Executive Director Updates, September 2018

Welcome to the Executive Director’s blog post for September, 2018.  We’re changing format of our Crossings newsletter somewhat to broaden our audience and also to streamline its management.

August has flown by with a number of developments and we’re excited about the upcoming fall activities at the museum.  We appreciate all you do to make the museum a success and hope you’ll join us as we grow our community treasure.

We held our twelfth Trains, Trucks & Tractors event to start August. We were pleased to have a significant number of returning exhibitors and visitors as well as a few new ones. We had a lot of positive response to our re-alignment of food service, music and picnic tables into building 2. We’re looking forward to applying some of our findings from this event to our fall events and future TTT events.

Our events committee is continuing to plan for fall, Christmas and 2019 events. Coming up next is the Smithsonian Magazine sponsored “Museum Day” on Sept 22. It will be followed closely by two weekends with visiting steam engine “Mack” (Jeddo Coal #85) from the stable of the Gramling family. October will have Train or Treat.

In a significant change, we will be focusing on Breakfast with Santa and Lunch with Santa this holiday season and will NOT be hosting Polar Express Experience due to changing business requirements outside our control. We appreciate everyone that has supported that event in the past and hope you’ll participate in the museum’s other holiday offerings. Tickets for both Breakfast and Lunch with Santa will go on sale Tuesday, Sept 4 at 10am.  We are also investigating developing some new concepts both for the holiday season and into 2019, please stay tuned for more details.

In addition to steaming up for events, we’ve a number of infrastructure projects underway.  The most significant is our building 3 (shop) rehabilitation project. Our volunteers spent about 3 weeks clearing portions of the building that were fire damaged before we acquired it so our contractor to get to work August 21. The first of the structural columns was set of Thursday August 23 and the contractor completed columns an August wrapped up. We’re looking forward to a more secure, stable, productive workspace in September.

In April we announced that we had been challenged by the Hudgen’s Family Foundation to raise $50,000. I’m pleased to report that as of August we’ve reached 107% of that goal.  We’re continuing to fundraise in anticipation of additional growth at the museum.  We would really like to include your donation in that total so please visit our donations page to help us significantly exceed their challenge.

I appreciate all the support that you give us each visit.  Please know that I, the volunteers, and staff work hard each day to continue improving the museum and I hope we make each of your visits enjoyable.

Thanks,
Randy

Featured photo: Cheryl Hardt