First off, I was just asking if anyone had any experience of such an operation (or if something similar had been tried). Nobody said I'm trying to finalize a business plan to seek funding.

1. If modern dinner trains have such short lifespans--wouldn't trying a different marketing strategy be a potentially good move, at least for periodic special runs?

2. I don't know how many people it would appeal to. Nobody in the US gives much of a crap about history but there sure are a lot of museums around. And, everyone eats--just look around. It's probably easier to find the Holy Grail than a skinny American today.

2a. That's what marketing is for--to educate the public about a product or service.

2b. I'm talking about recreating food, not dining cars with spitoons and no A/C.

2c. Railfans aren't the sole target market. If they were no dinner train would have ever left the station platform.

2d. See response to 2c.

3. How the heck would I know costs that when I haven't even decided on the first dish?

4. Public life will return to "normal" after a vaccine is in place. Did the world population spend the 1920s hiding because of the Spanish flu pandemic? No, and it'll be the same for Covid after effective vaccines are in place.

With few exceptions, your comments apply to ANY dinner train operation and don't address my specific question: "has any dinner train operation really attempted to explore different roads' menus via a series of trips?" Sorry if you had a bad dinner train experience (or worse yet, your dinner train operation went belly up due to lack of imagination).