With new developments at the Northwest Railway Museum, Snoqualmie’s 2016 Railroad Days could be significantly downsized in 2016.

Snoqualmie’s connection to the history of railways and steam trains makes up a big part of the city’s identity. The museum is working on more year-round events and plans to break ground on a new railroad education center in 2016. Because of all this work, the museum has had to pull staff off of Railroad Days planning, leaving the future of the event in limbo.

Peggy Barchi, organizer of Railroad Days and marketing and events manager at the Northwest Railway Museum, said with only six full-time employees, the museum had to make the call on what projects deserve higher priority.

“Trying to open up the museum year-round takes a significant amount of time,” Barchi said. “This is where you have to make the hard decisions.”

According to Barchi, it is a trade off between putting in a lot of effort for a three-day event versus using that time to elevate the museum’s programs across the whole year.

Richard Anderson, executive director of the Northwest Railway Museum, said that after the last Railroad Days they made it clear that Barchi could not be spending so much of her time on that project.

“We made it clear that we have plans for Ms. Barchi but we simply don’t have the bandwidth to have her spend 25 percent of her time on a three-day event,” Anderson said. “We need her to focus on a 360-day operation, not a three-day festival.”

Part of that 360-day operation includes changes to the regular train rides as well as the development of a brand new building. According to Anderson, the regular train rides will be undergoing some changes as they will be extended from 90 minutes to a full two hours.

“Next year all of our regular train excursions will be two hours and stop at the new building to walk through,” Anderson said.

The new stop is currently planned to last around 40 minutes, so the passengers have a chance to see everything.

The new building itself is currently being called the Railroad Education Center. It will have a library, archives, a reading room, and a classroom as well as the program offices for staff. Anderson said the project will cost $2.6 million and they are hoping to begin development next to the train shed in early 2016.

The museum will also be revamping all of the marketing materials they’ve been using for years.

Now the museum is looking for any interested parties who would be willing to take up the planning roles and work with the museum to help keep Railroad Days going.

“We really would like one or more people to step forward for this role,” Anderson said. “We can continue to facilitate it and play a key role, but we can’t allow Peggy to spend 500 to 600 hours on it.”

Even though the future of the event is uncertain, Anderson believes that they will find a partner to help keep it going.

“I’m still confident it will happen one way or another,” Anderson said.