Hello everyone. I hope you are all well. Just a word of thanks to the Conrail Historical Society for a very enjoyable excursion this past Saturday, 10/17/09. Russ Swinnerton, Ed Kapuscinski, Eric & Bennett Levin - you guys rock. Please extend my gratitude to anyone I may have missed. The E8s were pristine as usual and the onboard service was very warm & friendly. I even appreciated the overcast day for pics. Looking forward to next year's trip, Lord willing. Again guys, well done and thanks. Tom, your thoughts? God bless. Seth

I don't want to Monday morning quarterback these guys too much because they did pull off a great trip for the most part. I understand how difficult it is to pull these trips off and I try very hard to support EVERY mainline trip that happens in our area. I have ridden many trips behind the likes of NYSW 142, C&O 614, Reading FP-7s, and MARC diesels. Never has an organization sold every seat in a 3-2 situation for an all day excursion. This resulted in an awful situation for many people. These guys owe everyone who was jammed into those SEPTA cars a discount on the next trip.

CRHS said they tried to get all Amtrak equipment. Had they done so it would not have been an issue. When they rented the SEPTA cars someone should have thought, "golly, we can't jam 130 people into these cars for a whole day". They should have took the SEPTA cars and sold them at Amfleet capacity, not 130 people. As for the learning curve, maybe nobody within the organization had ever ridden an excursion. I don't know.

Again, I know how hard it is to pull off something like this trip. I am glad it ran and for the most part everyone did a fine job. Just when you plan future trips try to find a few folks who have ridden a LOT of trips. Talk to them and put them on your planning team. Those are the guys who know what works and what wont. If you need some help ask around. Even with what was learned on this trip, there is more to learn. Please ask and listen. Don't fix this one problem and miss another because you did not get input from people who have been doing it almost forever.

Are details about this trip to remain a secret or will someone tell us what this is all about?

The trip ran Saturday from Philadelphia using Bennett Levin's restored PRR E-8s and a combination of Amfleet, SEPTA commuter cars, and private varnish. Route was Philly-Perryville, MD on the NEC where the trip turned North to Harrisburg via Enola Yard and then back to Philly on the former PRR mainline. The trip went off very well and the locomotives ran at track speed, the cars were at a good temperature. The main issue was that CRHS sold every seat on the commuter cars including the end seats with no windows. Some people got to ride in 2-1 seating in the club car, others in 2-2 in Amfleet, and everyone else was jammed into the SEPTA cars like cattle. These cars are not designed for long distance, the seats were small and packed. There were no headrests and a lot of people made the best of a really bad situation while others had very nice accommodations even though everyone paid the same price.

All in all things went very well considering the poor planning with the SEPTA cars and most everyone enjoyed the trip even though many of use were very uncomfortable and jammed in like sardines. A trip along the Susquehanna River is a trip not to be missed even under those circumstances.

We've not heard from anything official from the CRHS people about this situation but if they want to do the right thing they should be offering some sort of voucher for a discount on a future trip to everyone who rode cattle class.

I had hoped to ride this, but the wife & I have been feeling the effects of the flu. Wondering if seats in coach were assigned or did the last ones to board get stuck with the no window seats. I would not have been happy on an all day trip without a window.

.........and this trip was the marketing equivalent of preaching to the choir.

If a family of non railfans had tried it out as a fun days entertainment, having no previous excursion or tourist railroad experience, and had got stuck in sardine can space, what are the chances they would become active and supporting converts? Reckon they would give any train rides a chance ever again?

What our visitors experience, or perceive as their experience, becomes the reality that makes them love train rides or hate them. We have one chance to fail before we get no more opportunities to succeed. We have to make smarter choices and filter all our operating decisions through the POV of the riders perceptions and experience. Any result other than completely positive, don't do it.

dave

Just for the record, my wife & I and a friend were in one of the SEPTA cars, three across. I didn't find the accomodations terrible, actually, I thought it kind of worked out good the three of us could sit together. We took turns at the window. Would I have been happier in one of the Amfleet coaches? Maybe, but the point I was trying to make in my original post was that I thought these guys did a very good job providing a pleasurable trip. There seems to be a dearth of affordable rare mileage excursions in the area, particularly behind vintage equipment. Let's be grateful for what we get, and trust that the trips will only get better as time & resources allow. Just my opinion. God bless. Seth

The trip was advertised to the public with many display ads in the Philadelphia Inquirer. More people were turned away from this sold out trip

Its been a real mixed bag of reactions about this trip. We've had a flurry of email regarding both the good and bad. With that in mind, I'd like to set the record straight on a few things:
Let's talk Septa cars first (as they are the point of most contention). We were told when we ordered the Comets that all seating was 2X3 seating. We weren't told that one of the 3 wide seats was in effect a "jumpseat", nor were we told that the ends of the car were 2X2 with nothing but paneling to look at. We were told this and that the capacity of the cars was 130 people and we booked it as such. When we got to the platform and saw these, we were shocked at what we got and had we known ahead of time the situation, we would have not booked the cars to capacity. For that I apologise. In future, we plan to do more research on the exact cars were getting.

The dinette we got from Amtrak (for those who weren't on the trip) was half tables and half business class seats (1X2 configuration). We were told by Amtrak that our cafe car would be an all table car. The folks in the business class seats all paid the same price as everyone else and most were people who had some kind of medical requirement or had been seated in rows that did not exist in the Comets (due to the seating at either end of the Comet cars). The table section was also filled with these folks.

The planned raffle was cancelled due to the weather. I talked with Bennett Levin and we agreed not to do it partly because of the gaurantee of getting soaked but also because the rain created a slippery condition which made it unsafe.

Which brings us to the subject of compensation. Before any talk can begin about refunds etc, the Board of the CRHS (of which I am a director) is going to meet and discuss how best to handle this. I will keep people updated as is appropriate. I will say to not expect full refunds (as some people have) as that would financially destroy our group.

Finally, this brings us to next time. There will be a next time. I can't release our plans for the next one. I can tell you there will NOT be ANY Septa equipment on the next trip. Period. I will also say that we may obtain cars from other agencies (NJT, MARC, etc) but they will be priced and labeled accordingly (most likely a class seperation 1st class, Coach Class, Base Class, Etc).The learning curve on this has been big for us. As we've never run a trip before, we weren't totally sure what to expect. Now that we've gotten one under our belt, we've got a better handle on things and the mistakes of this trip will not be allowed to happen again. The CRHS accostomed to putting on a first rate show (ask anyone about Conrail Days, our Conventions, etc) and we were also disappointed with the problems we encountered. I will post more info on this situation as appropriate but please feel free to post other questions here or email me directly at Russ.Swinnerton@thecrhs.org
Thanks!
Russ Swinnerton
Onboard Services Manager

I also wanted to add that I appreciate constructive criticism as it will make the next trip what we hoped this would be.
Russ

Kudos for the honest and open discussion, Russ. That says a lot about you and the group! Very positive.

All the best,

Rob

Russ,

Thanks for your comments. I was very unhappy with the SEPTA cars. I am eager to hear what your board decides. I am still glad I rode the trip and I will continue to try to support every trip that runs in our area. Other than the 3-2 seating blunder everyone did a great job.

I appreciate your comments about not repeating the same mistakes. Please remember that there are other hurdles lurking out there. Please get in touch with other folks/organizations when planning the next trip so you can get ahead of the learning curve and not have to say "we'll never let that happen again" a few days after the next trip. There are people who visit this board on a regular basis that have run/ridden these types of trips many times who would be happy to share.

Inexperience in running special excursions, especially in the East is something that was inevitable considering how mainline excursions have really died off in the last 10-15 years. The first excursion I helped run was back in 1982. There were a lot of people who had done literally hundreds of excursions and learning the do's and don't's was easy if you were willing to learn. Not for the good, but I volunteered with the ticketing and working some of the trips at the infamous Garden State in 88 NRHS convention, and aside from the obvious stuff, I learned a lot about the limitations of accounting and sales software applied to the excursion business. The trips I have been involved with the last few years have been small, but those lessons learned early on really paid off.

While Tom Gears says the CRHS guys should have gotten people who have been riders on excursions to help out, I think trying to find people who were involved in running a big trip should be the goal. Certainly among the various NRHS Chapters that ran trips in region they traveled through there have to be some guys left who did this. We need to keep these kind of rare mileage/mainline excursions alive and that only happens we the trips are safe, and enjoyable to the passengers, especially the casual ones.

One comment if I may---

Back in the Jurassic Era, I had some (small) involvement in a few mainline trips in the northeast. And, I've had some experience at NAUG as well.

We'd never sell the "full car".... if a coach had 70 seats, we'd plan on selling 60, and hold the last 10 just to see if there were any "problems" that required moving folks around, etc.

The same has held true at NAUG when we do DOWT. Our CNR heavyweights are 80-seat cars, and we max out the passengers at 70 for the DOWT events.

Saves a lot of headaches.

Howard P.

Howard you are so right. I remember riding a 614 trip and talking to Ross about filling the coaches. He told me they would never sell more than about 70% of commuter cars.

Just a few of the people who responded to this thread would be able to provide years and years of experience to future trips. Lets hope CRHS chooses to get ahead of the learning curve for it's next trip.

Here is a great photo of the special leaning into the curve at Prospect Park.

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 61&nseq=72