Good Morning All! I came home last night after being run ragged from my convention duties and felt it best to wait until I was more awake (and sober) before I answered some of the questions on the threads below.

First off, I do not consider people who want to bring their kids into town to watch the arrival of a train "freeloaders". I'm glad ozzman and the budding railfan got to see the 425 arrive in J.T. Truth be told, if I wasn't so caught up in convention activities, I would have seen your post and replied with a (ballpark) answer myself.

Now, as to the NRHS, the public and chasers....

I do agree that the NRHS has done a poor job promoting itself to the general public. I often think that some NRHS members are still waiting to see if "This whole internet thing is going to catch on". Our convention group took to Facebook for the first time, and to the boards to promote our event, to the consternation of some, but with great success. In the end we still felt we needed to do more to expose ourselves to the general public though.

To that end the L&WV chapter and the Convention Committee hosted the Flag Coal 75 in Scranton and had a successful event last Sunday for the general public. We publicized a caboose train at a minimal fare and it was (very) well attended. During the event we promoted the NRHS by showing off things such as the DL&W and RDG F's restored by NRHS chapters as well as the Rivanna Chapter's PRR Caboose. We covered Railcamp and the NRHS Heritage Grant Program. A lot of families, a lot of kids came out last weekend. Hopefully we made some new friends. To be honest it took some doing to have the NRHS National let us hold such a non-member event that I'm proud to say ran slightly in the red, but we eventually brought the powers that be over to our way of thinking and they put their support behind it. We had the newspaper and two news stations cover our event and put the NRHS in the public eye.

I would have loved to sold excursion tickets to the general public, but that wasn't in the cards. We could have sold a few more cars on at least 2 of our trips, but several Steamtown cars were undergoing a conversion to steam heat and other work. We made the decision not to promote trips to the general public that they could not get tickets on. Perhaps it was the fact that we fought to keep prices reasonable, took to the internet in force or just that we offered some really neat stuff, in the end we sold out every major trip months in advance, a catastrophic success you might say.

As for the chasers... Most everyone chases. I'm pretty sure everyone reading this has. I have chased from time to time (though I usually made a contribution though a ticket purchase or donation). I've chased Strasburg, New Hope and the R&N, but I've also purchased tickets and ridden their trips. A lot of chasers (I'd dare say a majority) don't do that. I'd go so far as to say that publishing train schedules would not generate any new membership or revenue. Chasing doesn't make you a despicable person (although a lot of despicable people chase). If you chase, you really don't have any right to ask, demand, expect or complain. It's a free country, take your shots, but don't expect us to expend resources on helping you.

As for chaser packages and such. For trips operating over class one and regional railroads, this is not a good idea for several reasons. First, it invites trespassing making future operations more difficult. Care to have me tell you about some of the stuff I saw last week? Perhaps people climbing on revenue freight equipment? Walking between cars during switching movements? Cursing at railroad employees for getting in their pictures/video? I don't care if that's a minority of chasers, it's guilt by association. I'd be very surprised if some of our partners ever let us do anything like this again! My favorite was the guy on Thursday who parked his silver Mustang VERY close to the tracks, who then yelled at us for having him move it so the water truck could reach the 3254. Or the several other chasers who said we should have put up a "No Parking" sign there.

A second reason is liability. It's not railfans suing us or suing the operating carriers I'm worried about. It's the guy driving and videotaping who hits the car in front of him that concerns me. With some of the driving and other behavior I've seen out there, giving maps and schedules to some chasers is like giving a loaded gun to a four year old. Don't get me started on the chasers who flip the finger to people on their way home from church or the grocery store.

In the end, I'd like to think we offered the general public some options while delivering a quality product to the people who paid to the ride. I would not change a thing we did.

I invite responses.

Dave Crosby, Railroad Coordinator, Endless Mountain Rails 2010.

Well said David and congratulations on a very well run convention. From all I've heard it was well planned and equally well executed.

I especially liked your thoughts regarding our chaser brothers. The only thing I wish you had done was had the Mustang impounded for tresspassing. I would have.

Again, congrats to you and your team for a job well done!!

Ross Rowland

I must second Ross's comments. I'm just sad that the behavior of some of the chasers is as bad as what I saw that ruined chasing for me--and from your description, has gotten worse.

Not really related to this, but you and Ross would probably appreciate an incident that occured on what was then the Chessie System in Montgomery, W.Va., when I was a student at West Virginia Tech in the 1970s. One local resident regularly parked his car near the former C&O tracks (he lived nearby), but for some reason he left the door open on day, and a train clipped it. It didn't take the door off, the door was in a position that the train closed it; in fact, the door was only about an inch or so closer to the track than it should have been. However, the train was running at a bit of speed, and slammed the door shut with enough force that the window glass went flying into the car in about 10 million pieces. It was funny to watch this fellow driving around town with a tiny dent in the edge of the door and some plastic taped over the window in January. . .

Just in case anybody doesn't think Dave wasn't willing to go the extra mile.

Better you than me, as I'm pretty sure I might either uh-uh or cause a catastrophic lens fracture.

Seriously good job David. Only thing I wish could've been different would have been having Mr Gramling and Flagg 75 spend the entire summer and have five more coaches on the Sunbury trip, as I procrastinated to long!


.

Wow SH

Nice picture of me. I look a lot trimmer than in most pictures. I shall have to use this...

Dave

Dave,

I have to agree about your comments about some of the "chasers" - I got to meet a few of them for the first time - and just being around them for a few minutes, I can tell there were a couple that were downright rude and ignorant, and people that I would not want to be around in general. People that I generally would not want to be around for more than a couple minutes (and for the most part, that was correct). Then again, there were a lot of them that were really nice, good people.

Anyway...Here's video footage that I shot of the Lehigh Rambler excursion on Saturday - enjoy, share with friends, and don't forget to watch my other videos!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJhUjkjVdJA

One of the things that amused us (and sometimes pissed us off)was observing the never ending circus from our perch in 1522's cab. I've seen all of what Dave described and some things I never thought I would see. Sometimes people suvive in spite of themselves.

Dave - did you mean to say the Convention ran in the red as stated? Considering most, if not all rides were a sell out, that would seem a bit odd. If so, sales to the public, especially at the non-member price would've been a big help and could've included a free one year membership.

I'll stand by my avocation of support packs. Skip the maps, if risk is feared, but the pack would include a few tokens of appreciation, a donation of some type and allow not only a bit of "bragging rights", but also advertise the need for such support to others at the same time. As for listing schedules, unless your goal is avoiding liability, I think everyone has the right to simply ask though not expect.

Congratulations to you and the organizers for pulling off such a successful event - an event spanning nearly a week with several events with several different groups - just a superb job!

/Mitch

Hello All,

Just some clarification.... The Flag Coal visit was done without consideration as to profit. The $5.00 fares were only to offset our costs. The chapter itself contributed several thousand dollars to host the event. We were also very fortunate that the Lackawanna Heritage Valley Authority provided financial assistance. Hence the "in the red" remark. It was nice that the organization could jump into this without an eye towards reaping a financial reward.

As for the overall convention. I'm not the treasurer, but I'm sure we'll come out just fine :)

Crosby

PS: I think that support pack has some merit. Perhaps for the next Scranton convention! Hope you had fun in WV!

Did I miss something here? One of the F3A units is owned by ARHS and I was not aware that they have any official affiliation with the NRHS.

PC

The RDG F's were restored by the Philly & Lancaster Chapters, hence the plurality.

Funny how Mr Mitchel hasn't responded here....

Crosby

Reading Company Technical and Historical Society owns #902 while the Philadelphia Chapter of the NRHS owns #903. Their affiliation with the NRHS is similar to that of the R&N which ran their own Pacifc #425 for the event. No connection but welcome participents. The RDG units were not actually scheduled to run, rather they became substitution power for CN #3254 due to some track issues. The event was Founder's Day and not a convention event, but rather Steamtown's own event which ran the same day as R&N's #425 which was part of the convention. Kind of wondering why Founder's Day could not be run Sunday allowing patrons to ride both.

/Mitch

Mitch

The Saturday Founder's Day excursion was somewhat like Railfest. That's the day the town of Delaware Water Gap wanted it. We would have loved to make it an unofficial ending to the convention, but ya' can't win 'em all I guess...

Crosby

Founders Day in the town of Delaware Water Gap has been held the last Saturday in June for a number of years, even pre-dating the Steamtown excursions. From the town's point of view (and I assume Steamtown) the day was a success as the train was sold out. In past years we have has a sales table at the event but didn't this year due to the convention. I would be curious to know what the passengers or the people in town thought of the Reading diesels being the power instead of steam.

Dave, congratulations for a successful convention. I would've liked to have made it up for at least a day, but I burned up a lot of vacation time working on the DL&W 664 and couldn't get away from work.

As Preston stated, the ARHS is not affiliated with the NRHS, but the Convention was the impetus to getting the F-3's repainted. Unfortunately, ours took longer than expected, so Tri-State (NRHS) wasn't able to finish their unit, but we hope to have the set completed in the near future. [I could've used another week to keep working on the nose of our unit, but it was not to be......]

Steamtown NHS has been a very gracious host, and we look forward to a fruitful working relationship with them. We would not have been able to finish our unit as quickly as we did without the use of their facilities and help from their personnel.

Tim Weidner (RCT&HS) did a fantastic welding job in replacing some severly rusted metal on the cab of the 664, so I dare say this is probably the best this engine has looked since it rolled out the doors of LaGrange!

Walter Hoffmann
President, ARHS