future 611 trips ??

[NW Mailing List]

Hey Phil

While I love the concept and know it was successful for the Tornado and think it is great. As far as I know, there is nothing about setting up some sort of deal in this country to a monthly donation program.

However, the 1218 is going to be a lot different, not just a case of "build it, and they will come." Do not get me wrong, I'd love to see it happen, but I am also a more practical person.

Bruce Harper's post of Steve Lee's commentary explains what is missing or wrong with 1218. I observed the same thing when I was there in 1995 for the auction. All that is fixable, finding the folks to do the work, possible. In addition, there were problems with 1218 most of its excursion career with tram issues on, I believe, the front engine. In fact Richard Shell was asked to ride along and video tape from a high rail truck on Blue Ridge to tape the motion to see if they could determine the problem. The answer was no determination was made, and before you even ask, Richard's tape was lost by someone he loaned it to. We lost part of the spring rigging up on the C&O along James River and delayed that part of the railroad for about 3 hours until we made temporary repairs to cripple it to Lynchburg.

The reason that 1218 is problematic, is the 1218 and 611 both require mainline railroad to operate on, a well maintained mainline. Both locomotives have clearance issues and both are large, heavy locomotives, therefore, no smaller lines, with light bridges or lighter rail.  This would require the cooperation of NS (most likely) to have a place to operate them and NS without Wick Moorman is not as friendly to steam operation. 

Sure, 611 ran this year and it may run again next year, but remember how limited the trips are, and with increased costs, the ticket prices were higher than ever, and some trips did not sell out this year. Most of that is because you cannot go to the same well but so many times before it runs dry. Unfortunately, 611 can only go so many places to turn today, and that is predicating where NS will allow them to run.

In addition, when 611 was first discussed with Wick Moorman of NS back in 2013 (I think), Moorman stated without a doubt that people only wanted to ride trips that were 4-5 hours long, no "death marches" and he listed three trips as examples, one of which was Roanoke-Bluefield, 100 miles each way. Now, how or why they did a trip from Spencer to Asheville, I believe about 132 miles each way, on harder terrain, last year, I don't know. I do know they were well over 15 hours of trip that time. Notice there was no such trip this year.

If 611 or 1218 is restricted to run only on the original N&W, there are not a lot of big population centers available, Norfolk is about it, the N&W no longer goesto CIncinnati. So marketing tickets is more difficult as you have a more limited base of riders. Now, if you do have big population centers, it also becomes difficult, as it is much harder to get noticed in the big market, and either requires advertising (paid) or someone who is well connected locally.

Personally, I think it would be great to see 1218 or 2156 in steam, but unless someone can really come up with a business plan to make it work, I doubt VMT is going to participate. 

We were tremendously lucky to have had 1218 to run at all, it is quite a different world and corporations today, as far as I know, there is no Robert Claytor out there who can make it happen.

Best
Ken Miller
On Jun 2, 2017, at 10:11 AM, NW Mailing List via NW-Mailing-List wrote:

> Good afternoon from the UK.,
>  
> Good points but all is not lost. The loco preservation/restoration/operation world here has created a whole new set of skills by taking on apprentices/trainees. Some of this has been government funded (I know this is not always popular) and some have been privately sponsored. This ensures the skills base is not diluted and the specific skills learned are transferrable into other domains. A win-win!
>  
> The Tornado model for funding loco restoration/new building seems to offer a way out of the conundrum. A large number of supporters contributing a small amount on a regular basis was able to develop a base for funding a wholly new locomotive being built for main line high speed operations. Whether there are rules precluding this sort of thing in the US I don’t know but I’m sure someone could advise on this. It has to be worth a look. Is there some sort of charity structure that might be developed?  It would be a tragedy if 1218 was side lined for good.
>  
> Phil Mortimer  

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