Be aware and check out change.org for yourself before you sign this petition!

https://www.change.org/p/amtrak-rescind ... -movements

change.org is a for profit SCAM that obtains e mail addresses and any other information and sells it! If you sign this and provide any other information you may regret it because you might receive all sorts of other junk and SPAM.

"Change.org sells its promotions to organizations on a cost-per-email-address basis. According to progressive online activist group Netroots Foundation, the cost of a petition promoted on Change.org without regional targeting is $1.75 per e-mail address. The Foundation reported that organizations could acquire the contacts of supporters who opted into giving their information in a free campaign."

Here is some interesting insight from the President of RPCA:

https://wp.me/p5IPAr-nE

Supposing someone wanted you or your organization/business to change the way it operates, or planned to operate. Say, they want you to sell your locomotive to another museum for a fair or unfair price, or open on weekdays, or stay closed on Sundays, or the like.

Tell me how much credence YOU are going to give to a supposed online petition with 5,000 names, from all over the place, virtually all of whom have no managerial or fiduciary stake whatsoever in your business or operation--if, indeed, they are even real names and places?

This is not petitioning your local restaurant to offer waffles as well as pancakes, or your brewpub to make an imperial stout.

The only thing online petitions do in reality is give the people who put their names to them the (completely false) sense of "accomplishment" or "having done something."

It's called a "Group" insurance policy, and there are legal ways of doing it. Of course, the various policy holders have to be members of the Group. Sometimes there's a Master Policy that covers every participating member, or maybe the insurance company is happy to have the Group do some of the work of managing a bunch of new customers with individual policies. There's still the fun of getting that "herd of cats" to each pay their expensive premiums and run safe operations.
When I worked for a freight railroad, there were some proposals of these types, but they usually involved a large investment in addition to the premium. The private passenger car and tourist railroad associations also have experience with these attemps.

Nice interview, Nick.

How do they handle liability insurance for excursions in the UK?

From the NRHS web page:

"A STATEMENT FROM AL WEBER, PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL RAILWAY HISTORICAL SOCIETY…
In response to Amtrak's Policy change of March 28 2018

The National Railway Historical Society (NRHS) would like to work with Amtrak to develop a program that will allow the continued operation of private passenger rail car trips and excursions that would be acceptable and make a fair profit to Amtrak.

Many NRHS chapters have run trips and excursions with Amtrak since the beginning of the founding of Amtrak. Many chapters have made major investments in keeping their passenger cars up to current Amtrak standards and have successfully run trips for the general public promoting rail passenger operations.

The NRHS is dedicated to preserving railroad history and giving the general public rides not only accomplishes that but shows that our partner, Amtrak, is needed in this day and age. NRHS chapters operate historic equipment and help preserve the equipment for future generations. We need to run this equipment, and keep it up to all Amtrak safety standards and understand that.

Al Weber - President National Railway Historical Society"
---------------
Bob H

Well, part of the way it's handled, as I understand it, is that losing litigants pay the legal fees of the defendant....

A more serious way of phrasing it is that the ability to litigate in the UK is less of a "winning lottery ticket" than it is in the States.

It is my understanding that is not Amtrak's insurance that is the issue here, it is Amtrak's liability cap, which is what makes the insurance affordable. I believe that this cap was provided to Amtrak by an act of congress.

This is the same legal system we have in Canada which of course originated in England.
Sue someone and loose YOU pay their legal costs as well as your own! Stops a lot of BS like you have in the Excited States of Amurika where anybody can sue anybody for any reason no matter how ridiculous.

I am really upset about this. I have taken may trips with Burt and Al of California Zephyr tours They were in the process of negotiating a sale of their cars, and this announcement will probably kill the deal.

I don't care what the doom and gloom crowd says. I say this is further evidence of incompetence on Richard Anderson's part, and so I say:

Throw Anderson from the train/Right now, right now.
Throw Anderson from the train/And put a railroader back at the throttle.


You need a railroader to run a railroad, especially a passenger one, pure and simple.

I'll admit I'm probably a total ignoramus on this, but I'm checking to see how much insurance might run in terms of payouts. The closest comparison might be the airline industry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiNjLHoLuAE

http://segal-law.com/what-is-the-averag ... -or-death/

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/p ... /R3421.pdf

This has to be considered extremely preliminary and at this stage totally inadequate, but I can't help but think the insurance cost and in particular a $500 million policy requirements are excessive and meant to be discouraging to us.

Granted, there would be other costs, but at an average of $4.5 million per fatality in the airline business in the USA (which has the highest average payments in the world), you would have to kill about 100 people per year to use that $500 million policy to its maximum extent.

For comparison, we kill about 100 people per day in auto accidents, and about 100 people per day die from gunshot wounds (of which about 66% or so are suicides).