My dad was a member of the chapter back then. I've got some video of a roundhouse that was going to be donated by CSX and operated as a museum in Jacksonville, circa 1986-1987. Apparently at some point the railroad decided they wanted to develop or sell the property to someone else. I was only 4 at the time but I recall a tank engine that was in a mall parking lot may have been moved and restored to use at this museum.

My questions are, does anyone know more details on what the big plans were, what details are there on why it didn't happen, what was the name and location of the roundhouse, and how was it redeveloped?

John -

I looked through the North Florida Chapter reports in NRHS National Railway Bulletin for that era. The only mention of a roundhouse I can find is the 1986 narrative that states "We finally got our lease on the SCL Westside Yard here in Jacksonville for a place to work on and store our equipment. It is complete with a roundhouse and turntable." The same report also says "We are still working with the Prime Osborne Convention Center to try and get at least a portion of it for a museum." It would appear at the time that the Chapter's museum plans were geared to the convention center and not the roundhouse.

- Alan Maples

Wow.
I was a member of the nearby Gul Wind chapter for many years and rode some of the North Florida chapter's NS excursions in that timeframe and this is the first I'd heard of either of these things.

How did the relationship between NS etc and the NRHS chapters work when it came to excursions?

Did the NRHS chapters get a portion of the ticket sale or did they essentially pay SOU/NS to run the trip?

If I recall correctly, the Southern quoted a price per seat with a minimum guarantee. The clubs marked it up and hoped to sell enough to cover the guarantee and have something left over. Commissary sales were not shared with the railroad. Some trips did better than others. In the DC area we had several clubs that formed a joint trip committee that divvied up the work and the proceeds. The Chessie may have had a different business arrangement but I don't remember any details.

- Alan Maples

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, the South had a disproportionately high number of NRHS Chapters "per capita." I was told years later that many Chapters in the Carolinas, Georgia, etc. would never have been formed, save for the excuse to bring the Southern to town for excursions.

My understanding (correct me if I'm wrong, please) was that the old SR and Chessie trip charter prices included insurance by the RR. It was the later demand that operators contract their own liability insurance, along with the dramatic nationwide spike in prices for increasingly unavailable insurance, that effectively killed mainline steam after the heyday from the 1960s to the early 1980s--along with a host of other factors (passenger car availability, reduced track capacity, etc.).

The Amtrak Sunset Limited Big Bayou Canot wreck in September of 1993, the worst wreck in Amtrak history, that killed 47, was the beginning of the end for the golden age of steam excursions. It was a huge shock to the liability insurance system for railroads. And it wasn't even the fault of the train or a railroad. It was the fault of a barge pilot lost in fog at night.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The Southern steam program or the NRHS chapters? I was on the joint trip committee in the DC area from 1975 - 80. The Southern needed people to staff their steam trains and could not get them from their own people, so they worked with local railfan groups who were more than willing to give up their weekends to be car hosts and commissary car workers. The financial arrangements made it even more of a good deal for all concerned as the clubs publicized the trips to get passengers on to the trains using photos and press releases provided by the railroad, plus their own press materials as well. They had the local contacts to be effective and nearly every newspaper, radio, or tv station had its resident railfan that would be approached to get their employer on board. This attracted the formation of the NRHS chapters if they were on the Southern route. The railroad put its trip list together every year to have trips in the places where these chapters were located. They went north to DC and then back south. This unfortunately gave us trains in the DC area during the hot part of the summer when working on the train could be brutal if the air conditioning wasn't working well. When the trips ended some of those chapters slowly died off as they had no other source of income other than member dues. The Chessie Steam Special and Safety Express took advantage of this well established practice and we were more than happy to join them as well. When you can't lose money doing what you love to do it is a great thing.

I was in two of the organizations that were part of the DC area Joint Trip Committee in the late 80s and early 90s. My understanding from talking to those who had been around awhile was that Potomac Chapter NRHS, a split-off from DC Chapter over the direction of DC Chapter, was originally just going to be the Capitol Railway Club, but became a NRHS Chapter because an organization had to be an NRHS Chapter, or associated with one (like Chesapeake Div. RRE) to sponsor a SR excursion. That policy would have been true in the early 1970s, right after what became Potomac Chapter was formed.

The NRHS goes back to the mid 1930s. SRR's steam program started in the 1960s.
The chapters which existed where the SRR (and later NS) ran soon hooked up with them to run excursions. I'd bet a lot of money that many chapters got started exactly for that reason. When NS pulled the plug in the 90s, I started watching the slow circling of the drain of many chapters who now had no big things to get ready for as SRR/NS excursions was all they were around for. And now, many chapters have folded up.

Some comments (not related to the original topic of this thread):

1) NRHS was organized some 85 plus years ago and RLHS is celebrating their 100th anniversary this year

2) The Southern/BS steam program lasted for roughly a third -or about 30 -- of the years NRHS has existed (from something like 1966 to 1994). In addition, the steam trips on CSX with the 2101 and 614 lasted only four.

Over the years, public steam excursions on the UP, except for those offered for a short period in the early 1990s by Pacific Limited, have been fairly rare -- typically a couple a year.

3) NRHS has had over 190 chapters and a listing (as of 2013) of when a chapter was admitted to NRHS and withdrew (or folded) is available at:

https://admin.nrhs.com/public/general/N ... _July_2013

4) Liability insurance is not the only reason major railroads have been reluctant to operate excursions After all they aren't in the entertainment business, where as companies like Disney, CedarFair and Six Flags are, as are cruise ships.

It also has been over a half century since most major railroads have had passenger departments, Exceptions include the Rock Island (which is gone), DRG and SR which ended their passenger train service about a decade or after Amtrak started and possibly the Alaska Railroad.

One only needs thinks of a benefits/cost/risk tradeoff to understand why excursions have become so rare.

Bob H

Thanks Alan. Didn't know the name of the shop or yard.