You're half right ( which means you're half wrong).

Half Right...........Yes, if a road features steam in its print and online advertising and then shows up at train time being pulled by a dismal there will be some unhappy campers....

Half Wrong........As has been proven over and over and over again the VAST majority of tourist railroad riders DO NOT CARE what's pulling the train. They are not either steam nor diesel fans just good 'ole daisy pickers there in most cases riding a themed train that is celebrating something ( Mother's Day, Halloween, Fall Foliage, North Pole, etc., etc.) and the train is but the medium.

It ain't complicated.

Ross Rowland...part time hogger NH&I RR

Regarding events, at some point if all you want to do is run a special event business you can scrap the trains and make more money.

Not if you want to run a profitable passenger rail business.

Ross Rowland

I have found that the visitors to the J&L Narrow Gauge Railroad are coming to see a steam train, certainly know the difference between 58 and our Brookville, and would be mightily upset to be pulled around by it and not the steam locomotive. It is all in what the expectations are for the attraction.

Yes, it's your steam engine that convinced me to pay for 1 of the shirts you were selling a few years ago. Unfortunately, the Post Office thought it was an election ballot, so they never delivered it. They did provide proof that you had mailed it.

Why do you want to do that though? If the end goal is to make money, just start an event business and cut out the expense of an operating railroad.

That was my experience as well selling tickets / conductor for 10+ years at a tourist railroad. If the diesel pulled up, people would know the difference alright!!

Maybe if all these “experts” would get out of the cab and sell tickets for a few days they would learn how smart the general public actually is. They aren’t stupid.

Interesting. The WM, RDG and L&HR 2-8-0's are likely to have pulled the same cars on the "Alphabet Route" from the Midwest to New England!.

Phil Mulligan

Yes the RDG I-10-s-a 2-8-0 is the class rebuilt into T-1 4-8-4's. However, 2011 was not rebuilt into a T-1.

Big agree. If people don't know the difference – or worse, don't care – that's on us. It's our fault. We're supposed to be the preservationists, storytellers, preservers-and-makers-of-cultural-relevancy. It's our job to make train fans out of paying customers so that they do give a damn what's pulling their train.

Folks, it ain't complicated. On nearly all tourist railroads ( exceptions being GC &Strasburg) the vast majority of their annual income is generated by themed trains and the vast majority ( 98% ? ) of those riders are there primarily to participate in celebrating that themed event with the train being the medium. They could care less what's pulling it.

Mainline trips are of course a totally different kettle of fish in that the steam engine pulling it is the major marketing tool to help sell the tickets. Sad truth there is with today's class 1 attitudes " real" mainline trips ( no diesels, track speed, open windows ) are probably not in our future.

Sad but true. Ross Rowland

I'm not sure I agree. I'd say for most tourist railroads the themed trains are are a marketing tool. 99% of the passengers are still there to ride the train. It's not simply a medium for the theme. The theme might have gotten their attention, but if they weren't primarily interested in a train ride they wouldn't be there. And yes, most passengers do know the difference between steam and diesel. It doesn't take much railroading knowledge to know that one looks and sounds similar to what they see at grade crossings and the other is something entirely different. Now, whether or not you get more patronage by running steam or not probably depends on the railroad, but I think it's fair to say that most passengers PREFER steam all other things being equal.

The reality is that all these "blanket" pronouncements--passengers don't care what's up front; you can go all special events, etc.--are hokum, and so are the people making such sweeping statements.

I've spoken a lot with the people behind the scenes at everything from tiny station museums to "national" museums, from small operators to major professional operations, both in railroads and other forms of "entertainment," and the lament is plain: You have to DO IT ALL to get people across the gate, in the cars, whatever. Over and over again I've heard "If we could just find that ONE magic bullet that does it all, we could just do that! But it isn't there! We're stuck having to do something different every time you turn around!" And that is from everyone from museums to restaurants to wineries to festival venues to musical venues.

I have heard from the PR people at a few operations that say in effect "We have people contacting us to ask when the next Thomas/beer/music/Easter/Pumpkin trains are running, and then we get people contacting us to make sure nothing special is happening a particular weekend!" Some of them have been forced to make certain that a visitor who just happens to blunder upon the line at the "wrong" weekend can still manage to have a completely "normal" ride and/or visitor experience, minus the kids running around burning off sugar, the Civil War soldiers, the antique cars, or whatever. British lines that have Diesel Gala Weekends showcasing vintage diesels, for example, run the risk of alienating someone who came for a vintage steam ride. Imagine coming from another country to see supposedly one of the great train rides/museums, only to find to your chagrin that that particular weekend is Thomas the Tank Engine Week--or finding a "fake" steam loco heading up your planned steam ride on the West Highland Line or White Pass & Yukon, part of a major movie studio filming project.

The critical aspect of all of this is what you're marketing. A "train ride" is no longer enough, and hasn't been for years. Is it the destination (the Grand Canyon, the sports stadium), the route (the bottom of a canyon you can't get to otherwise), what you can see from the train (Native American ruins, eagles, zoo animals, "Dutch" farmland), what's ON the train (murder mystery, gourmet dinner, singing troubadours, parlor car, party caboose), an overall experience (time capsule 100 years ago), what you learn while there (all about how railroads/trolleys/transit changed America), or what?

The Strasburg RR isn't going to "get away with" diesels on their trains save for an emergency/breakdown. The Grand Canyon Railway has been getting away with it for well over a decade now; ditto Cuyahoga Valley, ditto Conway Scenic, ditto a whole bunch of formerly "steam" railroads. Hell, even the East Broad Top is temporarily diesel!

What I've been told is that themed events keep LOCAL people COMING BACK.

Too many places are "been there, done that." When was the last time you were at your "state history museum"? Probably on a school field trip. The art museum? The lighthouse? The farm museum?

Places that are by necessity "static" (a fixed collection, a set route, etc.) NEED some variety to get "the locals" to return. Only a crazy few worldwide are going to schedule a visit to the Durango & Silverton or the EBT or Tweetsie just to see Eureka or Southern Pacific 18 operate there, but lots of people will show up for the bluegrass festival, the antique car show, "ales and rails," etc.

I remember talking to the organizers of the RR Museum of Pa.'s first "Rails & Ales" beer festival. They said it took them years to get a conservative, hesitant management aboard to the idea; the first one has the longest line to get in of any special event they had ever planned.

According to the GCRY management, the Halloween and Santa-themed trains they run, as short, out-and-back runs much shorter than their daily runs to the South Rim, draw almost as many riders in a few short weeks of operation than the annual full-ride numbers. And most of those riders are "local" (Williams, Flagstaff, Prescott, Phoenix, etc.) compared to the regular runs.

I know people at my regional live steam club that runs in a public park. Part of their agreement for use of the land for the railroad is operating for the public once a month during good weather. Their single biggest event of the year is either Halloween or Christmas (I can't remember exactly which) season runs, like over a thousand riders on 7.5" ga. trains, which is a lot when you're putting probably about 10 or 12 bodies on a train at a time. Most of it is not steam. In fact their goal is running the most reliable equipment they have, which is usually essentially lawn tractor motors on rails that look like a D-E locomotive. It's mostly for the kids, and most of them just want to ride a train of some kind. Oh, and if you happen across one who is bonkers for steam, do everything you can to recruit them when they get bigger, because that is where your next generation of volunteers and members will come from.

“Only a crazy few worldwide are going to schedule a visit to the Durango & Silverton or the EBT or Tweetsie just to see Eureka or Southern Pacific 18 operate there, but lots of people will show up for the bluegrass festival, the antique car show, "ales and rails," etc.“

Yeah... nobody shows up when 611 visits Strasburg and the NCTM ;)