In my past as a General Manager for a shortline railroad that after a couple of years added a dinner train, that I was also responsible for, you need enough freight revenue to support a dinner Train operation. The dinner train cannot be a drain on the freight operations, they can work togther for an overall possible profit. Dinner trains fall under all sorts of local health and safety codes that put on added expense and I will bet in SC county code the regulate the dinner train right out of business. You need to have at least FRA Class one track to runn a passenger train and the Branch is currently not class one but FRA excepted. So no dinner trains until the track and all Bridges meet FRA class one. 49 CFR part 213.9.(a)and for excepted track 213.9 (b) You also need to remember that FRA classifications of track are the minimum Standards. The SERA folks seem maintain their track on almost all the operations I have seen to the meet only the minimums for class one and two track, they are always just a defect away from a violation or a needed repair and maintain by defect and not by planned program track and bridge work. Any segment of track that a passenger train is run on in FRA class 1 to 3 must be inspected twice weekly 49 CFR part 213.233.

FRA is also going to have Bridge safety and inspection rules come into effect in 2010 and the bridges on the line need to have work.

Dinner trains need both local support and tourist traffic to be work. Two passneger operations that close to each other while different will just compete with each other for riders.

Cement plants in California in General are not well liked by the neighbors around them who moved in when the plant was already there and in most cases will do everything to shut the plant down. The rock from the quarry at Davenport is good for making cement but not so good as base materials and is not a ballast grade rock. I hope the SERA can make the Branch work but the car counts lead me to belive there is not enoght revenue to pay the bills Dinner train or not.