As you all by now know Trainfestival2009 was a roaring success and did a TON of good for our passion of steam. Jason Johnson and his extensive crew deserve all the compliments they get and then some. Jason in particular deserves extensive accolades for making the personal committment many months ago to devote 24/7 to an event that held LOTS of risks. Unbeknownst to most folks he also had the guts to make decisions ( with high risks) months ago that made the cross country trip of 4449 possible!! For a self-employed guy this was truly a high risk undertaking!!

As has been previously discussed the event was a bases loaded home run from every aspect. The general public ( the vast majority of the nearly 40,000 attendees)got a dramatic, compelling introduction to steam railroading and its magic. Us serious groupies got a show unequalled since the Fair of the Iron Horse...long long ago!!!

It was especially heartening to see all the youngsters in the crews of the 8 live engines including a sprinkling of young ladies. Steams future is assured.

Sunday night I got back to the hotel in Lansing a VERY tired old cogger after 3 back to back 16 hour days of total immersion in steam and meeting&greeting hundreds of friends from around the globe!!! I hit the pillow after only brushing my teeth and was in lala land in seconds. No need for the TV remote that night!!!

I had the most wonderful dream, sparked I'm sure by the great 4 days at Trainfestival 2009. I dreamt that Jason had been able to lease the facility at Scranton for 5 days in conjunction with the NRHS convention and had mounted a sequel to TF 2009. There were 21 operating steamers in attendance and all performed roles in a very well orchestrated ballet. It was a 5 day event that drew a total attendance of nearly 100,000 folks. The city of Scranton was overwhelmed with the business it brought in and everyone went away praiseing the NPS and its great work at Scranton preserving this important piece in the story of America's industrial growth!!

UPRR sent both the 3985 and 844, BNSF sent the 4449 and 700, NS sent the 611 and CSX sent the 614. Steve Sandberg brought his new engine the Santa Fe 2926 (?), and the State of California sent the 3751 to represent it. Andy Muller swallowed hard and restored the 2102 and got the 425 tuned up and they represented America's regional railroads. Jerry Joe Jacobson also swallowed hard a sent the 6325 and the 763. The State of Indianna and the City of Ft. Wayne sent the 765 and the State of Michigan sent the 1225.Disney sponsored the Leviathan, and various corporate sponsors were represented by 5 smaller steamers mostly saddle tankers, plus the Little River 110. 21 locomotives all live and performing!!

There were one on one pulling contests, handicapped timed rallies by the big girls up the hill to Moscow and lots and lots of things for the kids to do ( 12 live steam trains running on 5 minute headways on a 2.5 loop around the park, lots of interactive railroad video games etc.) and entertainment on stage for the moms and others who got dragged along but weren't really into trains.

Each of the 5 days there was a triple headed mainline excursion from Scranton to the Delaware Water Gap with 3 REAL run-bys in each direction at 2 different spots which were accessible only by rail. The triple headers turned the whole rig on the Wye at Portland and as a matter of fact NS CEO Wick Moorman rode on the 611 ( the lead engine on the first day) and ran her for several of the runbys. The mainline trips to the Gap operated at track speed and ran trouble free all 5 days. The fares were a very reasonable $ 75/coach and $ 200/ First Class. First Class recieved the famous 261 groups renowned service and everyone was raving about it. The mainline trains were made up of 9 open window coaches ( some from the NPS, some from the O/C), 3 concession cars, 9 A/C coaches ( all from the O/C) and 5 First Class cars ( all from the 261 fleet), for a total of 27 cars including the loco. tool car. The 3 big engines had no trouble whatsoever handling that train up the mountain. As a matter of fact on the first day the engineer on the lead engine ( N&W 611) had to make a brake application going UP the mountain to get down to the allowed speed on some of the curves as his teammates on the 614 and the 3985 were putting out too much power!! They got their hand signals down pat after that and it went smooth as silk!! All 5 days of the mainline trips were solid sell outs with a waiting list for each day of several thousands.

V.P. Joe Biden ( he's both a BIG TIME train lover and a Scrantonian) cut the ribbon at the official opening ceremony and then rode on the lead steamer ( N&W 611) all the way from Scranton to Moscow. There, he boarded the train to discover that somehow Sarah Palin was also on board so they decided to go through the train together for a bi-partisan meet&greet and promoted folks to donate to the newly created Steam Preservation Fund that Jason had set up to be a beneficiary of the event. It took them the entire rest of the day to work through the 26 cars but their efforts resulted in incredible national TV coverage and raised nearly $ 1 million dollars in pledges to the fund!! Word on the street is that Joe caught you know what from the Mrs. on his cell phone near the end of the day for not telling her that this was part of his "day with trains"!!. She saw coverage of it broadcast live via satellite on ABC and was more than a little mad!! She later got over it after Joe explained the good cause and shared with her that in the very few private moments he had with Sarah he thinks hes got her leaning towards becomeing a Democrat!!! That made it ok with Jill!!!

Lots of celebrities attended and ABC-TV and FOX gave it extensive national coverage. The timed,handicapped (like a car rally) contest between the big engines was especially popular.

The event produced a gross income of nearly $3 million dollars and an operating profit of nearly $1 million which was divided amongst the live engines on a weighted scale and a portion to the new Preservation fund!



Then the damn alarm clock rudely brought me back to reality..............and I was very sad!!!!

Oh well, I guess it's ok to dream once in a while. Sometimes they come true!!

Thanks Jason

Ross Rowland

An incredible dream. Did Pennsylvania send the 1361? I'm sure others will be willing to bust the bubble. But even if your dream could be scaled back to a regional train fest, imagine 40,000 at Steamtown. And sure there is plenty of regional steam that could attend, just truly need to work on how to get it there. I'll pay for a double/triple header of NH&I, BR&W 2-8-0s up the hill along with Strasburg 425 or 90.

Keep the dream alive, fire up some people, fire up some boilers.

Tom

An excellent dream since Jason's talented team has been delegated the task of carrying it out - including dealing with bureaucracies at NPS and mainline railroad management. If you dreamed of doing it yourself - probably a personal nightmare.

Those guys rock from everything I've heard and deserve honors for producing what could be the steam railroading event of this decade. If I ever meet Jason again, his pint's on me.

dave

Maybe Strasburg will send 1187.

Whatever you have please send some my way!

Whatever it is, it's either illegal, controlled, or potentially fatal when ingested at such hallucinogenic levels. I mean, I got no further than "leased Steamtown" and fell on the floor laughing............

Yes, Mr. Parkins, Penna. sent the 1361 on 3 flat cars and it was used as a teaching tool with appropriate signage of how NOT to do a restoration project.

Somewhat akin to the mangled car displayed at a busy intersection with the sign that says " don't drink and drive"!!

Ross Rowland

So where does the Yellow Ribbon Express fit into all of this???

Jason Greene
Birmingham, AL

I think it would be interesting if Train Festival were made into something that happened every other year and traveled to different locations. I think communities trying to get more commuter rail may want to have such festivals in their towns.

New Bedford Massachusetts wants commuter rail and has an empty railroad yard! Unfortunately the ground is full of PCB's.

PC

Hmm. What if the proceeds went to fix 1361?

Altoona Trainfest 2011. There are a couple of steam friendly short lines in the area that could handle it. I don't really have the time or knowledge of the area to think it through though.

Combining all the elements here, maybe they need to hire Susan Boyle to come over and do a music video of "I dreamed a dream" using the 1361 as a stage prop. Maybe you could have computer animation showing the 1361 being reassembled as she sings.

PC

> New Bedford Massachusetts wants commuter rail
> and has an empty railroad yard! Unfortunately the
> ground is full of PCB's.

Great! We mine the ground for the PCB's, put them back in the GG1 transformers where they belong, and then we can have an operating G at this event too! ;)

Yeah, I'll take a dime bag of it too! Must be some really good sheet, mon! (OK, so I heard Cheech and Chong too many times in the '70's).

Seriously, I have some small idea of what it takes to stage something like Trainfest, having helped put on photo charters, an Amtrak HS convention, and volunteered at Star-Spangled Rails '03, as well as knowing a couple of the volunteers who were at Train Fest. One of them jokingly told me he was trying to see if it was possible to live off free volunteer pizza and bottled water for four days<g>, they had so little free-time.

First, forget about 611. Too many obstacles to overcome (cooperation from the museum; needed tube job and other repairs; anti-steam culture at NS, etc.)

Second, didn't Steve Lee swear-off any off-line UP steam ventures after the Challenger/Clinchfield trip?

Third, how many hotel rooms are there in the Scranton area? I don't think even a city the size of Cleveland could pull off a 100K+ event with it's lodging capacity. Granted, we're talking over a period of at least five days, but for the 30K+ that came to Owosso over four days, participants were staying over an hour away, including the volunteers. Plus, wouldn't you want something like this to be more centrally located in the country?

I'm not totally dismissing the idea. I've thought about things like this before, discussed them with a couple of close friends, but never put it out there for possible ridicule. Do I think you could get 20 good-sized steam locomotives in one place, under steam, for such an event? Maybe. However, I think there are problems coming to this Planet that are looming large, that the powers that be don't want talked about seriously, and that would make such an event seem totally frivolous. Probably better to concentrate on getting your individual preservation and museum projects in order for the long-haul.