Big Easy Train Kaput

Wdrsn · **Posted:** Tue May 08, 2001 10:51 pm

THIS JUST IN;
New Orlean Big Easy excursion steam train will run its last this weekend citing low ridership. Another lesson that just because a place has a lot of visitorship doesn't mean they'll ride a train. Gamblers go to gamble, a partiers go to party, and niether cares about a train.

lorija799@aol.com

Alan Levy · **Posted:** Thu May 10, 2001 12:59 am

That's too bad, but hopefully their operable steamer will find a good home.

Alan

AlanL759@aol.com

R.L.Kennedy · **Posted:** Thu May 10, 2001 10:58 am

Is it completely dead, or just cut back until summer vacation time?

What engine were they using and who owns it?

> THIS JUST IN;
> New Orlean Big Easy excursion steam train
> will run its last this weekend citing low
> ridership.

http://www.trainweb.org/oldtimetrains
oldtimetrains@rrmail.com

Wdrsn · **Posted:** Thu May 10, 2001 1:25 pm

Espee mogul 1744. According to our information, they are done. They didn't realize that just because there is a large visitor ship to a given area, then a tourist train will work. New Orleans is a place for adult entertainment like partying and casinos. Partiers go to party, Gamblers go to lose their money, niether wants to ride a steam train. Simple but expensive lesson nonetheless.

lorija799@aol.com

Wdrsn · **Posted:** Thu May 10, 2001 1:27 pm

lorija799@aol.com

Tim Gautreaux · **Posted:** Mon May 14, 2001 5:53 pm

The reason the ride was unpopular was that it was a slow grind in closed-in coaches through strip mall parking lots and blue-collar neighborhoods ending in an area of abandoned factories behind a crime-ridden government project. The railroad was not really in New Orleans but across the Mississippi River, several miles from downtown. If the train were a different ride in roofed, open coaches along the tracks bordering the French Quarter, it would go gangbusters. People do many things in New Orleans other than drink and gamble.

The most interesting thing about the ride was that portion where you could drive after it at four miles an hour as it backed down the middle of blacktopped streets with normal auto traffic flowing around it. You could drive in the street twenty feet from the pilot as the engine backed all the way down to the river. In short, it was more fun to watch the train than to ride it.

With a brisk 15 mile an hour jog through some of the line's woodsy trackage in open cars and a reasonable fare (they started at $32 a ticket) they might have made it. But the real bucks will always be on the New Orleans side of the river.

Tim
Louisiana

runner@i-55.com