I'm doing some research on current and future ridership trends in the steam industry. First of all, does TRAIN or anyone else have an estimate on the total number of riders in America per year? Secondly, have any of the steam railroads you guys are associated with conducted any sort of marketing survey within the past, say, five years or so? If your railroad hasn't, why not? If so, what questions have you asked? What have you learned? Who is riding, and why? How did they hear about the place? What is the demographic breakdown of your riders (young families, retired, etc) How far have they travelled? What additional services would they like to see? What other attractions are they planning to visit during their vacation? Feel free to contact me offline if you prefer. Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
-Chris Zahrt

Gosh, could it be that nobody in the industry does any marketing surveys?

PC

I didn't want to discourage Chris, but every time I've asked for the sharing of this sort of information it has resulted in not much either. Based on experience, I'd suggest that marketing savvy differs greatly among railroad museums and tourist railroads, limiting the potential sources as a smallish percentage of the total industry. That percentage might not find any wisdom or benefit in sharing the fruits of their time and trouble with those who don't develop it to exchange in turn.

dave

It might also be said that there are firms that do such surveys and charge good money for the results. Those who have already paid out that money might be somewhat reluctant to share the information gratis. Same with those who make a living doing those surveys...

Well I don't have answer to all your question, but this one I can talk about.
Reading & Northern restored their Baldwin Ex. GM&N steam locomotive # 425 this past year, they ran one two privet trips and Four public trips, each public trip was sold out with 730 passengers aboard. I was one of thoses passengers for the September 6 trip.

Len.
The Two privet trips.
Reading and Northern Steamer #425 OCS December 29, 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4ESDWCVRrU

May 10, 2008 Hickoy Run State Park Trip
Reading & Northern "Returns To Steam", May 10, 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmocRFDMMBA

Now the Four Public trips.
Reading & Northern's Jim Thorpe Special Part One 2008 May 10,2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jcHFXiorR4

Reading & Northern "Steam On The Rails" Part One July-12-13-08
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvMOGfFOszo

Reading & Northern "Steam On The Rails" July 13, 2008 Part Four
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xYRBQxC4s0

Reading and Northern 425 Riding Behind BLUE THUNDER Part One September 6, 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62hu3tbVuNE

As one of those 'making a living' doing those surveys, it puts me in an awkward spot. Most of those that work with our firm that gather intelligence from such surveys do NOT release the survey results publicly, as a good survey learns a lot of positives - and negatives - about their own operation, and some of those negatives are downright embarassing (as they should be). I've done 15 years of such surveys, and in that time only one client has given me written permission to republish the findings to anyone that asked as a benefit to the industry.

The surveys are always the property of the clients, not of the consultants (us), so it's pretty much up to them on what they choose to share.

One thing that's generally known out there, and so widespread that its nearly universal, is the increasing dependence on special events to generate any significant increases in ridership. Those may or may not include steam, but the impact on ridership is so significant that it requires in-depth investigation of numbers, not just raw numbers, to draw any meaningful conclusions about the health of excursion railroads in general, not just steam in particular. There are a lot of significant operators that run both in various situations; again, making wide conclusions must be carefully hedged.

We encourage our clients to always put the 'steam' question on the survey program to discover how sensitive their market really is to a power preference. There's a dramatic difference of preference based on the EXPECTATION that the railroad generates, sometimes based on location, history, or even advertising deception. If an operator decides to run steam, it should be in full knowledge of the wants of the market, not just the board, a few well-heeled members, or anecdotal evidence.

So do it yourself.

I would venture that most museums keep records of attendance and/or ticket sales. Every one I've been involved in has. And *usually* most organizations are willing to release those numbers.

Phone book + phone + time = results.

And before someone balks at how much work this is, or if someone will talk to you, and etc... I've done this in other fields before, fields with much higher dollar players and far more reluctant participants.

No, it's not easy. Yes, it will take a *lot* of time -- figure on trying to reach about 100-200 contacts a week if you work this 40 hours a week, and figure on only reaching about 80 of those in that time. (Now multiply by the total number you need to reach, oy).

It *isn't* easy, but it is primarily sweat equity. It can be done, if its that important to you.

Oh, and your phone bill will be huge. One week ran me over $300. Fortunately mine was reimbursed by a municipality that was highly interested in the results.

Dear Chris:

The Valley Railroad (http://www.essexsteamtrain.com) carried just under 130K in 2007. This includes our steam powered train/train riverboat excursion, Dinner Train, "THOMAS" (TM) and Santa Special/North Pole Express.

Numbers as follows: Dinner Train 4179, "THOMAS" (TM) 20,878, Santa Special 7471, North Pole Express 19,011, Steam Train and boat charters (must ride train to get to boat) 75K+/- (sorry I don't have the exact number in front of me nor the breakdown between train only and train & boat combination) (we offer no boat only service).

We do a survey of each table/group on every dinner train (except for charters). Overall trends (fairly constant since 2000): "How did you hear about us?" word of mouth/repeat customer 35%, Internet 30%, brochure 20%, advertising (print) 10%, other: balance.
In our rating section 75% give the dinner train the highest rating (5) and 20% a rating of 4. We also ask for positive and negative comments about the ride, food, service and atmosphere/scenery. Most dinner train riders live in Connecticut.

We also do periodic platform exit surveys of our Steam Train riders conducted by our greeter. The latest one (done in August) found that "How did you hear about us?" tallied: word of mouth 25%, Internet 20%, brochure 20%, repeat riders 20%, other: balance. The riders were from: Connecticut 65%, other New England 12%, NY&NJ 12%, other:balance. We asked for positive and negative comments and recieved no negatives about our service or personel. About 2% of the riders had a negative comment about the narration, but the question wasn't specific enough to learn whether they wanted more or less OR if they were commenting on the train or the boat (or both). We find that it is often difficult to do the surveys at all, and the longer/more specific you get, the more people do not finish the survey.

Ridership for 2008 is fairly flat: Dinner Train up a bit, school groups down, advance sales for "THOMAS" (TM) down, advance sales for North Pole Express up (all Friday, Saturday, Sunday trains sold out, all Parlor car seats sold out all departures, we expect that as we get closer to the season the rest of the trains will sell out and overflow will choose to ride the Santa Specials).

Hope this helps!

J.David

Thank you very much, Mr. Conrad! That is exactly the type of information I was looking for. I first became interested in marketing last year as commodities prices began to skyrocket. It really drove home the fact that the steam locomotive is only going to get more expensive from here on out. How can we grow revenue to keep pace with this? I guessed that in order to answer that, I first needed a rough idea of what the market was for a steam train ride. Who rides steam? Why? Where were they from? Etc. etc. By learning about the market, I could then suggest the type of customer a train ride would appeal to and more effective ways of reaching them. Also, learning who was NOT riding steam trains and why could open up new marketing opportunities. I was pretty proud of this line of reasoning, up until I realized I had no idea what a marketing survey was or how one went about obtaining one. I was doing some contract work at Mid-Continent at this time. Armed with enthusiasm and little else, I decided to survey the customers at this museum. My survey was appallingly crude. During lunch break, I would eat in the picnic area and try to strike up a conversation with anyone that passed by. Dale Carnegie was right. People love to talk about themselves. Basically, all I had to do was ask where they were from, and the resultant monologue would answer all of my other questions. Before firing up the milling machine, I’d jot down some notes about the people I talked to that day. While this survey was by no means rigorous or quantitative, it did at least give me a starting point for defining a Mid-Continent customer. I then wondered if the results of this survey could be extrapolated out to define a steam railroad customer in general. I’m guessing you can, but that was the point of the query in my original post. I wanted actual data to confirm this hunch. Assuming that a handful of conversations in North Freedom, WI is indicative of the buying habits of hundreds of thousands of Americans, here are the conclusions I reached. First of all, the industry’s customers are old. 63% are age 50 or older. 32% are 30-40 years old. These are mainly young families taking their children on a train ride. A depressing 5% of our customers are 20-30 years old. Our customer base is aging, and we are failing to attract younger people. Secondly, only 21% of the industry’s customers are not already interested in trains. We are failing to make steam attractive and relevant to the population at large. On the plus side, a steam locomotive is seen as family fun. Only 21% of steam customers visit alone. 47% brought their wife. 21% brought their wife and children. 11% brought only their children. The 47% figure is significant. We need to have activities on site that will appeal to the spouses of the affected. Doing so will make a steam destination a markedly easier sell. 45% of our customers are repeat riders/visitors. This is good in that the experience was pleasant enough to make them want to come back, but bad in that, again, we are failing to attract a significant amount of new customers. Finally, only 27% of our customers made the steam destination the sole purpose of their trip. Where else are they going? Might other people at that destination be interested in riding our train? Could we pursue event partnerships with this destination? As I said, the above survey is remarkably crude. It might have gotten me a C in high school business class. However, like all good research, it raises more questions than it answers. So I’ll conclude with yet another question. Have you guys seen similar patterns at your steam destination? Any information would be greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
Chris Zahrt

Hi Chris.

One of the things that strikes me is the C&TS is older than either one of us. If tourist railroads are a trip back into the past then in many cases it is a trip back in time to a point before many were born. Not having an old memory to stir on how does the experience evolve to be memorable?

I do not have the answer but when I see vintage autos or war aircraft I can always hope there will be a future if we think outside the box.

Robby