KF>Uh huh. I've heard more than one NRHS chapter bemoan the fact that their 
tri
KF>they sponsored had more people chasing and watching them than riding the
KF>train.
KF>Not from lack of advertising, either. And hey, I'm guilty of it, too.
 
Which comes down to at least two items right off the bat. How much
advance publicity did the chapter do when the details had been cast in
concrete for that trip; and did they price the trip to encourage people
to ride, or discourage them from riding?  Too many trips may get short
shrift when it comes to any advance knowledge of such trips, despite
their being mentioned by the chapter's newsletter (the Pacific Northwest
Chapter does it this way, for instance), and/or putting notice into
Trains magazine and Model Railroader if enough time is available ahead
of the actual trip.
 
 
KF> There's a big part of the problem right there. Look at that Frisco 
teamer
KF> seems like every time that sucker is scheduled to go out, something 
reaks
KF> usually about 100 miles from home. (I wonder if there's a connection?)
KF>Nothing a host railroad likes less than having to go and rescue an 
excursion
KF>train, steam or diesel.
 
Despite howls of protest from chartering groups, some railroads have
taken the precaution of placing one or more of their own road engines
behind the steamer, just in case. While this will obviously screw with
someone's mind if they're intent upon taking a "pure" picture of such
trains, the railroad clearly has other ideas about how to get anything
across their tracks without tying up the mainline. (By the way, is this
100-mile radius on the outbound or inbound portion of the trip?  Might
make a difference in how we might choose to view it? )
 
Needless to say, some part of this scheduling detail will depend on what
part of the country such a train might run across, how much trackage is
available to the dispatchers to work other trains around such a special
train, and the training of the crew actually running the steam train on
what most likely will be "borrowed" track for the trip in many cases. In
most instances, the host railroad will be putting one of their own
people in the engine to keep the engineer appraised of each and every
mile of track being run on during that trip, the signaling system being
used by the host railroad, all sorts of things the engineer will need to
know while running the train.
 
 
KF> There's the big one, right there. The risk management types have killed 
off
KF> a good many great steam trips. Also, with the increase in business, 
decreas
KF> in trackage and all, there's a big problem with being over capacity at 
he
KF> times that an excursion needs to run.
 
This would have happened several years ago on a Norfolk Southern charter
trip, had one of the Claytor brothers not been at the throttle when the
train derailed. First thing they made checks for was whether the train
had been running too fast for the track conditions, and for the
condition of the older passenger equipment being used on that specific
trip, too.
 
 
KF>They do pretty good with charters around here. Amtrak runs a bunch of 
footba
 
KF>specials to Buffalo, and ran two trains from Buffalo toCorning and back 
last
KF>weekend. From what I heard over the scanner, it appears they made their
KF>schedule.
KF>But then, the track they were going over only gets a half dozen trains a 
day
KF>now.
KF>The biggest problem they have with the football specials is getting the 
peop
 
KF>from the station to the stadium and back.
 
Between at least two organizations in the Pacific Northwest, Amtrak has
been running chartered trips for both the Historical Society based in
Portland, Oregon (I'm a member, so can attest to this), and another with
a travel agency in Seattle just last May that my wife and I jumped at
the chance to ride on. Add to it the occasional football special here in
the San Francisco Bay area now being run by CalTrain that transports
people from San Francisco or San Jose to Stanford every other year for
the Big Game between U.C. Berkeley and Stanford. Other than these, any
other sort of chartered train trip will be few and far between. Unless
the U.P. chooses to start doing public relations in a positive way now
that they own most of the tracks here in California since taking over
the former Southern Pacific late last year.
 
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 # SLMR 2.1a # I'm in shape ... round's a shape isn't it?
 # PDQWK 2.5 #51
 
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