A slightly belated reply to Ed Kelley's post above: Niles Canyon Railway's "Wine Tasting Special" trains, each featuring a local winery (30+ in the local Livermore-Pleasanton-Sunol area) have been a good addition to our passenger service, requiring extra staff on most 2008 WTS trains to handle the overflow crowd. WTSs are definitely on the schedule for 2009.

A few of us have informally discussed expanding this concept to include the excellent locally brewed beers & ales, per Ed's suggestion. (Fritz Maytag's Anchor Steam Brewing Co., the inspiration for the real ale micro- / min-brewery revival in the USA, is just across the bay in San Francisco.) This is definitely worth exploring further.

Getting back to the subject of selling alcoholic beverages: What we'd like to do is add Parlor Car service, similar to S.P.'s "Del Monte Limited" on the San Francisco - San Jose - Monterey - Pacific Grove run, to some(?) of regular NCRy Sunday trains. S.P. 2979 lounge car is very similar to the famed S.P. 2946 "Oliver Millet" parlor/lounge http://www.sbhrs.org/organization/block/01Sumr.pdf car on the "Del Monte". Our goal is to attract additional upmarket passengers and revenue, not least from bar sales.

- Doug