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 Post subject: BBC: "Heritage railways in 'precarious' situation"
PostPosted: Sat Aug 01, 2020 3:12 pm 

Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2004 1:51 pm
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Location: Somewhere east of Prescott, AZ along the old Santa Fe "Prescott & Eastern"
Story focuses mainly on the Welsh heritage railways, but.........

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-53614567

Quote:
Heritage steam railways are in a "precarious" situation and will be struggling for survival over the summer, one railway manager has said.

Tourist attractions such as steam railways have been closed for months and are now reopening with social distancing and hygiene measures.

Liz McGuiness, general manager at the Llangollen Railway, said the industry was "walking a tightrope".

She said the railway will lose hundreds of thousands of pounds over the summer.

Among the new measures at the Denbighshire attraction, which is opening for the first time since the lockdown on Saturday, is a special hand sanitiser for staff as it is considered dangerous to use alcohol-based products on board a steam locomotive.

In total, £100,000 has been spent making the railway safe to reopen, including buying PPE for volunteers and staff.


Much more at the link.


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 Post subject: Re: BBC: "Heritage railways in 'precarious' situation"
PostPosted: Sat Aug 01, 2020 3:19 pm 

Joined: Wed Jan 20, 2016 1:15 pm
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I’m sure it’s the same here in the states. Some operations haven’t opened at all this year and many that have are running extremely reduced schedules.

TVRM for example would usually be running the 1 hour “local” train 5 times a day, daily, plus a Georgia train and dinner train on the weekends plus trains on the etowah tn line.
This summer they are running the local 4 days a week. That’s it. That’s a major cut.

GSMR usually runs trains daily In the summer, they are also down to 4 days a week and they are only running the west-bound route, and are not operating east to Dillsboro.

Meanwhile Tweetsie Railroad is not allowed to reopen even for train rides only because the state considers them an amusement park.


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 Post subject: Re: BBC: "Heritage railways in 'precarious' situation"
PostPosted: Mon Aug 03, 2020 3:49 pm 

Joined: Mon Aug 23, 2004 2:28 pm
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Curious: Great Smoky Mountains RR can operate, but Tweetsie can't ('amusement park'), and the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer can't. Does GSMR have some kind of common-carrier status that differentiates them from Spencer?


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 Post subject: Re: BBC: "Heritage railways in 'precarious' situation"
PostPosted: Mon Aug 03, 2020 4:53 pm 

Joined: Wed Jan 20, 2016 1:15 pm
Posts: 1477
Headend Shield wrote:
Crescent-Zephyr wrote:
Meanwhile Tweetsie Railroad is not allowed to reopen even for train rides only because the state considers them an amusement park.


As does Google and Wikipedia....


I wasn’t saying they weren’t an amusement park? I was just saying a fact.

It does seem unfair that GSMR can run enclosed air conditioned cars on 4 hour train rides but Tweetsie can’t run a 30 minute all open air train. But... I’m not the one making the rules!


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 Post subject: Re: BBC: "Heritage railways in 'precarious' situation"
PostPosted: Mon Aug 03, 2020 5:10 pm 

Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2004 7:07 am
Posts: 737
Location: Philadelphia Pa
John D wrote:
Curious: Great Smoky Mountains RR can operate, but Tweetsie can't ('amusement park'), and the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer can't. Does GSMR have some kind of common-carrier status that differentiates them from Spencer?


GSMR is indeed a common carrier - they have hauld freight since e inception in the late 1980s. Tweetsie, while a "railroad", is a narrow gage one located within an amusement park and its existence is based on the fact that it publicly calls itself an amusement park. Cant argue that point now.

As far as Spencer goes....is it a museum, not a common carrier. One has to decipher if it is an issue of they "can't" because they are told so by a local government agency, or they "can't " because they don't have the volunteer staff available to do so at the moment? Spencer itself is open to the public, with limitations.

Many museums have seniors making up the bulk of their volunteer staff....if they as individuals don't want to risk it, the museums can't force them.


Last edited by junior on Mon Aug 03, 2020 10:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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 Post subject: Re: BBC: "Heritage railways in 'precarious' situation"
PostPosted: Mon Aug 03, 2020 6:22 pm 

Joined: Sat Oct 17, 2015 5:55 pm
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In hopeful news, someone a while back brought up UV light as a way to disinfect cars/ stations quickly. There apparently is a type of UV light (far-range UV-C) that would be very safe to use, and effective: https://news.columbia.edu/ultraviolet-t ... 9-UV-light .


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 Post subject: Re: BBC: "Heritage railways in 'precarious' situation"
PostPosted: Tue Aug 04, 2020 6:16 pm 

Joined: Mon Aug 23, 2004 2:28 pm
Posts: 444
Spencer (a.k.a. the North Carolina Transportation Museum) has been declared an 'amusement park' by state officials. That lends credence to the fact that Great Smokey Mountains RR, as a common carrier, can operate passenger trains, but Tweetsie-and now Spencer-cannot:
https://salisburypost.com/2020/08/03/hanging-on-by-a-thread-county-pleads-for-restriction-relief-at-nc-transportation-museum/?fbclid=IwAR3SsXRifr41nxKdVRTAq8esT0d7iNTsqqzFMgYpPhLVdmjTZSk1_VovjDM


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 Post subject: Re: BBC: "Heritage railways in 'precarious' situation"
PostPosted: Fri Sep 18, 2020 7:10 am 

Joined: Sun Apr 05, 2015 1:28 am
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Location: Ipswich, UK
The first Covid casualty here.....
https://www.cwherald.com/a/stories/five ... U.facebook
Looks like there may be a chance that the supporting charity/group may be able to salvage the situation, but given that restrictions are being introduced again here due to a rapid growth in cases, I don't think they will be the only line to "go under".

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 Post subject: Re: BBC: "Heritage railways in 'precarious' situation"
PostPosted: Mon Nov 02, 2020 8:43 am 

Joined: Sun Apr 05, 2015 1:28 am
Posts: 640
Location: Ipswich, UK
Situation looking grim here again, particularly as it was hoped that the pre-Christmas money-making season might actually be able to take place as "normal" (depending on your definition of "normal").
Scotland and Wales have introduced "Firebreak" restrictions on activities in the past few weeks, whilst in England we now have a 4 week "Lockdown" starting on Thursday 5th November and supposedly running through to Wednesday 2nd December, but I can see it going on longer than that.
Lines that had planned Santa and "Train of Lights" events have had to cancel some operating dates and the Great Central (sort of..) Gala for this coming weekend (which I had booked for) has been postponed. Railways with paid staff can take advantage of the Government "Furlough" scheme, but whether any more grants/handouts will be forthcoming we will have to wait and see...

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Last edited by 70000 on Mon Nov 02, 2020 1:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject: Re: BBC: "Heritage railways in 'precarious' situation"
PostPosted: Mon Nov 02, 2020 1:02 pm 

Joined: Sat Sep 04, 2004 10:54 am
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Location: Tucson, Arizona
Things will get better, but they're going to get worse before they get better-perhaps much worse. Financial predictions are that a worldwide financial depression is ahead. 2021 will be a bad year financially and from what I am seeing, it's going to be a long, slow recovery. We will be fortunate if we get the virus under some form of control in 2021.

A recent survey amongst US museums has determined that 2/3rds have seen significant revenue loss to the point that they are uncertain about surviving the next year. The outlook is uncertain at best for many organizations. We probably won't know the true extent of the financial damage that has been wrought so far until sometime next year.

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 Post subject: Re: BBC: "Heritage railways in 'precarious' situation"
PostPosted: Mon Nov 02, 2020 2:07 pm 

Joined: Fri Aug 27, 2004 4:02 pm
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Location: Back in NE Ohio
Europe is going through a second wave in a big way. At least one day last week the UK reported 100,000 new COVID cases, in a country of 55 million.


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 Post subject: Re: BBC: "Heritage railways in 'precarious' situation"
PostPosted: Mon Nov 02, 2020 2:41 pm 

Joined: Sun Apr 05, 2015 1:28 am
Posts: 640
Location: Ipswich, UK
PaulWWoodring wrote:
Europe is going through a second wave in a big way. At least one day last week the UK reported 100,000 new COVID cases, in a country of 55 million.


I think you will find that was the weekly figure rather than daily!
It's running around 20,000 a day at the moment (eg 18,950 today), hence the new Lockdown measures.

Several lines and museums have received some seriously large sums of money from the Government/Heritage Lottery Fund in the past few months to keep them going, £906,000 being the largest i've seen mention of so far for the Severn Valley Railway, though others are a lot less than that. The London Transport Museum did get a figure of £1.75 Million (!!), but I've seen it mentioned that their normal running costs for that museum are £30,000 a day (Don't ask me how they spend that much..)
Another batch who will receive figures of £1 million+ should be announced in the next few weeks, though whether any preserved railways will get those sorts of figures has yet to be seen.

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