On 09-30-97 BOB WALLACE wrote to ANDREW HAMBLYN... 
 
 BW> Ah, then it comes down to your taste versus that of literally 
 BW> thousands 
 BW> of steam devotees who will go out of their way to catch even the 
 BW> briefest of glimpses of the Union Pacific's 844 or 3985 
Uh huh. I've heard more than one NRHS chapter bemoan the fact that their trip 
they sponsored had more people chasing and watching them than riding the 
train.  
Not from lack of advertising, either. And hey, I'm guilty of it, too.  
 
 
 
 
 BW> AH>The steam age is dead, and a lot of railroads/ railways all over 
 BW> frown on th 
 BW> AH>cause of the organisational headache they create. 
 BW>   
 BW> A good part of it depends heavily on who it is that maintains such 
 BW> equipment for use on the host railroad's mainline. While the hosting 
 BW> railroad can gain some measure of good marks for allowing steam to run 
 BW> on its rails, there are obvious safety factors that do need to be 
 BW> taken 
 BW> into consideration, and obvious scheduling considerations for the 
 BW> dispathers who do have other trains to move along the system. 
 There's a big part of the problem right there. Look at that Frisco steamer 
 seems like every time that sucker is scheduled to go out, something breaks 
 usually about 100 miles from home. (I wonder if there's a connection?) 
Nothing a host railroad likes less than having to go and rescue an excursion 
train, steam or diesel.  
 
 Between nervous management, lawyers and insurance 
 BW> carriers, it's hardly surprising that much of the steam we used to see 
 BW> running mainline excursions has been bumped off the rails. 
 There's the big one, right there. The risk management types have killed off 
 a good many great steam trips. Also, with the increase in business, decrease 
 in trackage and all, there's a big problem with being over capacity at the  
 times that an excursion needs to run.  
 
  
  Even Amtrak 
 BW> is having problems in scheduling charters with equipment that sits on 
 BW> the side tracks for 36-48 hours or more every week without drawing any 
 BW> revenue for Amtrak while they lay over to await the next scheduled 
 BW> run. 
They do pretty good with charters around here. Amtrak runs a bunch of 
football  
specials to Buffalo, and ran two trains from Buffalo toCorning and back last  
weekend. From what I heard over the scanner, it appears they made their 
schedule.  
But then, the track they were going over only gets a half dozen trains a day 
now.  
The biggest problem they have with the football specials is getting the 
people 
from the station to the stadium and back.  
                                     K 
                                      --- 
 * OFFLINE 1.56 * Them durn ol' U boats stunk, so the new U boats must stink, 
too! 
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