Our opportunity to help is knocking.

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I just got off the phone with Janet Kroetch who is a board member with Future View TREA. This is the charitable organization that runs the Middleton Memory Lane Railway Museum as a work project. Janet is chiefly responsible for the day to day operation of the Future View program and museum.

Future View was responsibile for saving the Middleton railway station from destruction as it had turned into a derelict building. A lack of heating and maintenance and over 5 years neglect had seen the floors starting to come up and the roof cave in. Future view was looking for a place to use as a drop-in centre when the idea to use the station came up. Approaching CPR they got permission to use the building and subsequently repaired it and painted it using the folks in the Future View program and donated time and money.

Once the station had been refurbished, people started donating railway items to the drop-in centre so it seemed only appropriate that they started to display those items. The idea grew and grew unto today the Memory Lane Railway Museum serves over 5000 visitors a year.

Here's the good news everybody; the museum would love to utilise our collective talents and time to continue to run and host this site and the museum web site.

They would also like to start to catalgoue the entire museum and digitizing it. This is excellent news as many of us have already been wondering how we can in effect do this!!

The only caveat is that all work will be approved and coordinated through Janet to insure that the Future View program itself is not comprimised.

And as a bit of a sad final note, for the first time in 20 years, the museum is planning to close for the winter. The Museum and Future View receive no funding what so ever and are operating solely on private donations. The reason for the closure is that there are not enough funds avaialble to heat the building and so with regrets, they will have to close the museum and leave it unheated from December through to April. This of course means all the Future View people will have no where to go and nothing to do for the winter either.

If ever I heard a call to action this was it.

We have on the table:

(1) Help Catalog the Museum.
(2) Heat the museum and keep it open.

[SgtBobCdn]

Hi Steve, althought I am just a new member, I am deeply interested in keeping this sort of thing alive. There is a tremendous amount of history here that we need to preserve. Although I am in Ottawa, I would be more that willing to assist in cataloguing and digitizing the information that they have. Good news, is that I will probably be posted to either Halifax or Greenwood next summer.

Please let me know what I can do to assist.

Rob

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I was waiting to see if anyone else would bite. I think this is a huge milestone that the Future View TREA has seen that are our motives are true and that our hands are willing.

Who else will come on board for this?

[Dan Conlin]

I'd be happy to make a donation to help keep the place open. Where do I send the cheque? Paul Collins, the community museums person at the Nova Scotia Museum in Halifax, may be able to provide some advice on cataloguing.

Dan Conlin, Halifax

[briantrainman]

Yes, please post where we can send donations. Too many other opportunties to support worthwhile projects have passed us by. Just think what saving the Kentville roundhouse might have done to anchor a central museum devoted to the DAR and don't get me started on how much was lost when the old station was demolished .It is my understanding that a treasure trove of documention was lost to us then. By the way I would suggest that people also support other museums such as the Admiral Digby which house DAR photos and artifacts. Brian Lilly

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Hello everybody. Here's the latest greatest.

Regarding cataloguing the museum, I am asking for help within the Nova Scotia museum community for advice how to best run a regionally and nationally compatible web based cataloguing system and I have received quite a few options which I am now going through to detemine which solution will best serve all.

Once I have server software selected then we need to proceed to set up the client computers that will be used to enter info at the musuem level. This also includes getting the museum hooked up to the internet. Does anyone have any contacts at a local ISP that we could ask to supply a connection as a donation (Eastlink for example)?

There are many concerns about the exhibits, especially concerning negatives and photos from a number of people. We will be suggesting to the museum to remove certain exhibits to protect them from low temperatures during the winter if they must close the doors. Be advised though that they plan to maintain the interior temperature at 38 to 40 degrees F even if the doors are closed. However, that is too cold for "the boys" to work in and so there will be no progress on cataloguing or building and grounds improvement.

Along with everything else, setting up PayPal to accept payments for the museum is taking some time, but IS in progress. As soon as we have the account set up, I will install PayPal buttons on the site so those who wish to send a donation can do that through PayPal.

Janet Kroetch is our official contact person at the museum. She is a current director and takes care of the day to day running of the musem and the association. In the future when enough information concerning the exhibits and inventory has been gathered and we understand what work and equipment is required on-site then we will be working with Janet to coordinate those resources and bring them to the museum. So for those of you who feel the need to actually get to the museum and get hands-on, just hang on because that is going to happen in the future once we get everything in place.

And that's all I can think of for now... let me know if you have any further information on something I mentioned and especially if I forgot anything important.

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I now have a PayPal account set up for the museum so they can accept donations from the WWW.

Now that's great news!

There are links all over the place so hopefully it won't be too difficult to find your way to the one PayPal donate page.

For now, until I get around to editing the top menu on this forum, I have put the donation link and information in our system message forum as a sticky.

So for those of you who wanted to pitch in, please follow this link to get started:
http://dardpi.ca/Forum/viewtopic.php?f= ... p=228#p228

[elenahusky]

When we think of "opportunities", we often think of chance occasions that cross our path, or are presented to us. We don't think of opportunities as something we have to actively go in search for… because opportunity knocks on our door – not vice versa. Right? Wrong.

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Must have been something funky going on with the database. The last message posted in December from "wire rope" just popped up as *new*.

Opportunity most certainly knocks. You can however put yourself in places and situations where opportunity is more likely to knock than others!