I have been led to understand that, over the years, the ownership of the line, originally spread over multiple owners and/or their estates, widows, etc., has been consolidated over buyouts to a core management of a few stakeholders. Essentially, Linn Moedinger is a "benevolent dictator" or "rail baron"--and the evidence would show that said style of management brings results, and those terms are not the least bit derogatory. It really does run like a railroad, however--the employees, last I heard, pay into Railroad Retirement and not Social Security.

An interesting mental exercise would be to wonder what would happen if, just as a hypothetical, Xanterra, Iowa Pacific, or the Genessee and Wyoming--or to be more controversial, Six Flags or Disney--were to approach the railroad with a firm buyout offer, with the condition that current management stay on for at least ten years and train transitional management. I was out in Flagstaff and Williams the very day that the sale of the Grand Canyon RR's sale to Xanterra was publicly announced in front-page headlines, and I must say that the worst fears of many about what would happen to the railroad have proved unfounded. It was much more "All we do is own you, and if it ain't broke, we ain't fixing it!"

It's very obvious that Strasburg's success is due to 2 main ingredients;

1. Location, location, location.............As is the case with ALL successful tourist railroads in the USA, a mandatory ingredient is to be located within a tourism destination that draws sufficient numbers to allow the rr attraction to feed itself with enough revenue to prosper. Lancaster County in the 1960's-70's became the "go to" place for millions of families within the greater NY-Washington megopolis looking for a day trip into yesteryear with something to do for the whole family. Located smack dab in the middle of that allowed Strasburg to successfully become one of the " must do" attractions within that experience.

As the tourism numbers have declined over the last 15-20 years for Lancaster County so have Strasburg's numbers. That's a principle reason that they have become proactive in the Farmland Preservation effort to try a preserve the urban sprawl from swallowing up the dairy farms that provide the bucolic view from their windows.


2. Management...............From the get-go they have dedicated themselves to doing it right and have succeeded. The high quality of their product has led to praise from both their customers and the tourism professionals who direct a lot of business to them. Their cars, locomotives and grounds are second to none and run to Disney standards and that generates lots of satisfied customers.


3. Another Strasburg possible???

Absolutely............all you need is a few miles of track located within a major tourism draw, enough cash to purchase the right of way, cars, locomotives, support facilities etc., support of the local politicians and CoC types, no major NIMBY enemies, and last but most critical, a management team to put it all together and operate it to the highest standards.

Maybe, just maybe the new Civil War railroad about to start up will become the next Strasburg??

Time will tell.


Ross Rowland

Reading back over this thread....I'm wondering what business the terms "historic fabric' and "restoration" have in this discussion? Strasburg railroads better than almost anybody else in this country and deserves all the success they work for and provide a standard of quality - based on their audiences experience - that is hard to beat.

Strasburg doesn't "restore" a car - they rebuild or overhaul a car using their technology to make it better than it was new by adapting products, materials and techniques unavailable when the cars were first built. This isn't restoration, and that's fine. Tourist railroads don't need to make absolute repairs only in-kind down to hand worked patina or concern themseves with only making reversable alterations.

The respect for the history is part of their character, but they know it isn't practical for an operating railroad that intensively uses up old things as part of their business to try to act like a museum conservation lab rather than a working railroad's backshop.

Museums sort of deal with this by having a defined collection that's OK to alter for use in live interpretation. That leaves that subcollection with a lot of dead wood to haul around from a financial perspective. People are accustomed to paying to simply passively view works of art in art museums - apart from the B&O Museum and CSRM, how many of us can make any claim to presenting out core collection as art? I've taken people who don't care about railroads, machinery or history to CSRM and they have been enthralled.......

Interactivity? How much can we encourage this if our business is preservation? Stuff that gets handled gets worn out. Visit the Exploratorium in San Francisco and spend a great day messing with everything there, having a ball, and learning a lot of stuff about everything. It's all new, made for hands on exhibition, and not to be preserved. Can we even envision a railroad museum all made of newly constructed stuff that we invite our visitors to play with? W don't even encourage them to get too handy with the rolling stock they ride.......

So, broaching this carefully after consideration: might we want to reconsider our missions and policies and act more like tourist railroads and limit out preservation collection to a relatively smaller mass that we can more easily afford to actually preserve on the basis of the stuff we choose to use and alter as necessary to earn out way in visitor experience?

dave

I've been going there since I was a kid. First time on my own nickel back in 1977. I've lost count how many times since. And since I've gotten on the 'inside', it's been fun to meet the staff and crews for a whole new perspective.

And every time, every single time, there's something new. I enjoy going there just to see what they've come up with next. It's not a static attraction, it's managed to remain dynamic over time. New equipment, site changes, restorations.

I truly admire them for the attention to detail from the customer perspective. When I was down there a couple years ago, every 'on site' delivery was being made in Model T trucks, fully restored. Wow. Unbelievable. They were getting as many photos as the trains, let alone making fantastic photo props for the die-hards. That kind of thinking is so uncommon, but it speaks volumes as to the understanding of the mission and the method.

My wife said it best, actually. It's a 'mom approved' operation, top to bottom.

NOT LOCATION. NOT NOT NOT!!! I must debunk this myth of "location" because it becomes an excuse.

"Well we do 1/100 of Strasburg's business becuase we're not in Lancaster county." No. That would explain doing 2/3 of Strasburg's business (for most of us). Much more than that, you are not doing the business fundamentals properly as they are.

Try a thought exercise. Swap locations with Strasburg. You also swap public goodwill and marketing. And let's say the RRMofPA is a non-factor, so you don't get a bunch of free riders from referrals or from being across the street from them.

Yup, that's right, your organization would fall into exactly the same funk as it's in right now, only the location would change.

Meanwhile Moedinger's team would ROCK your old location, with a fresh view and attitude on all your old problems and brain-blockage and political impossibilities. They would brazenly market themselves as THE go-to place in your market for a train ride and they'd blow your mind. You would not take kindly to this because it would imply that you kinda suckED.

To which I say "who cares" what you did. What matters is what you do, and there's no need to be loyal to the past for tradition's sake. You have the right and the privilege to UN-suck at any time, and when you're doing awesome, nobody will remember when you weren't.

Strasburg grasps this, and has no doubt made numerous mistakes, but unlike many they have made prompt course corrections to stay focused on theiir business. But they let the needs of the business decide this, not other factors (e.g. ego) as is often the case elsewhere. It's back to "what are your priorities" and if you don't know what they are, they're probably nothing good.

So no, it's NOT "location". Most of us can achieve at least 50% of Strasburg's numbers based on the sizes of our mutual markets. But you have to focus on that and do it with excellence, which most of us do not.

----------------
Oh, and "advertising". Never say that. What you actually mean is "Publicity", or in larger scale, "Marketing". Saying "advertising" when you mean "marketing" is like saying "hard drive" when you mean "computer". We know what you mean but it's WRONG and leads you to a wrong and unworkable mentality. For a smaller organization, advertising will be minimal if done right - you can't afford much it - so you will rely on marketing which is not advertising. For a larger organization, advertising is only one part of a healthy balanced marketing strategy. Advertising doesn't take over until you're huge: Coke, Ford, McDonalds or the Purple Pill. You can't afford to compete with those guys for limited advertising slots as your primary strategy.

With all due respect the above post is totally incorrect. Being located strategically within a major tourism drawing destination is an absolutely mandatory ingredient in making a tourist railway successful.

Tourist railways are entertaiment enterprises that in and of themselves do not have sufficient drawing power to generate sufficient traffic to produce the numbers needed to produce the revenues for a going enterprise.

Proof positive of this is that every one of the existing tourist railroads in the nation that generate 50,000 riders or more per year are so located.

Location,location,location IS critical.

Ross Rowland

Anyone have ridership numbers for Ely? It is my impression that the railroad and equipment is well maintained. They have an authentic historic operation, with original rolling stock on the original line. They also have an entire railroad complex, stations and shops etc, not just a loco and a few cars.

They aggressively promote, advertise, whatever the proper term is with frequent large ads in railfan publications and even multiple TV appearances on one of the top rated reality shows.

Seems like they do everything right...

They're also located just a bit off the beaten path.

But if location doesn't matter, then they should be hauling tons of people, right?

This debate reminds me of the common debate among photographers.

1) If I only had a better camera...
2) It's the photographer, not the camera!

As with most things, there's a lot of truth in both sentiments.

Just like you can't pull a 100 car freight at 60 with an 0-4-0, there's certain things you can do with the DSLR and lens you bought at Costco. There's a reason big shot wedding pros spend tens of thousands of dollars on gear, and it's not just to look good.

However, the same pro could swap cameras with the average railfan and still shoot circles around them.

It's the sum of the parts that matters.

The same applies here. Of course location matters! But it's certainly not the only thing that matters.

I believe Ross and Robert are both right. Location helps - a lot - but you can still be in the "right" location and run the place into the ground. You can't operate in a major market and sell crap. Inferior product? Unjustifiably high prices? Poor customer service? Untenable business model? You won't last. Anywhere.

I can think of a number of operations in good locations that failed, and with good reason. Golden Pacific in Tacoma. Rail Tours Inc. in its final years in Jim Thorpe. Steamtown USA in Scranton and, to an extent, its modern day counterpart. Even the Black Hills Central near Mt. Rushmore was on the verge of collapse before being purchased and resurrected by its current owners. If Strasburg started running rotted out Long Island cars with broken air conditioning and dirty seats - great location or not - they would soon be in serious trouble.

Would Strasburg survive in an EBT style rural area? Possibly. Would it have the same numbers? I doubt it. Would the White Pass & Yukon be as successful if it were ten miles inland and lacked access to the cruise ship business? Again, I doubt it.

Summary: Location helps, but it's not everything. You must have a desirable product to sell at that location.

Dave Crosby

I agree that the main reason "Thomas the T-hog" failed wasn't location.

However, Tacoma really isn't a good location. It's a working class town, just to the south of Seattle, but one that is in a different income class.

I wonder what would happen if you moved a quality operation to Tacoma? Maybe, oh, I don't know, how about a dinner train? One with a good reputation and an established clientele. Nice coaches, good menu, experienced team.

Start the run from a nice station, but the ride quickly heads south, literally and figuratively, into a rough part of town that looks the part. In fact, it's so rough that I once had the distinct pleasure of being on board a train that was shot at. The consist was empty, and I think the main goal was simply break windows on the cool moving target that went by, but it was still damn scary. Fortunately, they were small caliber rounds, or maybe even a high power pellet gun, not sure.

So, how long would a first class train last in a low class part of town? Well, after 15 successful years operating near Seattle and running through high class suburbs, the Spirit of Washington Dinner Train lasted under a year in Tacoma...

Same train. Same crew, and managers. Same marketing, established audience, and even lots of good promo around the move. As far as I can tell, nothing major was changed but the location. 15 good years in Seattle, one bad year in Tacoma.

This isn't theory, it's history.


Oh, and if you're ever engineer on a train I'm conducting and answer my radio call of "They're shooting at us!" by asking questions, expect a royal butt chewing when we reach the terminal. We had a double header, and the experienced mainline hogger answered my reply with a distinct and instant increase in the volume of stack talk on the lead engine. The second hogger said "Who's shooting at us?" "What are they shooting with?" My reply roughly translates as "Gee, my good man, I don't rightly know. Are you suggesting that I stick my head out the (shattered) window and inquire as exactly to what weaponry they're using?" But shorter, and maybe a bit saltier...

Bob's right of course, if you dropped Starsburg exactly as it exists today, great infrastructure, equipment, promotions and all, into Tacoma or some backwoods area people never get to, it wouldn't be the success story it is.
I watched Golden Pacific die a slow and painful death. It was a curious operation, but one ran well. You could eat off the floors of those coaches, the lunch was good and the overall mood was similar to the old SRR/NS excursions (but without the stifling weather and not nearly as many foamers). And, it's the only operation I've ever had someone go through the passengers and ask for feedback. I enjoyed the ride and felt it was well worth the money. I was going to ride again that season but they called it quits. Spirit of Washington was even more painful to see, I don't it lasted but a couple of months (I was going to ride for my birthday, but they didn't even hold out that long).
It's silly to think the location has ZERO reason for a success story, but if your operation is where it is, you're probably not moving it long distances. Do your best to make the place look like the kind of operation people look forward to riding (not just realzing you're the only game in town) and the overall type of experince you get in that PA town. If you do that, to a degree, they will come.
But yeah, you put it in the Tacoma tideflats, you're probably gonna fail.

East Broad Top and Steamtown should be more successful operations than Strasburg, and Steamtown is certainly closer to the New York market. New Hope & Ivyland and Black River & Western are also closer to the urban population. NHIR started out with lots of paid publicity, a for profit model, and frequent operation. but they didn't take off like Strasburg. What happened?
(Both Strasburg and New Hope started out with Diesel, although New Hope had promised steam from its beginning. Was that the start of its downfall?)

Ummmm......not sure I follow your logic, Jim. EBT is way out in left field in an area known for having had a lot of coal removed from it 60 years ago and not much since. Steamtown is in Scranton......also a place where a lot of coal was removed a long time ago, and now only as the home of Dunder Mifflin, at least for another week. Strasburg is in an area that is already a destination for tourists who would be there anyhow if there was no railroad and find the railroad an enjoyable affordable diversion from quilt shops and outlet discounters. Who finds their way to Orbisonia or Scranton for tourism apart from EBT and Steamtown?

So, here's another corollary to the "location" thing: a good location already includes a critical mass of desinations that already bring in tourists.

What tourists from new York will decide to go to Scranton for any purpose other than Steamtown? What Philadelphian tourists really want to go to Orbisonia and might decide to take a break from all the other attractions and excitement to ride the train?

dave

If you don't think Strasburg has made it because of its location, just think about the history of a number of tourist railroads in Pennsylvania that are no longer with us. In the mid-60's, there were so many little tourist pikes in the Keystone State that a book titled "Steam Along the Turnpike" was produced. A lot of folks thought they could do what Strasburg had done, but they lacked that one thing -- an audience already in the neighborhood.

And if you go a few miles west of Lancaster County, across the Susquehanna River into York County, you'll find the Stewartstown Railroad, another little granger railroad in the same model as the original Strasburg. They've been struggling for years. And there are no other attractions nearby. Rail Tours Inc. was a very cool York County outfit that never took off, and the Northern Central Dinner Train tried valiantly for years before closing down.

A few miles west of York County, in Adams County, the old Gettysburg Railroad tried to do what Strasburg does so well, but they did it on a shoestring, and we all know what happened there.

Finally, Strasburg's for-profit model, with the profits being turned back to the company has helped with their success. And if you wonder why they don't use volunteers, I was told by a Board member years ago that they decided volunteers were too hard to manage. Paid employees show up and do their jobs or they're gone -- but the same can't always be said about volunteers.

I mentioned Steamtown and East Broad Top because they had large and/or historic collections and line, yet didn't succeed like Strasburg.
I forgot about Gettysburg RR, it's also in a tourist magnet, and closer to Washington than Strasburg. But, it's a longer distance from the very larger population bases.

Does Strasburg aggressively pursue the tour and charter bus business? Many operations don't, even though it can bring in extra passengers by the bus load! Did Strasburg spend a lot of money on vice presidential salaries in its early days? New Hope & Ivyland did, and had less money left over to have enough to pay the bills.