I never said location didn't matter. Obviously it's a major factor for an extremely remote area, but I'm not talking about that.

I'm talking about the situation most of us are in, where we're located within 60 miles of a large metropolitan market. Usually because that's how the organization got formed there in the first place - there had to be a critical mass of railfans, hence a major metro area, and they located to their convenience, and inadvertently, to their customers' too. That's why so many museums are 60 miles from major metros.

The upshot is that if you go to any random railway museum in those markets, and say "why aren't you Strasburg"... "We're not in Lancaster County"? Sure, I'll buy that if you're in East Ely or Prudhoe Bay. I'll buy it if your business is 61% of Strasburg's (and your metro market is 65% of theirs). But if you're in a perfectly respectable metro market (as most of us are), and your numbers are 9% of Strasburg (and your metro market is 65% of theirs)? No, that's not location, that's you not doing the business fundamentals and failing to develop your ridership the way you could and the way they did. And fobbing off "location" is nothing but an excuse and a lie.

And Ross, I bang on this point because it's the case for so many of us... so please stop handing the gold-brickers a gold-plated excuse. It's a self-destructive lie, because if you told the truth - we don't market nearly as well as Strasburg - that's something you could seriously look at and do something about. You can't fix what you're too proud to admit is broken.

Sure if you're already playing the game at Strasburg's level but you're only carrying half as many people - then it's time to look at MSA's and see if maybe the reason is a smaller market. But so few of us are anywhere near that point that I consider it not worth mentioning. Certainly the few who are there don't need to be told.

On the first page somebody said something to effect that he/she enjoyed the page for the Business aspect of the discussion. To that poster.....watch this discussion. There are two very diverging trains of thought here.

Mr. McDowell and Mr. Rowland,

I hold great respect for both of you. I agree with Mr. McDowell. Though location CAN be a determining factor, it has NOTHING to do with the success of the Burg. Be honest guys. The Burg is in the middle of God's Nowhere! When you actually pass Amish buggies, you know you are in a secluded place. There is no movie complex. There is no other big attraction. The PA Museum is surrounded on all sides by EMPTY fields. The ride starts in the middle of nowhere and ends deeper in the heart of nowhere. There is no major highway to leads to it. If you go to Hersey, PA. and ask the little old person the street where the "historic railroad" is; I venture you would get the "deer in the head lights look." In the case of the Burg......location is NOT a key.

I sat next to Linn two weeks ago at the NBIC meetings. I have listened to Linn long enough to be able to say that I can imagine him saying to his team one day something like this;

"Look guys, since we don't have a great location....we had better find some other way to make this work because location isn't going to get us there."

My good friend Randy G. on the other hand has hit the nail on the head.

"Mother approved" Why? Easy!

Safe
Clean
Well presented
Kid friendly
Plenty to do
Plenty to see
Stuff Mom can buy that is NOT RR JUNK!!!!!!!

We are excluding in this discussion the key player Linn's wife has been to all of this.....she thinks like a woman and gets other ladies to like the way she thinks!!!!!

Notice, Mother Approved did not include location! It included the aspects that I mentioned earlier.

I graduated in Business Management and I kind of think my business is doing OK growing at a 20-35% annual growth rate. Maybe I have a credential here? Maybe not?

Look, the Burg offers a "perfect" product at a high asking price and has a staff that supports the product and the equipment that also supports the product. To those of you who say.....Location, Location, Location. I say, Products, Services, Demands and Fair investment for fair return. Again, excluding location: The Burg is 100% on all of the most critical aspects of good business!

Sorry to derail this too much......Grand Canyon has had to learn the hard way that having a great train ride, with a terrible staff = less riders! Better staff, better product, more riders. Now you can see, even with a great location, it is possible to screw it up! Want more examples of the same in our industry? There are too many to mention now.

Kindly,

Sorry Robert for spelling your name incorrectly.....please forgive me.

Kindly,

JohnE.

Been a while since you've been there?

Amish buggies are almost hard to find these days, and empty fields are getting scarce too.

You're correct, there still is no multiplex theater in Strasburg. To find one, you'll have to drive to Kendig Square, over an hour's drive.... If you're in Amish Buggy. In a car? 10 minutes or so.

One thing that I think is a key to their success that hasn't been mentioned is the length of the ride. Forty five minutes is the perfect amount of time for the average tourist to be on the train. My kids love trains but I don't think that they would last more than an hour on a train. The average family doesn't want to be stuck on a train all afternoon or all day. Have the experience on the train and then go home or move on to the next experience.
I also agree with the location aspect. John is right, the place is in the middle of nowhere. But there are plenty of non railroad related activities that draw people in. The BLack Hills Central is in the middle of nowhere, but there is enough of a local tourist draw to keep them running.
Excellent discussion with a lot of excellent points.

Mike Thidemann
Fort Worth, Tx

Let me get this straight: You think STRASBURG is a "secluded" place?

Maybe if your idea/ideal of "civilization" is Times Square, Rodeo Drive, the Vegas Strip, or any city with a major league ballpark (save for, say, Green Bay?).

In the off-season, when traffic is light, I can leave the Strasburg parking lot, and in five minutes I can be in crass-commercalism Hades. (Twenty minutes during tourist season, thanks to traffic jams.) A MAJOR outlet store center, that attracts chartered buses. A motel built to resemble a Mississippi showboat. Every motel chain you can imagine. Fast food and buffet food, even sushi. Dutch Wonderland amusement park. Mini-golf. Target. Souvenir shops of every ilk. KMart. Even an off-track betting parlor.

No. No, no, no, no, no.

Ely, Nevada is "secluded." So is Orbisonia. So is Cass, and Durbin. (One trip there, I was gassing up my car up the road for the run home, and a car with NJ plates pulled up, with a woman getting out and asking me with a worried face, "Excuse me, can you tell me how to get back to civilization?" She wasn't jesting in the least.) Alna, Maine is secluded. Boothbay and Portland, Maine, are not. Ringoes, NJ is secluded; Cape May, NJ is not. Knoebels Grove Amusement Park in Elysburg, Pa. is secluded; Disney World and Six Flags are not.

Part of the charm and success of the Strasburg, like many, many other successful tourist attractions just like it (Colonial Williamsburg, Greenfield Village, Sea World, even South Of the Border), is that you CAN drive right down the road and drive into this little slice of Americana (or dolphin show, whatever) as if you've just driven into a reasonable fascimile of the past. But then, as soon as you're done, minutes away you have all the trappings of "civilization" that the "city slickers" and young folks permanently glued to their smartphones have come to enjoy--wi-fi, fast food, beer, maid service, cell phone signals, 300 cable channels, and the like. Visiting the Strasburg and those other successful tourist places does not require the massive "commitment" that going to the Grand Canyon and riding a mule down the trail, or rafting the Colorado River, or going camping in the wilderness of a Pennsylvania state park, or going to a ski lodge up in the mountains, or heading off to a National Seashore island by boat does. That "comfort zone" is just minutes away. It most definitely is not that close at Orbisonia or Cass or Cumbres or Alna. (Is there anyone here who's been to Orbisonia that HASN'T eaten in the pizza shop or at the drive-in soft-serve north of town, simply because they were the only places serving food?)

Review the thread on "Lewistown Eats" regarding someone planning for NKP 765 excursions later this month. None of the stuff mentioned in that thread is an issue at Strasburg--or, for that matter, New Hope, or Durango or Williams. But that same "what do you do for food/fun?" syndrome is the reason the EBT and others like it are still starving for traffic.

We have two principle schools of thought in this thread--one that emphasizes location, and another that emphasizes the general business operation. I would say that both are correct, both are important, and I would add a third--plain old luck, just being in the right place at the right time.

Think of this--Strasburg began as a tourist hauler right as the big auto age was hitting its stride (how many of us remember Dinah Shore singing "See the USA in your Chevrolet. . ."), combined with an bit of a boom in an interest in old time things (including those TV westerns--Yee-ha!), and another of those periodic revivals of things Colonial. People wanted to get out and see things, like the Grand Canyon and Washington, DC, and yes, to take a look at the old times as represented by the Amish, who were and still are perhaps the closest glimpse we can have of a pre-television, pre-radio, pre-electric, pre-industrial, pre-automobile, pre-just about anything of our modern world. It also helped that the owners just happened to pick a location that would turn out to be a huge tourist mecca for as long as it has--something it wasn't in 1958, something I don't think the management saw at the time (they did start out as a freight road, you know). They were also fortunate in that they were starting out as the railroad industry was getting rid of a lot of stuff, including wooden open platform coaches that were on their last legs, (some having recently been replaced by RDCs on the Boston & Maine), steam engines of various types (including a pair of Canadian locomotives and a former Reading camelback that was toiling long after it would have been retired by its original owner), the steam wrecker, and the freight car fleet.

None of this is meant to detract from the Strasburg's management or workforce at all, but luck certainly did help. I would argue this was also an important factor in keeping the Silverton Branch alive long enough to help it become the Durango & Silverton, and it certainly may have been a factor in the success of the original Edaville Railroad in Massachusetts. This, combined with dedicated management, certainly also helped the Valley Railroad grow. We also had good management and good timing in the early days of both what is now Dollywood and the Tweetsie, both of which started out with a strong Wild West flavor, even though located in the eastern US.

Now, having said that, it's my opinion that our business has suffered far more from mismanagement than anything else. How many tourist pikes, past and present, lack the entertainment value of the Strasburg? How many have pursued the Strasburg's own pursuit of excellence? How many, as noted in the case of the Grand Canyon, stumbled with the passenger experience, perhaps fatally so? How many roads, past and present, have the experience of clanking down some weedy right-of-way with rusty cars, no toilets, and staff that look like (and sometimes act like) clueless bums? How many, for whatever reasons, just get by on the minimum of what they can do, and it shows?

Perhaps the ultimate example of mismanagement was the Gettysburg Railroad. That was an operation that should have been bigger than the Strasburg, by virtue of location! Never mind the safety issues--recall the slow speeds, the bad track, the relatively poor condition of the passenger equipment (including one of the ugliest paint schemes I've ever seen), and yes, the locomotives, too, which began to scare me in the last couple of years they were running (man, I recall how No. 76's air compressor would groan and wheeze, and how its valves blew so badly the exhaust sounded like a continuous roar the moment the engineer opened the throttle). Who would want to ride a rattletrap like that?

I recall the Walkersville Southern sort of being like that at one point; I am amazed at how it has turned itself around in the last 15 years or so, apparently thanks to newer managers who understand you have to have a nice experience for the passengers. They've even brought in steam, even if is with rented tank engines--something the previous management would have had nothing to do with. I recall talking with one of the guys there then--some ancient fellow--who said he never wanted steam, nor even cars with six-wheel trucks, saying they would be too hard on the track and would bind on any curves. He said he should know, he was a model railroader in O scale! I guess the managers of railroads prior to diesels and on whose tracks all those old Pullmans ran just didn't know anything at all.

I believe this also may have been a strong factor in the problems the East Broad Top has had. We must always love Mr. Hall and the Kovalchiks for keeping the EBT with us--and we must also recognize, or at least consider, that they didn't take the road to the next level. In my opinion, they failed by being too conservative, too cautious, and perhaps too eager to copy the successful Strasburg. The Strasburg and other roads seemed to "prove" for a long time that you didn't want a train ride that was more than an hour long, and you didn't want more than five miles or so of track to maintain. That view ignored the potential of the whole of the EBT; as much as a jewel as the road is in Orbisonia, I've been told that the really spectacular parts are the ones few have seen, on the climb to Robertsdale. Granted, this would have run into some money, and it may not have been a wise move originally, but as noted at the Strasburg, the travel market has changed somewhat, in that instead of just nostalgia or just a train ride, people now want a total "experience," and that need not be limited to one hour's duration. Durango & Silverton, White Pass & Yukon, Cass Scenic, and perhaps most of all, the Cumbres & Toltec bear this out. It's not something limited to us; take a look at most of the British examples of heritage roads we admire so. Most of them, with their authentic structures and well-cared for track, make me think of Strasburg on steroids! Really, if the Strasburg ever gets that new roundhouse, and the station and interchange with Amtrak passengers at Paradise, it will become very much an American version of several of those British outfits. And what is Wolsztyn, Poland, if not a total, authentic, true "Wolsztyn Experience?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW1mQb4BBf8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHv4HJUouCI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65RJ1I7S72g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMVczdaziVY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk3-QoKpth0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhR8GZ_WWMM

Very interesting discussion for sure. With all due repect to John Rimmasch ( for whom I have the greatest admiration for how he has grown his steam service business in an industry with slim 'pickins) I must say again that every tourist railway in America that's able to carry 50,000 or more paying customers a year is located within a major tourism area.

There's a very valid reason for that. All these outfits are selling one thing...entertainment....and happen to be using a train as the vehicle. As the train ride in and of itself is not of sufficient magnetism to create its own tourism destination it must depend on being able to attract a small percentage of those who come into the greater area to prosper.

I am a very part time engineer on the NH&I RR and I can tell you that a vast majority of our riders ( excluding the special events trains--- North Pole, Santa, Easter Bunny etc.) are folks who have come to New Hope as tourists, hear the whistle and decide that a one hour train ride would be a nice diversion.

Yes, good management, and some good luck also contribute but without good location they are not enough to make it work.

Again, the market is never wrong.....look where every single one of the few really successful tourist pikes are located....that's the answer to how critical location is.

IMHO, Ross Rowland

When we look at potential (and existing) operations the issues of location are always major. It's not always population centers either, it's simple access, right down to turn-by-turn and visibility.

You can be in a relatively remote area and still win if there's enough flow-through traffic and some visibility. You can loose even in a high population area if you've managed to make yourself invisible. You can certainly put up a good fight with good advertising, but it's not cheap and most excursion railroads can't afford the promotional budgets of amusement parks, etc. Signage isn't easy, you either pay the price or struggle with the bureaucracy, takes time.

But location really won't save you either even if you have it. You can still drive away customers in droves with the experience you provide. Gettysburg (RIP) stands out as one of the best examples, even during the steam years they actually had pretty good ridership - but if you want to see the obituary column look it up on TripAdvisor.

But if you don't have an adjacent metro market nearby for special events, and you're not on the flow for tourism, and you're out in the middle of nowhere... you can pretty well finish yourself off with a second (or third rate) experience.

One thing I have observed is that western markets work a lot different from eastern. Driving halfway across a state to see something when you are west of the Mississippi is typical, in the east it's more like 100 miles for a day-trip norm. The distances that NN/Ely pulls from is amazing.

Walkersville Southern: Exburbia is expanding onto their doorsteps, almost. Five or ten minutes down the road is now a "big box" shopping center with a Wegman's super-store, Lowe's, etc. Four more minutes will get you a city of 66,000 with all manner of dining, from the brewpub to the celebrity chef outlet (Bryan Voltaggio's Volt) to Latino pupuserias where English is a second language. And commuter trains to Washington D.C. The derogatory reference of "Fred'neck" I used to hear years ago definitely no longer applies. I remember the very first business I saw between Walkersville and Frederick being a liquor store that looked from the outside like your typical case-of-Bud-slinging joint, but has recently transformed itself with upmarket wines, beers, and spirits.

And Washington D.C. (which remains a boom town in this current economic depression, for political reasons we won't debate here) and Baltimore, Md. are an hour away. And Frederick itself is a bedroom community for that "boom town."

The WSRR definitely has the potential to be another Strasburg, and to grab the dinner train traffic the Maryland Midland/EnterTrainment Line managed to fumble. One could argue that they need steam, or at least one old-timey coach, but.....

Oh, and one other thing: Though the line may have volunteers and work with non-profits, the railroad in question is still technically a for-profit, and managed like one--as some groups have discovered when they wanted to "donate" to some of their projects....

How much of Strasburg's success today has to do with having the political and PR capabilities to land the State RR Museum across the street in the 1970s? Keep in mind that locating the state railroad museum for Pennsylvania in Strasburg made zero sense from any historic standpoint - such a museum should be in Altoona or in a dozen more more-relevant locations from that standpoint. I always thought scoring the museum in that location benefitted the Strasburg RR a great deal. Moving forward to today, does having the museum across the street still benefit the Strasburg a great deal? Do many people come to visit both?

And, also having other attractions - such as the Choo-Choo Barn, the Caboose Motel, the TCA museum, etc. decide to locate in the area in the 1970s as well helped the Strasburg a great deal, IMHO.

Chris.

I think the best example of a rail museum squandering a beautiful location is the Ohio Railway Museum. Located deep in the middle of a huge population center, they could not even manage to make enough money to maintain a measly one mile of track and a few pieces of rolling stock. That museum did and still does have potential. It is easily accessible from I-71, has an iconic looking railroad station and parallels the NS/CSX lines so that both railfans and nonfans have something to enjoy. The museum also has that wonderful overpass over 161, a great billboard if there ever was one. A visit to the ORM including the ride may last an hour or less, just about the maximum length of time that short attention spans will allow.

but what do we have instead of an unqualified success? Unqualified failure. Here is their hours on their website for the 2013 season. "We offer demonstration train rides every hour on our streetcars or passenger coach, beginning at 12:30pm. Open every Sunday from 12pm until 4pm." Four hours a week??? That is all??? What is the point? How many millions live in the Columbus, OH area and they can only justify four hours a week? Poor management and a failure to properly market their operation has doomed this museum that due to their compact size (low overhead) and wonderful locations should be rivaling Strasburg on ridership numbers.

Egads, was that really already eight years ago? Time certainly flies.

I think the real question is "is there anyone that DOESN'T visit both?"

The Strasburg/RRMusPa relationship has always struck me as an utterly perfect "public-private" partnership. They absolutely complement one another. With the "real museum" across the street, the Strasburg RR doesn't have to expend energy with historic interpretation and preservation of historic fabric (not that they don't to extremes, mind you, but their marketing department isn't hamstrung by the accuracy or lack thereof of the paint schemes!), like just about any other "historic" railroad operation should (and tourist-only rides like Napa Valley, dinner trains, Verde Canyon, etc. don't, by and large). The Museum, meanwhile, can set about conservation and interpretation while completely ignoring demonstration and the wear and tear that it involves--the guys "over there" have that all covered, pretty much in spades. California and North Carolina's state rail museums can only dream of such a partnership, as can just about every other tourist railway in North America. There's an effort being made at Williams, Arizona for such a partnership with Grand Canyon, but there appears to be a rift at work between the "tourist market" guys (Williams) and the "central location" guys (the already-extant and diversified Arizona Railway Museum in so-hot-they-close-in-summer Chandler, metro Phoenix).

In recent research, I have come upon many, many lobbying letters written in the late 1960s (hand-typed/written, not form letters!), when the decision whether and where to put a Railroad Museum of Pa. were evolving. Take my word for it when I tell you that there was a great deal of effort being made to steer that museum to Altoona, Northumberland, and Orbisonia/Mount Union--and, to a lesser extent, Scranton, Eddystone, York, and Jim Thorpe. I shudder to think what the visitation of the PRR collection would be in a Mount Union "warehouse," or even Northumberland (the huge roundhouse was a mile and a half up a then-gravel road and a still-active rail yard from the nearest road). The momentum generated in Altoona evolved by 1979-80 into the Railroaders Memorial Museum, a very worthwhile proposition still flawed by "location, location, location" and some management issues. Scranton--well, we've already expended untold megabytes on that.

But let's be blunt: By 1967, the Strasburg already had made a credible attraction of itself, by then leasing PRR 1223 and PRR coaches from the PRR, and temporarily holding Mississippi Central 98. It wasn't politics. They earned it.

None of it. First, I'm not at all sure Strasburg RR did any lobbying for it. Second, railfans will go to the railroad and to the museum, but whether or not they are in proximity isn't relevant. Railfans are probably the destination draw for the museum - nonrailfan tourists come to Lancaster County for the totality of local attractions, ride the train as a part of their visit to the area, then may visit the museum or not in that order of motivation - I differ with Sandy on thiis one. After a train ride, wandering around looking at static stuff isn't as fun and the 5 year old wants lunch. RMPa hasn't developed into the kind of draw that CSRM has become. No slur to their management, different visions at the state level.

I must have missed something.....did anybody actually expound the idiotic idea that a good location would overcome terrible management or that good management would even choose to locate in, much less succeed in a bad location? Can't believe anybody would think it was an either / or.........

dave