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| The End of Class One Steam? | ||
| By John A. Craft | ||
| " . . . the Steam Locomotive is here to stay." - W. Graham Claytor, Jr., speaking to the NRHS Convention banquet in Richmond, VA, September 1966, shortly after 4501's return to Southern rails. | ||
| The unthinkable has happened. For the first time in over 30 years, not a SINGLE steam locomotive turned a wheel on a Class 1 railroad during the fall "excursion season." No New River trips. No Rathole trips. No Sherman Hill trips. No Hoboken - Port Jervis trips. Nothing. | ||
| Don't get me wrong; there was steam on the "main line." Ohio Central came nigh to covering its entire railroad with 4-6-2 1293 in October; the Pacific called at Columbus, Brewster, and Gould Tunnel. And Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum's no. 610 has rattled off trips over a scenic Central of Georgia line all month long. I hear you saying, "Wait a minute Craft, steam ran all year long on Class Ones! Did you forget about 3751, 4449, 1522 and 261 on BNSF? 844 and 3751 on UP? Aren't you being just a tad melodramatic?" Maybe. But fall traditionally brought out steam in a cornucopia of excursions, and a single weekend might force the travelling steam fan to choose between three or four major main line events. | ||
| Just look at September - November 1988. We find Nickel Plate 587 making her debut trips in Indiana on a weekend when both Nickel Plate 765 and Norfolk & Western 1218 were running excursions in neighboring Ohio; the following weekend, 1218 met sister 611 in Chattanooga while L&N 152 ran on CSX and 765 ran on Conrail. The following weekend 611 and 765 were faced with competition from UP's Challenger 3985. It goes on: through mid-November not a single weekend passed without three big engines on the mainline (for the record, SSW 4-8-4 joined those mentioned above). One would not have found the situation much different in 1987 or 1989, or indeed 1993. | ||
| How did we get here? And can we find our way back? The answer depends: on the economy, on luck, but mostly on us. Those of us who ride, who work, who champion steam on the Class 1 main line. | ||
| How did we get here? If we could answer that definitively, I wouldn't be sitting her writing this. But among the contributors: We're a victim of the railroad's successes. The Class 1s got themselves into a bind in the 70s and 80s; they got rid of more infrastructure than they should have. Traffic surges in the 90s have created choked corridors and, just as important, exhausted employees in the field. (These, incidentally, are the two reasons Norfolk Southern said goodbye to its program; no one wanted to believe them at the time.) | ||
| We didn't follow Shakespeare's advice. Liability concerns are real when fortunes are made by pouring coffee in one's own lap. Gripe all you want about lawyers and fraidy-cat executives; they have the gold, they make the rules, and they're right to limit their risk. | ||
| Corporate paternalism is dead. It was mortally wounded in Ronald Reagan's first term, and buried in his second. It's every worker, and every company, for him- or it- self. And every one of us who has a pension, or a 401K, or a mutual fund is the richer for it. Gone are the days when a Claytor can justify losses on a public excursion program. | ||
| Perhaps most importantly, Steam's been dead for over forty years. David P. Morgan wrote the obituary for steam in 1954; only the extremes of the spectrum (highly efficient power on UP and N&W, or shortline survivors) survived after that. To have had five years' experience with steam on most railroads, you would have had to start work shortly after being mustered out of Eisenhower and MacArthur's invasion forces; you didn't see many of these on those BNSF employee specials. To even remember steam one must be nearly eligible for membership in AARP. Steam ain't a boomer experience, y'all; nostalgia doesn't sell to someone who was never there, and $150 excursion tickets aren't easy to buy when you're depending on Social Security. | ||
| OK, so there's no silver bullet, no single cause. Is there a simple solution? 'Fraid not. | ||
| You know the drill: denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance. We're still in denial - carping about the evil David Goode, refusing to believe that CSX really NEEDS $200 Million in insurance, looking for conspiracy theories everywhere. G T F O I - if you need a translation, send me an email. And while you're at it, go ahead and get mad - get VERY mad. | ||
| I'll clue you in in advance; bargaining won't get you very far. Your organization is not going to make a dent in the bottom line in a time when NS can drive away $73 Million dollars in business by bungling the Conrail integration. But you're not going to convince anyone that you're a drop in the bucket, so why not let you run? | ||
| Which brings us to acceptance. You're a supplicant, with little to offer a multi-billion dollar corporation. How can you possibly convince David Goode (for example) to change his mind? | ||
| Change your focus. Your customer base of retirees is dwindling, and your ticket cost is rising. You can't attract their children for a nostalgic trip; it's novelty you'll be selling now. And don't expect to make money; your costs will probably be higher than your revenues. | ||
| Get into gear on your fundraising efforts. That means you've got to develop other revenue streams. To get non-riders to pay for your trips, you've got to offer something more than a train ride. Ramp up your educational efforts; run a trip in conjunction with the local history center and include some informal and fun activities at the destination, and on the train. And scrap those fourteen-hour death-march trips; if you can't make it a Nine-to-Five trip, you won't develop a repeat customer base. | ||
| Until that time, get your house in order. Your engine is overhauled and ready to fire up. Are your coaches spotless inside? Get rid of the stained upholstery and the musty smells before you need them. Make sure the bathrooms, air conditioning, and lights work all day. Your new customer base isn't interested in roughing it. Aim upscale; most groups will tell you that their premium seats sell faster than their coach seats. Have you considered something like a steam-powered "American-Orient Express?" | ||
| Wait for the pendulum to swing. There are a lot of managers who are willing to run steam climbing their way up the ladder. It's an even-money bet that there'll be another Claytor at the helm of a Class 1 one day; besides, Ed Burkhardt's going to land somewhere. But it's not going to be operated as a corporate program, or at a loss. And there's nothing like a good PR or economic crisis to sway some opinions. Philip Anschutz made good use of SP 4-8-4 4449 to promote SP's efforts to correct the environmental damage caused by a fertilizer spill; develop your contacts in your local Class 1's PR department, convince them your group is reliable, and hope for a lightning strike. Until then, get some experience running on a regional railroad - and make sure you're reputation is stellar when the trips are done. | ||
| Above all, Be businesslike when your chance comes. Every railroad manager you deal with will have far greater expectations of your group's business skills than ever before. Live up to them. Is there an MBA in your organization? Make him your railroad liaison. If your group is a bunch of mechanics who can't balance a checkbook and whose only motivation is to play conductor for fourteen to sixteen hours, it'll be obvious, and you'll be sunk. On the other hand, if your group is truly an educational organization whose goal is to help your community learn about its history, or the railroad to promote itself, you're going to have a better chance at success. | ||
| On a trip in Texas during that busy fall in 1988, Jim Boyd said, somewhat off-handedly, "These are the good old days!" None of us could have known how right he was. The slide from the heady days of the late 1980s came quickly; rebuilding will take a while. But we won't get there by wishing; polish up your images as well as your equipment and sell your capabilities. | ||
| John A. Craft | ||
| What's your reaction? Send your comments to mail@steamcentral.com. | ||
| From Hal Lewis: | ||
| "You make several good, realistic points. After several years of NRHS and Pacific Limited trips, as well as acting as Rail Ops Manager for the 1999 NRHS/R&LHS convention I think that I have a little to offer. You are very correct about branching out to other than railfans. Our yearly surveys showed that for other than trips Like Tennessee Pass, railfans constitute about 30% of ticket buyers. If multi-day trips are operated, tour operators can be an outstanding source of revenue. They bought 400 of the 600 Tennessee Pass tickets. They do their own marketing, reservations, and most do their own bus and motel arrangements. The most important item to a railroad, or Amtrak, besides having a large enough treasury, is credibility. You have to establish a track record for paying bills, being able to do hotel, bus and meal management and to schedule realistically. An average days mileage, in the West, used to be about 250 to 275 miles. Now, it's about 200 to 225 miles to avoid death marches. It should be fully understood that running a mainline trip involves a lot of planning and operations responsibility. In addition, if you don't design your reservations and ticketing system properly you can fall on your face. Running these trips isn't much fun for those who are really doing the work! Right now, Amtrak offers the best hope for mainline trips. They won't be with steam, but a group can learn from Amtrak charters and perhaps build enough of a treasury (and credibility) to be able to sponsor a steam trip if it comes their way." | ||
| From Aarne Frobom, Michigan State Trust for Railway Preservation, Inc.: | ||
| "I've thought for a while that the typical NRHS-style steam excursion was a dodo, and that besides being unmarketable to railroads and customers, was both a lousy re-creation of a historic passenger train and a bad way to display a working steam engine. (It was possible to ride the last of the NS 611 trips without ever actually seeing the steam engine if you bought a ticket). Neither did these corporate excursion programs accomplish much PR for their operators. To reach masses of people, you need to use electronic media. Doing it in person a few thousand at a time won't get the message across. I share your belief that the big carriers will eventually want to make use of the symbolism of the steam locomotive for political or commercial advertising, and I think one of the things that motivates that to happen will be the fact that steam engines are enormously telegenic. I also feel that there is a generation of future railroad managers who will be more inclined to experiment with steam operations. Not a few of them got their start in enthusiast groups or preservation efforts. A lot of them are keeping their enthusiasm secret for the time being, however. (One of my favorite phrases from Conrail was the description of one of their managers as "an outed railfan.") I view the fact that steam is now 45 years dead as an asset. The farther in the past it retreats, the more exotic and potent it becomes as a PR tool. Witness the way people go nuts whenever a sailing ship shows up in port." | ||
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