Can we call the question until next month's meeting after the slide show of Conrail paint schemes? Or adjourn to the Steak and Shake?

Wesley

Oh come on Wesley! We can all give our opinions it gives us something to do.

But seriously, the only people who can help is congress and if you want to do something then drop them a line, e-mail or a letter. This is best we can do unless you can volunteer up there. Chris asked the right questions especially the one on who is going to take on running the excursions?

Steve.

OK now that's a great example of a distraction. Let's go back to the first three priorities for any museum: Line, land and barns. Steamtown has the first two, so next up is "barns".

Shrinkwrapping equipment. Is that "carbarns"? No, it is not! It... you know... SEEMS like a kinda cheaper and therefore somehow better alternative, and a way to staunch the rust... but is it really? Let's add up the real costs of this deferral:

1. The shrinkwrap.
2. The additional costs of construction in the future.
3. Whatever future zoning and environmental baloney they dream up while you procrastinate.
4. The further deterioration to the equipment since shrinkwrap isn't a barn.

(in fact, why does anyone think shrinkwrapping does a darn thing? it hasn't been around long enough to prove itself. I can tell you tarps don't do diddly, having uncovered a piece of equipment at WRM that was painstakingly restored and then tarped 10 years ago... looks like it had been out in the weather for 10 years.)

My guess is, #1 through #4 would actually add up to MORE than the cost of doing a carbarn today.

Is there a Steamtown "booster" group? If not, is there a reason why there is not one?

--
Chris Webster
http://www.speakeasy.org/~cwebster

Is there a Steamtown "booster" group? If not, is there a reason why there is not one?

Actually, there was two.

The first, the Steamtown Volunteer Association was a unique animal in that it was both an NPS 7 (active volunteers) and an NPS 32 (fund raising group), in the old parlance and while it worked for a while, it degenerated over time. It was dissolved when one individual having successfully impeached a dedicated president who was going to give up the post anyway, started a letter writing campaign against the former superintendent. The former superintendent put up with a lot, but finally it was too much headache with no benefit.

The second, the Steamton Museum Association, was primarily an NPS 32 group, it really didn't last long and had no effect I could see and raised very little revenue other than that which collected at the bookstore. That was sort of a "gimmee".

There's been other groups as well, promising "help". One came in promising to fix one of Ross' former flames-the 759. Nothing ever happened and rumor had it they were talking up the idea of a 759-765 meet somewhere in Ohio without even consulting the park. The group disbanded and went away.

Then there's that other partnership....

Another option for all the dead equipment is to load it on DOD flatcars and send it to a government storage facility that is secure and a better environment for outdoor storage (like the Yermo California annex of the Barstow USMC Logistic Base). If the stuff has been sitting at Steamtown for more than a decade with no work being done on it, then it is certainly not going to be missed if it is sent elsewhere.

I went to several NRHS meetings this month, in most of them I was one of the youngest people in attendance, and I am close to retirement. I don't think there is going to be a sudden influx of people to help restore all the dead equipment that is sitting in museum back lots all over the country, and with recent security concerns for the railroads the entire railroad enthusiast hobby is likely to see a substantial decline in coming years.

PC

As to the volunteer issue at S'town it is my understanding that a good number of the volunteers have ended thier active participation in the running of the place principally due to thier fatigue with all the rules/regulations. I have worked with several of them at the NH&I and both told similiar tales.

As to the very good question of would any proven outfits now in the steam passenger business respond to an RFP from the NPS to take over as the D/O of S'town? It all depends on the details of the RFP. If it were so written as to allow the D/O to keep whatever revenues they generated from admissions/excursions/special events etc. AND contained a reasonable annual subsidy ( say $2.5 million) to cover equipment restoration/upkeep,physical plant maintenance, utilities etc., then I'm sure you'd recieve proposals from a good number of leaders in the industry. In the above hypothetical the gummit would cut its current cost by half and the place would recieve the expertise/life it needs to blossom, rather than withering (in terms of attendance) as it is now doing.

I'm guessing that this would be a first for the NPS- but just because its not been done before shouldn't be the ruling factor. HOWEVER, this will never come to be unless senior political leaders decide it's worth doing and they won't get involved unless the senior leaders on the Scranton level convince them that the community REALLY wants this. That's why it's such a long shot.

I'd be the first to agree that it's not a pure apples to apples test but just look at the incredible difference in the performance of the Strasburg RR vs. S'town. They're only a short distance apart, both are railroad themed/based attractions, yet Strasburg year in year out manages to run an on time spotless property, an absolutely first rate show,and charges nearly twice as much as Scranton to participate-- yet puts somewhere around 500% more PAYING customers through its turnstile. WHY?

Do you think that some of the following facts might have some bearing on the difference in thier successes?

1. Strasburg's property is maintained to Disney standards. Absolutely spotless-- no junk laying/standing around etc.

2. The entire staff is well trained (again to Disney levels) and very good at making the customer glad they came. They're also knowledgeable on the FAQ's and able to give intelligent answers.

3. They run thier trains EXACTLY as they advertise them. No ooops-sorries or excuses. This of course produces tremendous positive word of mouth (the far and away most important form of advertising).

4. They work VERY hard at doing everything possible to ensure that the guest will be a repeat customer and as a matter of fact many of thier current guests are 2nd. and 3rd. generation customers!


Common sense would sure seem to indicate that if Scranton were run by Strasburg or one of the other accomplished operators that things "would be different" to say the least!!

IMHO-Ross Rowland

Strasburg is fortuitously located in an area which is a tourist destination that brings in hundreds of thousands of tourists, and would whether or not there was a steam railroad there. Until Scranton reaches that status, the comparison doesn't hold water.

Unless the Pennsylvania Dutch tourist centers stop developing outlet malls and paving over Amish farms, thereby destroying the draw that brings in the tourists, Strasburg will resemble Scranton in the future.

And so it goes.......

dave

This fetish for inappropriate privatization is fiscally reckless and a recipe for corruption. You are proposing an arrangement in which profit is guarantied by a tax-funded subsidy. If that is not corporate welfare, I don't know what is. Unfortunately, we have seen more and more of this type of thing done in the name of "free-market capitalism" when it is actually state-sponsored crony capitalism. I do not want to see more of my tax dollars channeled into the hands of businesses that take almost no risk. Flip a coin; "heads" the the business owners win, and "tails" the taxpayer loses. Since when is that the way the American economy works?

Edit: Just to clarify, I am fine with the federally-funded NPS running Steamtown. Despite the limited amount of active steam, it is a terrific museum. The government has a role preserving our history and educating the public about it. I do not accept using tax money to subsidize a private enterprise. Speaking of which, have we nationalized the banking industry yet? Maybe we can take over the oil companies next.

WOW...comparing Strasburg to Steamtown...that is the biggest stretch of the imagination I have ever seen. Their only similarities have to do with their foundation.

Strasburg was a one man dream. That man got investors and purchased a ROW first. Then built said model railroad around that acquisition. Same man had backers and family to continue his dream and business long after he was unable to continue doing so. One wonders really, without Linn running things so dilligently, how much of that fabric would remain today. We're seeing how a dream can fade quickly once ownership and dreams change, with the Grand Canyon RR.

Strasburg indeed helped build what is today's Lancaster county tourist draw, in conjunction with the Amish. That same attraction aspect over the last 20 or so of those 50 years of operation, as others posted, has also led to the demise of said main tourist draw and in turn led the SRR to scramble to preserve what the original draw was, by investing in land preservation around them. They're being bitten in the ass, basically.

Steamtown, by comparison, was a one man dream by a man who had no real backers, no family that cared to continue the that dream and who had made the decision to acquire locomotives before he bought any ROW (a solid foundation) to actually run them on. His mistake is now our taxpayers burden. I wonder how sucessful Steamtown would be today if it had remained in VT?....Green Mountain does some kick ass business running diesels over the same route.

We're on here himming and hawing about Steamtown being a tax burden all the while, large corporations are jumping on the government bail out wagon all around us. Steamtown is mere pittens as far as I'm concerned when it comes to my tax money being wasted.

Ross,

Your calling a $2.5 million annual subsidy "reasonable" shows that you have absolutely no clue about the funding constraints that the National Park Service (NPS) operates under.

Twelve years of paying that annual subsidy would total $30 million, which is the amount Tommy Franks and Tom Ridge are hoping to raise via donations so that a National Memorial can be built outside of Shanksville:
http://www.nationalparks.org/who-we-help/flight-93/

--
Chris Webster
http://www.speakeasy.org/~cwebster

N/M

In contrast to the $2.5 million subsidy that Ross has suggested for Steamtown excursion operations, the New Bedford - Fall River (Massachusetts) Southcoast Rail Project that could provide a future home for those wonderful clean non-polluting steam locomotives (rumored to exist) has a projected cost estimate of $1.6 billion (yes, that's Billion with a "B") dollars. Just imagine how many steam locomotives you could buy with that.

PC

So that there's no misunderstanding in what I proposed in my hypothetical example of a possible D/O RFP for S'town, please allow me to clarify. What I suggested was that the Feds as part of the RFP would offer an annual operating payment to the D/O of $2.5 million dollars and that these funds would be used to restore locomotives to active service, (unique concept,eh??),maintain the physical plant etc. If that were to be done it would SAVE the Feds approx. $2.7 million/year vs. what its now costing them to operate the place.

It would also give the D/O maximum incentive to increase attendance, vastly increase excursion ridership etc.

Seems to me that it's clearly a win-win. The taxpayers SAVE $2.7 million/year and the facility gets a chance to blossom towards its potential.

Perhaps someday the planets will align to see it happen?? Not likely, but worth hoping for!!

IMHO-Ross Rowland

Mr. Rowland, you are not catching what i'm telling you about government budgets. If a private contractor comes in for 2.5 million, then if it works the same way it does here in the military, that 2.5 million comes out of the organization, Steamtown's budget, to pay for it. So they would loose 2.5 million. We do this all the time with the aircraft. When we had a contractor come in and take over washing the aircraft, we lost all the money that we would normally have for supplies cut from our operating budget. Plus we lost the people, active duty types, that were counted for washing the aircraft. Those positions are gone and not moved anywhere in the squadron or base. They are moved to another base or lost totally off the books. Its good in one sense that a contractor now has the headaches of doing a job but its bad in the sense that the NPS looses the money and probably the manning.

Steve B.