U.S. Departments of Interior and Commerce are looking to promote visitation to the states. If it is a favorable year for that, perhaps American rail museums should try to advertise in foreign rail magazines.
http://www.doi.gov/news/doinews/Making-America-a-Top-Tourist-Destination-Commerce-and-Interior-Keep-Up-Efforts-to-Increase-Visitation.cfm

In a broader sense, they would do FAR better either advertising in foreign travel magazines, getting articles about them "planted" in said magazines, or unifying enough to offer some kind of "package deal" tour system--Strasburg-EBT-Altoona, Durango/Cumbres/Golden, etc.

Railfan magazines are written BY geek FOR geeks and are effectively "preaching to the choir." Good travel pieces can "sell" the concept of heritage railways to the uninitiated and unsuspecting.

Well placed translations of your web site in German and Spanish would probably have the cheapest impact. Short items in foreign language travel magazines would help too.

Although many tourists speak adequate English, they are likely to browse and plan their trip in their native language.

Germans are fairly wealthy and travel abroad frequently. You can hear a lot of German spoken in Miami.

That said, be realistic. Someone is traveling from Europe for a week or two, tops. Does your site rank a share of that precious time?

We have a surprisingly large number of foreign visitors at RMEO, but that's more due to our location along the Rideau Canal and the national Capital than our efforts.

Sure, railfans plan in advance, but most notice the museum on their travels. I suspect most of us would see very little benefit from advertising abroad, although there's no harm in free publicity if it can be had.

Only the biggest and most exciting tourist railways or museums would be likely to see any return on foreign advertising.

Note that since Canada and the USA are such close neighbours, the preceding comments wouldn't apply... we should both advertise and seek publicity across our border.

Steve Hunter

I guess it was about 8-10 years ago, I stopped by and visited the Goleta Depot Museum located just up the coast from Santa Barbara. I think it was then, because its visitor count was down because of the decline in international travel. "International travel?" you ask.

The Museum Director explained to me that Santa Barbara received a fair number of international travelers -- Germans and other Europeans. And these were relatively high-end travelers who would stay a week in Santa Barbara. They would go and see the Lompoc flower (seed stock) fields, visit wineries, see the Mission, and then wonder what to during the rest of the week. So they would study the hotel brochure racks, guide books, etc. and a number would decide to travel the few miles to visit the Goleta Depot Museum.