I didn’t start to read the Railroad Heritage Employment thread until this morning. Not sure why, as I have the time to do it being that I am still unemployed. In the three months that I have been on the dole collecting “Uncle George’s” allowance, I’ve been working on finding ways to use my communications background to a greater means than the Internet and TV work I have done. It’s funny… I’ve been very fortunate in my career (up to now), winning a lot of awards, executive producing at MTV… now that I want to take a step back and do something different, people won’t even touch my resume.

I have two long-term goals: one has nothing to do with RYPN and the other is to start-up a daisy picker line. Until the Mrs announced a little one is coming in November, I was thinking real pie-in-the-sky. The pie has landed.

So, what I would love to do is be the communications/PR/web/marketing guru for a steam operation or museum. The question I throw out to the list is “How many of your operations have such a person?”

Seems to me the Strasburg does a wham-bam job of advertising (living in NJ I see a lot of that), and they are successful in getting into general PA tourism ads (including a great TV spot running now).

How about other examples?

I know there are some roads that could use the exposure Strasburg gets with its media. A good media program can pay for itself. I would bet the SRR team feels that way.

There are loads of other media-related money-makers out there, from on-site Polaroids and videos to making use of co-op advertising dollars for your gift shopÂ’s stock. (DonÂ’t stock lines with co-op dollars available? Start to. The power is unreal.)

I wonÂ’t turn Hume, Bob and ErikÂ’s work into a job boardÂ… but if anyone has such a position within 2 hours of good snowboarding, call me atÂ…


trains@robertjohndavis.com