My "train geek bias" tells me that tourist lines in close proximity to each other may not be bad.

Cases? Sure... examples of 3+ tourist railroads located with a 50 mile stretch of each other:

New Hampshire
Conway Scenic
Hobo Railroad
White Mountain Central
(make it 59 miles and you get the Cog Railway, too)
and the Silver Lake RR is just 10 miles out of the way

PA/DE
Wilmington & Western
Strasburg
West Chester

There must be others...

Rob

Well we had a good last day. Great weather ( although this mornings minus 5 wind chill was a little tough!!), # 40 ran beautifully, heavy ridership and got to meet several more Rypners!!

Lots of fans trackside shooting video and stills, perhaps some will get posted here??

Its back to the North Country early tomorrow for Christmas. Best wishes to all for a blessed Christmas and a healthy steam filled 2010.

Thanks, Ross Rowland

And maybe these are also not benefiting from each others proximity. Citing examples just shows more similar situations, and nothing more.

One interesting metric would be to study how many customers return to ride again, on the same railroad or one of the close proximity competitors. I would bet that most non-railfan customers do not return, even if they enjoyed the ride. Like the Statue of Liberty - most people go only once.

--
Will

The discussion here about New Hope's pricing vs. Strasburg's pricing seems a bit irrelevant. We (as rail enthusiasts) tend to think of the tourist railroads as a "community," but the reality is the relevant "community" is comprised of the other attractions near a railroad. For instance, New Hope's pricing isn't influenced by Strasburg's pricing. Strasburg's pricing is influenced by what the typical visitor to Lancaster County will spend, and everything from the Amish Village to Good 'N' Plenty is what drives Strasburg's pricing -- Lancaster County is a collection of quick-hit moderately-priced attractions.

On the other hand, New Hope & Ivyland is located in a community where $15 for day parking is not considered abnormal. Very few riders on the NH&I are there solely to ride the NH&I -- they are there for a day in New Hope, and New Hope is (in normal times) a place where you are going to drop a few bucks. The argument that cutting the prices on the train ride will result in a correlating rise in ridership is probably false -- most of the ridership that's there will ride the train if it costs $5, $10 or $15 and the folks already in town that aren't riding probably aren't going to ride if it costs $5, $10 or $15. Thus, you might as well charge the highest price the market will allow. Sure, dropping the price and providing free parking might bring in a few extra railfans, but the revenue gained from them won't offset the revenue lost from the folks who are in town who will ride no matter what. For every free parking spot you give out, you need to sell one additional ticket to make up the revenue you just lost. Will providing 50 free parking spots result in 50 additional ticket sales? Probably not.

As for the synergy of several tourist railroads close together, that is also probably not a very valid argument unless the operations are practically next door (i.e. Strasburg and the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania). The number of people traveling from tourist line to tourist line as a vacation is, in the overall scheme of things, fairly small. Someone mentioned New Hampshire, and yes, there will probably be a lot of people who ride both the White Mountain Central and the Conway Scenic. However, you'll probably find that those people are actually not riding both railroads as an end-all thing, but rather are riding them as subsets of a day spent in North Conway and a day spent in Lincoln (take away the bears at Clark's, and your dual ridership drops significantly). In other words, the proximity of the towns of North Conway and Lincoln probably has a greater effect on the number of people riding both railroads than the proximity of the railroads themselves does. The existence of the Strasburg probably hurts the Wilmington & Western and WK&S more than it helps, because most people who are seeking a train ride as part of a vacation will pick the closest ride, and most of those folks will already be in Lancaster County.

This isn't to say that people who visit multiple tourist lines and plan their vacations around riding trains should be ignored. But they make up a small enough group that the local economics (i.e. the town of New Hope) will be the driving factor in how railroads are operated and priced more than the economics of tourist railroads in general.

Is $15 for parking "gouging?" Not any more than selling a Mercedes is "gouging." I can't afford to drive a Mercedes, so I don't -- but obviously there is a market for folks who choose to drive one. Likewise for parking in New Hope -- there is a market for $15 parking, and I can choose to participate or not. Enough people choose to participate to make it worthwhile to the railroad without worrying about me.

Let's put this another way -- will the exact same house sell for the exact same price in New York as in Detroit? Ticket and parking pricing, like real estate pricing, is less about the product and more about the location.

The State of PA funded an experiment in synergy several years ago - a Railroad Historic Trail jointly marketed by the state and with discount fares available from the many railroad related attractions on it. Perhaps somebody - or a few somebodies - who were running member operations at the time can inform us on how well it worked?

dave

Steve's post hits the nail squarely on the head. The only correction I'd make to what he says is I'd substitute the word "tiny" vs. "small" in describing the percentage of railfans to the total ridership. My unscientific observation of the riders at the NH&I is that if the railfans make up 1% of the ridership that's a lot!! Point being that the overwhelming majority of the customers are clearly daisy pickers. With the important exception of the seasonal specialty trains ( Santa, North Pole, Easter Bunny, Autumn Leaf etc., etc.) 99% of the riders are folks who came to New Hope to play tourists, heard the whistle and decided to include a " choo-choo" ride in their days activites. NH&I's ridership is HIGHLY dependant on the towns ability to draw visitors. Pure and simple.

The specialty trains are another case. Thanks in large part to the internet these trains often advance sell-out completely via internet credit card purchases. These tickets are non-refundable AND non-exchangeable and thus the trains revenue is gauranteed even if only one rider out of 400 shows up!! In a few extrodinary cases ( such as this past weekends heavy snow storm) the railroad will allow those unable to make it use their tickets for another day, space permitting.

Hope everyone has a great Christmas!!

Ross Rowland

Is $15 for parking "gouging?" Not any more than selling a Mercedes is "gouging." I can't afford to drive a Mercedes, so I don't -- but obviously there is a market for folks who choose to drive one. Likewise for parking in New Hope -- there is a market for $15 parking, and I can choose to participate or not. Enough people choose to participate to make it worthwhile to the railroad without worrying about me.


Amen!

I know from experience that railroads being in fairly close proximity to each other has a small effect on its ridership, but nothing that would "hurt our numbers." Working for West Chester Railroad, we are smack dab in the middle of three juggernauts. 45 minutes from Strasburg, 40 minutes from Wilmington & Western, and 1.5 hours from NH&I (covered by steam on 3 sides).

I'd venture to say that for Special Event trains; when a passenger goes on a Santa train, they are probably only going to go on one per year. So if they come to West Chester this week, it is very doubtful they will be at W&W the next week.

I try to have our crews make it a point to poll some of our passengers asking about their experiences, how they heard of us, and if they have ridden with us before. We have quite a lot of repeat customers. They notice when we make changes, comment on things they like/don't like. I have also heard passengers compare us with other local railroads. Naturally people will compare experiences, positive or negative. We luckily have the advantage of having a very large local population around us being so close to Philadelphia.

I apologize for resurrecting this dead topic, but I recently had a talk with Paul Nichini, the President of NH&I, and I just wanted to clear my conscience with regard to the comments I made here on page 3. I hadn't quite realized it when I made those remarks, but especially from the point of view of the folks who've given the best years of their lives to make the place what it is today - some who are good friends of mine - I pretty much trashed them, and for that I sincerely apologize. I'd grossly misjudged Mr. Nichini based on rumors, incomplete information, hearsay, and assumptions. He is in fact a very shrewd businessman with an extensive breadth of knowledge about the industry, and an all-around intelligent guy. You may have your ideas about how to run the place, as well do I, but the fact remains that the place pays good dividends to shareholders every year - and Paul keeps them well-informed and committed to the railroad's best interests.

To tie this back into preservation, the winter overhaul of No. 40 seems to be going very well. This past year, the railroad retained a new steam mechanic who seems to me to be a particularly brilliant fella. Some minor tweaks that were made to 40 during the latter part of last season have helped the locomotive tremendously, and I am looking forward to her coming out this spring in the best running condition she's been in for decades.