Whither the Freedom Train?

Last spring a venerable steam locomotive pulling 25 red, white and blue cars chugged out of Wilmington, Del., on a 17,000-mile, two-year Bicentennial tour of the U.S. It was the American Freedom Train, a private, nonprofit project financed through $5 million in gifts from five U.S. corporations and billed as "a birthday gift to the American people." The train carried a somewhat indiscriminate array of American artifacts: George Washington's copy of the Constitution, the agreement for the Louisiana Purchase, Will Rogers' lariat, Judy Garland's dress from the Wizard of Oz and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's size 16 basketball shoes.

This week as the train plays Peoria--literally--its tour is mirroring the nation in quite a different way: it is in deep financial distress, fast building up a deficit that could reach $2.5 million. Apparently the trouble began early with lavish expenditures to renovate the train and assemble the exhibits. On the road there were further problems: complaints that the admission was too high ($2 for adults, $1 for children), the 15-minute moving-walkway trip through the cars too brief (the walkways have since been slowed). Attendance was erratic: only 10,800 visitors per day turned up during eight days in Boston, but more than 40,000 descended on the train during a 2 1/2-day stop last month in Archbold, Ohio (pop. 3,200).

To salvage the project, the train's original operators stepped down and were replaced this month by Peter Spurney, former general manager of Spokane's successful Expo '74. Spurney is considering a variety of cost-cutting and money-raising stratagems (the train now costs $20,000 per display day). But he also might well think about more stops at unjaded towns like Archbold, where a look at Joe DiMaggio's baseball bat and rocks from the moon is apparently still worth two dollars from the kitchen sugar bowl.

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