali, ed., given to the interpretive effort, in practical 1. P. R. Ovenstone, The Railway Preservation Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South terms it is more realistic to think of them Museum in Britain, Transport Museums, Vols Asia, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, Oxford 13&14, pp. 69–72, 1986–87. and New York, 1999. as networks of sites—the ‘fragmented 2. P. R. Ovenstone, Museum Railways—Aiming to 16. J. Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in museum.’ But this is not all. The Operate and Conserve, Transport Museums, vol. Contemporary Societies, Sage, London, 1990. 19, pp. 53–56, 1992. 17. J. Simmons, The Railway in Town and Country, ecomuseum attempts to empower local 3. C. Divall and A. Scott, Making Histories in 1830–1914, David and Charles, Newton Abbot, communities so that their definition of Transport Museums, Leicester University Press, 1986. London and New York, 2001. 18. A. Bennett, The Great Western Railway and the identity through place and history has a 4. D. Brett, The Construction of Heritage, Cork Celebration of Englishness, PhD thesis, University chance of being heard27. University Press, Cork, 1996. of York, 2001. 5. K. Walsh, The Representation of the Past: 19. R. Holland, LNER Posters 1923–1947: Aspects A few museum lines have already started Museums and Heritage in the Post-Modern of Iconography, Railway and Social History, MA to make appropriate links. But to interpret World, Routledge, London and New York, 1992. thesis, University of York, 1999. 6. R. Samuel, Theatres of Memory: Past and Present 20. B. West, The Making of the English Working Past: a territory holistically needs more than in Contemporary Society, Verso, London, 1994. A Critical View of The Ironbridge Gorge Museum, mutual publicity and discounted entrance 7. J. Anderson, Time Machines: The World of Living and T. Bennett, Museums and The People, both History, American Association for State and Local in Robert Lumley, ed., The Museum Time- fees between a couple of museums; it History, Nashville, 1984. Machine: Putting Cultures on Display, Comedia, requires a comprehensive approach 8. The Living History Source Book, American London, 1988. Association for State and Local History, Nashville, 21. J. Stilgoe, Metropolitan Corridor: Railroads and embracing the many different facets of the 1985. the American Scene, Yale University Press, New region’s identity. A museum railway that 9. D. MacCannell, Staged Authenticity: On Haven CT and London, 1983. Arrangements of Social Space in Tourist Settings, 22. R. Sykes, A. Austin, M. Fuller, T. Kinoshita and developed as part of an ecomuseum American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 79, pp. 589– A. Shrimpton, Steam Attraction: Railways in would have to learn to cooperate with 603, 1973. Britain’s National Heritage, Journal of Transport 10. M. Palmer and P. Neaverson, Industrial History, 3rd ser., Vol. 18, pp. 156–175, 1997. other museums and groups that might not Archaeology: Principles and Practice, Routledge, 23. Strasburg Railroad, publicity leaflet, 1997. share its views of the locale and history. London and New York, 1998. 24. H. J. Yates, The Conservation Context, in P. This is surely more of an opportunity than 11. R. B. Gordon, The Interpretation of Artifacts in Burman and M. Stratton, eds, Conserving the the History of Technology, in S. Lubar and W. D. Railway Heritage, E. & F. Spon, London, 1997. a threat. An ecomuseum is rarely, if ever, Kingery, eds, History from Things: Essays on 25. T. Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, a monolithic organization swallowing up Material Culture, Smithsonian Institution Press, Theory, Politics, Routledge, London and New Washington DC and London, 1993. York, 1995. and controlling its constituents; it is more 12. R. B. Gordon and P. M. Malone, The Texture of 26. R. Handler and E. Gable, The New History in an a web of independent bodies sharing a Industry: An Archaeological View of the Old Museum: Creating the Past in Colonial Industrialization of North America, Oxford Williamsburg, Duke University Press, Durham commitment to the exploration of a University Press, New York and Oxford, 1994. S.C. and London, 1997. territory’s history and identity, learning 13. R. Harrington, Perceptions of the Locomotive 27. P. Davis, Ecomuseums: A Sense of Place, Driver: Image and Identity on British Railways, Leicester University Press, London and New York, from one another in the process. In c.1840–c.1950, www.york.ac.uk/inst/irs/irshome/ 1999. practical terms, museum railways could papers/locomdriv.htm, 1999. attract visitors by moving them around the ecomuseum’s territory27. By embracing the outward looking, inclusive philosophy Colin Divall of the ecomuseum movement, museum railways could throw off once and for all Dr Divall is Professor of Railway Studies at the National Railway Museum and University of York. He is a co-author of Making Histories in Transport Museums, and Scaling Up: The Institution of any suggestion that they are just ‘big boys Chemical Engineers and the Rise of a New Profession. playing at trains.’ Indeed thinking of heritage railways as potential elements of ecomuseums leads us to an important conclusion developed at more length in