April 2010 President’s Report

By Ira Pollack

I hope all is well with you this month. I would like to summarize some of the events of our Annual Meeting held on March 17th. This meeting was a status report to the membership on the condition of the Museum and direction in which it is heading. The culmination was our yearly election of new Board members, five in this particular year. First I will thank our exiting members of our Board of Directors for their service to the Museum, and also welcome in the new members to this two-year seat. I will comment that during these past two years we have addressed and solved many new issues that have arisen for our still growing organization. Many new policies were instituted by this Board, and many new ideas and events came to fruition as a result of their actions. The position of Director is important for our continued growth, both financially and for the leadership of our membership. I look forward to working with this new Board, and continuing the progress of the Museum. The new Board members are Stan Madyda and Alan Baker. Reelected incumbents are John O’Hern, Jeff van Wagenen, and Don Konen. I wish them well in their new terms of service.

In closing my segment of this meeting I thanked all of the people who volunteered at the Museum this year. They assisted in many diverse ways - from manning the train crews and yard crews, the Front Desk, the Tuesday night modeling crew, and the Gift Shop, to acting as newsletter editor, membership chairman, tour guides, and Library staff, to performing their DRM Officer duties (such as Treasurer and Secretary), publicity and advertising, helping out at special events, train shows, restoring our railroad equipment, and so on. Look at our diversity; look at what we can do. I am sure that I have missed many people, people in the background; all doing their thing that makes us function as a working museum.

As the President of the Museum I have many expectations. I look forward to this new season with many of the same projects still awaiting completion. Most of my goals remain the same. In the next several weeks I would like to get a crew together and finish painting our turntable. Unfortunately last year we ran out of time and weather. I will be calling you for help on a Saturday morning to complete this project. Lunch will be served!

I also would like to spend time setting up a storage area in the Reading boxcar. Storage at the DRM has always been a major problem. The yard crew has taken all of the space available in the two trailers, and we definitely need a permanent home for our growing overflow of artifacts museum wide. I would like to collaborate with our Library staff and begin setting up shelving in the boxcar and, yes, getting rid of some of the stuff that has been accumulating in it for years.

Listed below are some of my future goals, or maybe dreams. I know that all of these cannot happen this year, but they are always in my mind.

1) Create more interactive exhibits; PowerPoint presentations

2) Set up sound systems for the #1455, RPO car, Sperry car

3) Restore and paint coal loader

4) Create a virtual tour of the N-gauge layout

5) Professionally paint one piece of railroad equipment per year

6) Establish a picnic area at the end of Track 42

7) Create an exhibit on catenary in the MU car

8) Erect catenary piers with wires

9) Rebuild Track 32 with a working switch

There is always some project to work on at the Museum; there is never any boredom here. All we can do is keep picking at our project list. It seems that when you finish one, there are another three that surface just to fill that gap. I hope you can help out this year as a volunteer, and as always, I look forward to seeing you.