We have developed a new smart phone application - the IRM Tour Guide - which is now available for Android. It was presented to the Board last Saturday and approved. The IRM App, "IRMA" for short, can be downloaded for free by anyone, but is intended mostly to enhance the visitor experience. We will now want to have some signs installed to inform visitors of this new feature. As you tour the Museum, your Android phone can display text with additional information about the artifacts, pictures, and links to videos of the equipment in operation. IRMA will also give you important safety information and helpful hints on planning your visit.
The computer code that actually runs the app was developed by my son-in-law, Jay Powell, and Frank and I are developing the content. Our intent is not to have information on every piece of equipment, but to tell stories about railroading in general using selected pieces as examples. Dining cars, private cars, labor relations, technological developments, and various aspects of preservation are a few of the types of subjects we want to cover. More will be added as time permits. Did we mention that it's free?
If you have an Android phone you can try out IRMA now. Go to the App Store and search for "IRM Tour Guide"; it's listed under the category Educational. As you may know, once the app has been installed on your phone, it will be updated automatically whenever we upload a new version. And once the Android version is finalized, we plan to port the app to iPhones.
