We have "Throttle Time" at the Monticello Railway Muesum. They use one of our diesels. Don't know & doubt that our Sou #401 will be included in that program but you never know what might happen.

Dave Huffman

"5) Overall, when taking into account all aspects, are engineer programs worth it?"

Let me answer this from a student's perspective.

I now have about 20 hours of experience as the engineer of a main line Steam Locomotive in regular passenger service. Each run is 50 miles, 16 stops, and requires you to run at a reasonable speed in order to maintain the schedule.

http://www.thewolsztynexperience.org

I have found the experience very rewarding and well worth the expense. While I have gotten pretty good at it, I have no illusion that I am anything but a rank amateur student. There is a lot more to it than simply being at the controls. That said I sure wish there were other extended programs in the US or even a way to formally train to be an engineer for a Steam Locomotive.

The best program in the US is currently at the C&TS railroad where both Fireman and Engineer training is available. I do believe that if done properly such engineer training programs can be of value to both the railroad and to the student.

Stan Ames

We have a instant motorman program at the SFTM for $15 plus the price of your ticket. It also helps that we run under 300V with a car designed for 600V that way if a instant motorman brings the control from notch 8 to notch 1 instead of shutting off completely we don't have a firework show under the car.

Greetings:
For 2010 Valley Railroad had 126 sessions with our "Your Hand On the Throttle" program (up from 110 in 2009). We have been offering this program since 1997 and have had no operational or safety issues. The current price is $500.00/session with a discount for "double sessions". We also discounted a group of 10 who came the same day and split up our "standard" (slightly less than an hour) sessions among the 10.
As long as we have a full (7 or 8 sessions) day the program is worth doing from our perspective...
Be well,
J.David

The Railroad Museum of New England/ Naugatuck Railroad no longer offers an engineer for an hour program and we have discontinued cab rides as well.

Mount Royal,

Do you know the reason why they were discontinued?

The Cooperstown and Charlotte Valley in New York offers an EFAH program and you can operate one of thier Alco S2's on a 16 mile run.



The EFAH was run on the northern section of the line that the normal trains don't run and due to it being isolated with no grade crossings. This area of track isn't heavily maintained since it sees very little traffic, funds and manpower are concentrated on the regular southern section used. It will not hold up to constant traffic.

Cab rides were discontinued because of possible distractions.

There were no problems or incidents that made these decisions, rather to head them off before anything did happen. EFAH may be reinstated in the future though I was told. If I missed anything I'm sure another RMNE member will comment.

Pretty well sums it up.

We still offer the program. We have had to make some changes though, since we do run on the general system. Under the old program, we ran on our track which, at the time, was considered insular. Today, there is sum debate as to whether our track is insular or not. So, we went ahead and applied for, and received a wavier from the FRA for our engineer for an hour program. We have not operated under these new rules yet, but plan to next year. You will also note that our program will now run on the general system, and not on our trackage anymore. We haven't finalized pricing et under the new setup.

Here are our terms for our wavier:

http://www.regulations.gov/search/Regs/home.html#documentDetail?R=0900006480a2330c

Jason Annen
President, Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum

Thanks for posting the link to the waiver. The conditions stipulated in the letter are common sense and should be SOP for all engineer programs.