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Guest Column: Audio tour adds another dimension to scenic railroad excursions

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by Jennie Vasarhelyi, Cuyahoga Valley National Park

This summer, a new audio tour was introduced aboard the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad. Called Voices of the Valley, this audio tour is available on all excursions between Akron Northside and Rockside stations through the Park. I served as the project coordinator.

This article provides my insider's view on the decisions we made in creating the tour.

Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad has always provided a way to tour and learn about the park. Until this summer, passengers heard a narration provided by staff and volunteers. While we liked the narration, we felt using multiple voices and layers of sound in an audio tour would create a more engrossing program. We'd prefer that staff personally greet passengers rather than being a disembodied voice over a speaker.

To make the switch to a recorded audio tour required a way to pace it with the train. A critical point for this project came when we discovered that use of global positioning system technology could meet this need. GPS technology communicates with orbiting satellites to pinpoint location on the earth's surface. In a GPS-triggered audio tour, we could identify GPS points along the train route where we want the audio tour to play. GPS technology can also recognize the direction a vehicle is moving, which enabled us to develop separate program segments for the northbound and southbound legs of CVSR excursions.

We had to make two additional major decisions about how to deliver the program before we could seek funding and move forward. First, we had to decide whether to include a visual component to the program. We decided against it, believing that the valley's scenery would provide the visual dimension. Second, we had to decide whether to broadcast the program over the train's speaker system or allow it play on individual units like an audio tour in a museum.

We went back and forth on this decision. To use individual units would mean additional costs related to purchasing, distributing, and maintaining much more equipment. In the end, we decided it would be worth it. We wanted visitors to become immersed in the program, something we felt would be more possible using headphones to bring sound close to the listener. We found that the narration presented over the speaker system competed with passengers talking and the noise of the train, making it hard for passengers to concentrate on the program. We also felt that visitors would appreciate having the ability to choose how much to listen. Finally, we realized that wireless technology would make individual receivers and headphones realistic to manage.

Most of the $335,000 in funding for the project came from the National Park Service's Alternative Transportation Program. The NPS targets this funding to projects that reduce visitor's dependency on their cars. Individual parks compete for this funding. Our success in receiving funding underscores the importance the NPS gives to projects that help people explore and better understand the stories of national parks.

With the funding in hand, we hired Antenna Audio, part of Discovery Communications, to develop the content. This firm has developed many of the best audio tours in the country, including one presented at Alcatraz, a National Park Service site with an outstanding audio tour.

The first stage in creating an audio tour is developing a treatment, which identifies the storyline, design approach, and locations for program segments. We made a few key decisions in the treatment phase. We decided against a "this is" tour in favor of focusing on the broader valley landscape and major points-of-interest. We felt that making passengers work too hard to see distant points of interest would take away from the relaxing pace of the train.

Instead, we picked a story-telling approach, recognizing that we could build an overall storyline by telling short but revealing vignettes. This approach would allow us to emphasize human experiences in the valley. For southbound program segments, we decided to feature the settlement of the valley and how it has changed over time. Northbound stories would emphasize the consequences of our choices and how we have responded.

In the end, we used four kinds of voices in the audio tour: The narrator, actors reading historical writings, recorded oral histories, and expert interviews. Historical characters include African American canal boat captain John Malvin, who wrote his autobiography in 1879, and Emily Nash, who moved to the Ohio frontier as a girl of six. Oral histories include one with Willy Ritch, who worked at the Jaite paper mill, and Clyde Davis, a farm hand in the Village of Boston in the 1920s. Expert interviews include NPS historian Sam Tamburro and anthropologist Lynn Metzger.

Music, animal sounds, and sound effects add richness to the audio tour. Music plays between story vignettes. However, we also included quiet moments to provide breaks and an opportunity for passengers to talk with their families. We were able to use some local music, including songs written by Alex Bevan for Cuyahoga Valley Environmental Education Center and canal-related music by Cleveland Metroparks interpreter Foster Brown.

Today, passengers aboard CVSR excursions will find receivers, headsets, and instructions for the audio tour at their seats. Onboard staff and volunteers can provide assistance if necessary. Access to the program is free for any passenger who paid an excursion fare. It is not available to Bike Aboard! passengers.

For people with hearing impairments, hand-held GPS units provide a captioned version of the tour. Assisted listening devices also allow passengers with hearing aids to listen to the program more comfortably.

Visit www.cvsr.com or call 800-468-4070.