Full Steam Ahead

Sean O’Byrne, the new interim director of Union Station, doesn’t want to repeat the mistakes of his imperious and indecisive predecessor, Turner White.

On the job since June 1, O’Byrne occupies a windowless office in the basement. White had perched in the mezzanine, preferring a view of the Great Hall to being near his staff, who were hunkered down below.

O’Byrne is also determined to bring new attractions to Union Station, even as it runs a $6.2 million deficit. Under White, the station tended to wallow in its pool of red ink. Science City was already a failure when White arrived in 2000, and it remained so through his recent departure.

O’Byrne, however, refuses to let defeatism rule. “It’s like Hannibal said going through the mountains on the elephants: If we can’t find a way, we’ll make one.”

That fighting spirit led O’Byrne to recommend that the station buy several railroad cars and related memorabilia — such as headrests and china — from an aging collector in Milwaukee. Union Station’s board of directors voted on Monday, June 21, to acquire the collection for $650,000 and to create a railroad museum.

For O’Byrne, a railroad museum — or “adventure,” as he prefers to call it — represents the most obvious means for the station to reconnect with the public. The station, O’Byrne says, has disappointed visitors for too long by not embracing its heritage. “This is a step in the right direction, because what we’re doing is answering the call of the public. The public says, ‘Bring me trains.'”

Circumstance forced O’Byrne and the board to be decisive. For years, station officials had considered the notion of a railroad museum. A deposit on the Milwaukee collection was made in two installments, in July and December of last year. But if the board had failed to act by June 30, the price would have gone up to $675,000, and the station would have forfeited $75,000 of its $95,000 deposit.

O’Byrne, whose background is in commercial real estate, approached the collection as though it were a piece of property. “If somebody can’t give me a good reason why we shouldn’t do this, then we’re going to pull the trigger,” he told the Pitch before the vote but after traveling to Milwaukee to inspect the collection with two Kansas City Southern mechanical engineers. “Even if we own the collection and we’re wrong, we can turn around and sell it. We’ll never get less than our money. It’s like putting money into your house.”

Earlier this month, Mike Haverty, Kansas City Southern chairman and Union Station board member, suggested that the collection was worth up to $6 million. O’Byrne, after consulting the engineers, put the number at $2.7 million.

The station bought a five-car streamliner (locomotive included), a caboose and three other cars that won’t be displayed. The cars date from 1946 to 1951. Peter Hansen, a Lenexa-based railroad expert hired by Union Station, says the cars are pristine, the furnishings authentic. A walk-through tour planned for the museum would allow visitors to step back in time. “These pieces represent that last golden age of rail travel before people abandoned the rails for good,” Hansen says.

On June 14, O’Byrne described the collection and its potential to the Union Station task force appointed by Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes after city leaders decided against putting a station tax levy on the August ballot. The exhibit, O’Byrne said, would draw 250,000 visitors annually. It would cost $2.5 million, according to the most recent business plan.

The tight deadline of June 30, when the price would have risen, stifled meaningful debate. When some members of the task force pressed O’Byrne for details, the group’s chairman, Ron Pressman, cut off the discussion in order to keep the meeting moving. Task force members who wanted more information, Pressman said, had four days to find their answers before he needed their votes.

David Brain, the president of Entertainment Properties Trust, was among the task force members who wanted to see a more detailed business plan. Attendance at Science City, after all, fell far short of its original expectations. “We have an attendance problem, so attendance numbers are real key,” he told the Pitch after the June 14 meeting.

A railroad museum is just the first of several attractions O’Byrne and the task force are considering to help turn around the ailing station. But attracting 250,000 annual visitors with just six rail cars sounds optimistic, to say the least. (O’Byrne is trying to pry a seventh vehicle — a Santa Fe War Bonnet locomotive — from the Smithsonian Institution.)

Railroad museums with more substantial collections attract fewer customers, the Pitch has learned. The National Railroad Museum in Green Bay, Wisconsin, for instance, has more than seventy pieces of rolling stock. It draws 72,000 visitors annually, according to its curator, Chuck Schuetz.

The Age of Steam Railroad Museum in Dallas has 28 pieces of stock on its 277-acre campus. The director, Bob LaPrelle, says the museum attracts 50,000 visitors a year. About half of last year’s customers came for a special visit by Thomas the Tank Engine.

The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum in Baltimore owns 200 cars. It drew 160,000 visitors a year before a heavy snow in 2003 caused the roof of its roundhouse to collapse. (The station hopes to reopen in November.)

The big daddy of them all — the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento — attracts 600,000 visitors annually, but its marketing director, Paul Hammond, cautions against comparisons. For one thing, the museum sits in the heart of touristy Old Sacramento, where much traffic converges. “We’re completely unusual,” Hammond says.

Hansen, the consultant, believes that Union Station’s rail adventure will be distinguished by the station itself. No rail museum in the country tells its story from such a magnificent stage, he says. “Only we can re-create the experience of catching a train in a grand, old train station.”

Visitors may “catch” a train, but it will not depart the station. The exhibit will not feature a ride, though there will be a model-railroad display.

But what the station lacks in hardware and moving parts, Hansen says, the exhibit will make up for in humanity. The station hopes to celebrate the lives of those who rode and worked for the trains. As Hansen imagines it, teachers will bring students to learn about how the Pullman porters inspired the civil-rights movement. “There are a lot of great human stories here that take place in and around the train.”

History buffs speak often of stories that need to be told. But those stories also need an audience willing to listen. None of the exhibitors contacted by the Pitch openly discourage the idea of a rail museum at Union Station, but some express reservations. “It certainly will draw more people through the building, but it also seems to me that they can’t rely on that to fix the problem,” says Courtney Wilson, the B&O museum director.

Wilson suggests that Union Station officials be conservative with their attendance estimates. Hammond at the California museum agrees. “Two hundred and fifty thousand is an awful lot of people,” he says.

For O’Byrne, though, the time for dithering has passed. Union Station needs paying customers, and he says shiny, whistling trains are a way to attract them. “We’ve studied this thing to death,” he told the task force.

O’Byrne has additional ideas. He wants to tear out the unloved elements of Science City (Grandma’s Attic, anyone?). He’d love to grab the Steamboat Arabia, but its lease will keep the once-sunken treasure in the River Market for another six years. An aviation exhibit and a cosmosphere might also brighten Science City.

O’Byrne believes that Union Station’s deficit can be eliminated by improved attendance, a leaner operation, and the development of land and property owned by the station.

He also promises to return phone calls and open the books.

“We’re going to lay everything out,” O’Byrne says. “We’re going to air everything publicly. But I’m not going to wait for full consensus. If 60 percent of the collective group says this is something we should do, we’re going to do it. Because if I wait for the rest of it, we’ll never get anywhere.”