Tom Rodgers Wrote:
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> I wanted to take the kids this
> year. but they are sold out. you would think that
> if they were very smart people that they would
> have bought a couple of more passenger cars.

If you want an idea of how much a passenger car costs go over to www.railswap.org or www.ozarkmountainrailcar.com.

Of course, that's just the cost of the car. Figure if the car costs only $25,000 or $50,000, it probably needs a lot of work - it might not even be legally movable (or in some cases not even have trucks!) at that cost. Or the inside of the car might be totally gutted.

The cars that are fully restored are at least $150K, $200K or much more - and most of those are not suitable for excursion service (i.e. they are sleepers or other private varnish cars).

Then, add to that the cost to move the car to the home railroad, prep it for service, paint it...and THEN the cost of maintenance. Yes, railroad cars require a lot of maintenance.

The saying that "it takes money to make money" starts to make a lot of sense. Yes, they COULD make more money...sometimes. Othertimes, they don't have as much business and therefore have extra cars sitting around that cost money but don't bring in revenue. (Thus, the reason why your favorite Amtrak train isn't 80 cars long at Christmas, or your favorite Southwest flight isn't a 747-400 in intra-Japan Commuter all-coach configuration.) It's actually OK to be full, as long as your ticket price reflects that you're making money (a positive return) on that full trip. It's better than to run a mostly empty train and lose all sorts of money doing it. Especially when you're trying to preserve and keep a steam locomotive running...losing money only means one thing - that day when it makes more sense to lay up the steam engine and park it in a park, and bring in a S-2 or a SW-9 to run the passenger trains - either locomotive can be purchased in running order for about $50K-100K and are a lot less expensive to operate than the steam locomotive (and easier to fix!)