Hi Everyone:

After reading questions posted on "thomas", have a little info. and an observation.

The original thomas was built on a plymouth industial 6 wheel diesel chassis. The steam thomas is on the B.E.D.T. 0-6-0T from RR Museum of PA (I think #15??).

From somewhere, I had heard that the new ones being built are to be "dummies"...2 or 3 to standard, and 2 36" gauge, meant to be on one end, while a live loco pushes from the rear..now I could be wrong about this, so check it out.

My observation...we investigated having Thomas visit Rockton several years ago...the up-front costs are horrendous! If it fell flat, we would have to shut down and try to raise money to reopen.

Would someone please inform the powers-that-be that operate the thomas program that most museums are not blessed with Bill Gates as a member, or that state legislatures don't pour out funding to RR museums?

Anyone involved with smaller museuums, please E-mail me on this...maybe we could network, and manage to bring thomas to our museums too!

Thanks for listening

Mike Gellner, Member

South Carolina Railroad Museum

ebsite, South Carolina Railroad Museum
msgscrm@aol.com

> My observation...we investigated having
> Thomas visit Rockton several years ago...the
> up-front costs are horrendous! If it fell
> flat, we would have to shut down and try to
> raise money to reopen.

> Would someone please inform the
> powers-that-be that operate the thomas
> program that most museums are not blessed
> with Bill Gates as a member, or that state
> legislatures don't pour out funding to RR
> museums?

It is my understanding that Gullane Entertainment appreciates the problems of funding the cost of merchandise sales. For this reason, I hear, they are proposing for the uncoming expansion of the "Thomas" program to have the merchandise placed on consignment basis.

I understand that there are other "up-front" type costs involved with bringing large numbers of people onto the host site and with providing the retail sales. I do not believe that every museum or tourist railway has the resources of location and facilities to properly host "Thomas." How many of these sites have produced events on their own that bring in several thousand people in a weekend?

Brian Norden

bnorden@gateway.net

> My observation...we investigated having
> Thomas visit Rockton several years ago...the
> up-front costs are horrendous! If it fell
> flat, we would have to shut down and try to
> raise money to reopen.

I understand that the purpose of the unpowered Thomas's is so they will be lighter, and cost much less to haul from place to place. A lot of the up front cost now goes to the oversized load truck that the steam Thomas requires.

I have never heard of a Thomas event falling flat, quite the contrary. I heard that the recent one at the Illinois RR museum sold 46,000 tickets in 4 days of operation! Next year will be a different deal with 5 Thomas's out there instead of one, but at this time there seems to be no quenching the thirst for the little blue @#$%&.

One of the seminars at this year's joint meeting of ARM/TRAIN is about doing a big special event such as Thomas. The folks from Gullane Entertainment will be on hand as will the folks from NCTM to describe what it takes to deal with 39,000 folks in six days. Given that Thomas is about to expand greatly next year, this is a good opportunity to find out what it will take for many new organizations to add Thomas to their schedule.

Also, the Gullane folks have a vendor table and have been very good to help sponsor the conference. They'll be on hand for plenty of one-on-one consultation. Jim

Wrinnbo@aol.com

BTW, although your figures for what attendance the Thomas event did at the Illinois Railway Museum are slightly off, they're pretty close. Over four days we had a total of approximately 40,000 people, with the highest attendance being on the fourth day (Sunday): 10,450. We got these crowds despite the fact that it was raining sporadically for each of the first three Thomas days! There are some at IRM who are actually concerned about next years event because of an issue no one had seriously considered in years past: the ability of the highway infrastructure in the surrounding towns to handle the crowds! Yikes!

8-)

Goop
frank@gats.com

> BTW, although your figures for what
> attendance the Thomas event did at the
> Illinois Railway Museum are slightly off,
> they're pretty close. Over four days we had
> a total of approximately 40,000 people, with
> the highest attendance being on the fourth
> day (Sunday): 10,450. We got these crowds
> despite the fact that it was raining
> sporadically for each of the first three
> Thomas days! There are some at IRM who are
> actually concerned about next years event
> because of an issue no one had seriously
> considered in years past: the ability of the
> highway infrastructure in the surrounding
> towns to handle the crowds! Yikes!

Amen! We are an operation that is located in a town of 3,500 people in a Metropolitan area of over 9 million inhabitants. We'd love to have Thomas, but there is no way we could accomodate that number of visitors. We would wind up making many folks very upset and angry, and it just isn't worth it.

East Troy Electric Railroad
jftrolley@aol.com

We were quoted a flat fee of $30,000 (15k each way) for transportation of the Thomas locomotive, plus 15% of gross sales to Gullane, and another 15% to Strasburg, plus crew per diem/accomodation. Then there's the actual cost of running the event, advertising,...

Our problem is that while we have a great place for a Thomas event, we don't have a line long enough to offer a ride - maybe the dummy Thomas would be the thing for us?

Do you suppose us smaller guys in the southeast could work out a short regional Thomas tour that might lower transport costs and make it more cost effective for us all since it wouldn't need to go all the way to Strasburg and back every time? No problem doing any reasonable repairs or maintenence in the Savannah roundhouse.

Dave

irondave@bellsouth.net

> The steam
> thomas is on the B.E.D.T. 0-6-0T from RR
> Museum of PA (I think #15??).

Yes, THOMAS is former Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal 15 (Porter, 1917), but he isn't from the Railroad Museum of Pennslvania. The RMoP still has their ex-BEDT 0-6-0T, 13, in its collection. BEDT 15 came from the Toledo Lake Erie & Western (tourist) RR in OH. Earlier it had been on the short lived Southern Appalachian (tourist) RY in NC.

Regards,
Jim Robinson


jrobinson@dataram.com