Work update

So things are coming along at the museum. Our auto gallery is slated for a soft opening at the end of the month, just days away. I'm guessing we'll miss that mark, but just barely.

Here are some photos of the things we're working on.

This is what the western-most end of the auto gallery looks like now.




The first exhibit we'll have in the gallery is from the Virginia Department of Transportation. It's called "From Mud to Mobility: 100 Years of Transportation Excellence."

Ok, so we missed the mark by a year. But our roof blew off -- give us a break!
Anyway, the gallery boasts a thirty-foot ceiling, so we've got ample room to display these banners vertically, but they'll need some cleaning as you can tell from the picture. They flew outside the VDOT building in Richmond for almost all of 2006. Given the circumstances, they're actually in pretty good shape.


This door is on the far west end of the auto gallery and leads into the last un-renovated portion of our building. This lets in a great deal of air from the outside, as do many of the unsealed doors in the auto gallery. This, combined with the meager heat provided by the two HVAC units on the roof, necessitates one of these...


If you can read that label on the back, it says "115,000 BTUs." That's a lot of heat. However, let's do some quick math.

The gallery is approximately 10,000 square feet in layout, by about 30 feet high, making for 300,000 cubic feet of air that needs to be heated. This thing doesn't make a dent. We're working on getting some fans that will blow the heated air down from the rafters, but that will take some time.


This is the final wrinkle. You're looking at the entrance to the auto gallery. Grand, isn't it? This is a fire wall with a door in it, when you get right down to it. The museum is housed in Norfolk & Western's old freight station, but when the museum first moved in, N&W was still using portions of the building, including the one that now houses the auto gallery. As a result, there is a certain truncated effect to all the galleries, and no real flow from one to the next.

Advance Auto Parts is working with us to completely renovate the entrance to this gallery, and thank goodness for that. This looks like crap. We know it, and we don't hide it. Their contribution to our effort will make this something to be proud of, and it will create the first truly seamless connection from one of our galleries to another.

Come by in about a week and see what we've got cooking. Your patronage helps! No, really. I see the internal finances for the museum; your patronage really does make a difference.