Glueck 2 Thread 0

Love the facadism comment.

Good read, especially given that response #1 which Tom pulled, lifted the veil.

If you take this thread, combine it with the McCain thread, you might think that doing anything at all is merely a waste.

Let me kindly point out that Xanterra already had a more or less complete "rail cruise train" (the former "Acadian" train set in service from Canada) in storage at Williams even before the AOE trainset came into their hands. If they were going to do luxury rail cruises from Los Angeles or the like, they already had cars adequate for the job in hand.

I've also lost track of just what ties there are/were, if any, between Xanterra, Anschutz, and/or the Denver Ski Train proposals that "derailed" last winter.

Anyhow, I have the chair and popcorn because this could potentially go a lot further than just one Greenbrier Express proposal.........

"What is preservation?"

It seems to be totally subjective, but there are (generally outside the rail world) commonly accepted norms amongst museum professionals. That me be a good place to start.

At somepoint you have to look at the original fabric and decide if a piece is preserved, restored, rebuilt or repicated.

Lets say I bought an ex UP sleeper from Ringling. The shell and trucks are all that are left of original fabric. If I recreate the inside, what do I have?

Using Strasburg is a spurious arguement, as it is clear they have. Preserved not only equient (and rebuilt a lot, too) but they preserve an experience.

A train othat is essentially a rolling luxury hotel is cool, but it doesnt preserve anything as those kinds of trains never existed before. See the difference?

Supposing Greenbrier was willing to offer long-term "employment" to certain historic private cars that otherwise would be languishing in storage sidings or operating other trips? And that, as a result of those cars being "off the market," that changes the potential "employment" for other cars, moving them up from potential to opportunity?

Why do we assume that the only cars that anyone would consider for such duty are cars that have been "bulldozed" end to end?

Well...that was the story wasn't it? Wasn't the story that the Greenbriar Flyer was going to be 16 luxury Long Island coaches stripped to the walls and recreated as casino cars, vip cars...parlor cars and so fourth? Am I wrong?

Now...the question is "why do people do that"? You look at the famous choo choos that used to ply this country and see nice equipment. But now everybody assumes they need to recreate a Holiday Inn Express inside and the record for these faux luxury choo choos is "forgetable" at best.

I think the people that design these things don't really understand what luxury is and what luxury means. They allow decorators loose with their money and the result is an explosion in low class taste and inappropriate materials. Flowery drapes...shag carpet and lots of granite counter tops. And Home Depot light fixtures...don't forget those.

Designing the interior of a railroad car is like making suits for a dwarf...less is more and a subtle pattern can save the day.

T7

As I salt the popcorn, let me spin this another way:

What if the AOE/GrandLuxe trainset eliminates the need to spend a whole bunch of money refurbishing a LIRR trainset in Pottstown, Pa.? GBX could lease the AOE/GL trainset from Xanterra for a year to prove and "test" the concept, with an option to purchase.

Were I the money behind the GBX, that sure sounds like a more sensible idea than investing millions into a new trainset--unless it's absolutely necessary to build bank vaults and integrated slot machines in the cars, or whatever........

[crunch, munch, munch.......]

I suppose you can debate whether or not this is "preservation" to your heart's content. I used to say the same thing about the "Spirit of Washington" dinner train, it wasn't preservation either, it was a fancy restaurant on wheels.

That said, this is definitely relevant to the group. I suspect that the Class 1's don't make the distinction between preservation and "fancy hotels built inside of former passenger cars". How operations like GBX and ARE, and the like interact with mainline railroads will have an impact on any operation that has a mainline connection and hopes to use it for anything from excursions to moving the occasional PV in or out.

So keeping tabs on them, and learning from what they do is, in my opinion, worth doing.

PS - Remind me not to sit in front of ADM at the movies...

A local operation, near and dear to my heart, but which will remain un-named, had a one time manager install sheetrock in an observation car. Yep, sheetrock... Yes, it worked (or more precisely didn't work) exactly as you would expect.

There is an argument to be made, Bob, for sure. AOE didn't belong in the same category as the Royal Canadian Pacific - preservation wise - or did it.

I would love to continue the conversation, but not in this thread which has now blatantly become another Greenbrier diatribe.

Here is a good counter-point to the faux luxury barges...at TVRM they have a great dinner train that is a pretty close representation of a real period diner operation. Instead of flowery drapes and deep fried shrimp they have left the diner close to the way it was built and serve food that is not far from what the Southern plated up decades ago (in some cases it is exactly what the railroads served). The serving crew wears exactly what the waiters on most diners wore as well (which is a lot).

So here we have an operation that serves a number of purposes. They are preserving original main-line diner operations, they offer an up-scale service to the customer and they put coins into the museum's treasury.

It seems to take a lot of work and the man behind the operation is apparently very dedicated to the task. If you ever ride the train you will hear the audible gasp when the waiters stream from the pantry with the entrees over their heads. And the bread pudding (I am told) is straight from the Southern Railroad instruction book. And those rolls...mercy!

Now they could have screwed oak plywood up everywhere...installed glittery Home Depot light fixtures and other baubbles...and served frozen hordevours and cheese cake but they didn't. They recognize that people wanted a true railroad experience...something special without being tacky.

T7

For the record, when I had a chance to ride one of the last Conrail Office Car Specials before the big merger/break-up, I noticed that a lot of some of the cars' interiors owed a lot more to Home Depot and Lowe's than they did to Pullman-Standard or ACF or Budd. The cars had good, solid furnishings, but still regular "everyday" furnishings, carpeting, wall panels, counters, etc. instead of mahogany, granite, polished brass, etc. I happened to discretely mention this to a staffer aboard the car, and he replied something to the effect of "Private car owners don't have stockholders to answer to." It was obviously a delicate dance of compromise, and I came to admire Conrail's management a lot more after that trip.

I must have missed something towards the beginning of this thread - did Xanterra actually claim they were accurately recreating a specific historic consist to be operated in truly recreated circumstances?

If not, they have every right to produce their show the way they see fit - and if they can make it pay, more power to them. I'm assuming they made no such claim, and as such have no problem giving them a lot of latitude in having tried to create an enhanced pleasureable rail cruise that could accidentally slant public awareness towards rail travel in a positive way.

I think if we truly want to expose ourselves to a lot of cost, liability, and loss of patronage all we need is to truly make our visitors experience what reality was in 1905, complete with the smells, exposed hazards on the job, lack of climate control, rudimentary sanitation, social inequities, lead paint freely peeling, icebox food storage, etc.

Most if not all of us have made peace with historic compromises to keep ourselves alive and kicking - once compromised, it becomes a matter of degree, which can only be judged on the basis of what is claimed and what actually evolves supporting those claims. I'm not going to pan SPAMALOT because it didn't acurately recreate actual events in dark age Britain, or CAMELOT either. Both are fine shows worth seeing (personal preference for Spamalot, your mileage may vary). In neither case did I attend a performance expecting a historic documentary, in both cases I was rewarded by a fine evenings well produced entertainment that lived up to or exceeded my expectations.

I'm not saying it's an either / or situation - we need to start thinking of our interpretive efforts in terms of audience pleasing storytelling and doing it well, but fortunately for us the real historic stories are for the most part interesting and make good theatre. Clean restrooms and safe sites don't have to detract in a meaningful way from the meat and bones of the story. It's about how well we do it and how good are our results........

We're not in the transportation business any more than Xanterra or Greenbriar. We're in the provision of experience business. I'm much more interested in how well you do what you claim to do than what your claim is, and will judge my money well spent or not according to those criteria - so will your visitors, assuming you have some.

dave

It is the topic (preservation vs. historic reuse or heritage railways) behind the original topic (the American Railway Express) that is significant...

There is no way we (railroad preservationist) will preserve and restore all the railroad equipment available... so, what happens to the rest... one viable option is reuse by "heritage" railroad operations... for example, SF Muni is now operating 40 or so heavily rebuilt PCC cars... what they are doing is not preservation, yet it is a great example of continuing use of railroad equipment...

Steam was mentioned... lack of steam is not an issue... there is preservation without steam... some electric, some diesel...

Let the discussion continue

OK, Randy I see your point. I was puizzled because that wasn't the topic behind the topic from my POV, but a sidetrack........to me the topic behind the topic is why it didn't reach critical mass and actually happen. I don't think there ever was anything having to do with preservation in the plan for ARE and can't imagine why we are linking the two on a very long thread.

But, if we are going to, I would respond that as an industry many of us are doing more to not preserve a lot of our collections than anybody else - we have way too much and lacked the discipline to stop grabbing a long time ago. Only recently has "rightsizing" collections gotten traction. It is a good transition when done well, and makes a lot of iron available for other purposes...maybe like land cruises, which circles back around and links preservation (or lack thereof) and running trains for land cruises in a sort of backwards way. Well, better than nothing I suppose. Oh, well.

dave

"A philosophical question comes to the fore: All preserved locomotives have suffered many changes along their lives, of which perhaps the most frequent one was fitting a superheater. What should be the state selected for preservation? The last one? Has the process ended? A steam locomotive is more than the cold hardware: it is a living being, all the alterations introduced along its life are the proof of this. In fact, it is a modernization process...."

Ing. L.D. Porta - Fundamental Principles of Steam Locomotive Modernization and Their Applications to Museum and Tourist Railway Locomotives