[PRCo] Re: Steam Into History

[Dwight Long]

Fred

Sloan Cornell's son Jim (RIP) was either the fireman or engineer on the engine that exploded.

Sloan's adventures into the difficult world of tourist railways did not end with the Gettysburg venture. He also owned the Knox and Kane, which operated over the old B&O, ex-Pittsburgh and Western, formerly narrow gauge line to Mt. Jewett and thence over the former Erie over the Kinzua Trestle.  He had one of the new-built Chinese steam engines plus another steamer up there.  In addition to the tourist business, there was a small (and unfortunately dwindling) freight business on the line.  He ran it for several years, sort of a shoestring operation, but managed to survive until the great catastrophe when a tornado blew down the unreconstructed portions of the Kinzua trestle.  He tried operating up TO the trestle's remains, but that was not the draw that going OVER it was.  I went up there in the fall of his last year of operation--got a pass to ride the ferry run of his equipment down to Marienville for the once-a-year trip from there to North Clarion Jct, which I had been to on the southern end of the P&W (over the Foxburg switchbacks) on a Pittsburgh Electric Railway Club trip in 1957.  I talked with Sloan while there.  He and his wife were trying to run the thing;  Jim was in the hospital seriously ill (and died soon thereafter) and Sloan literally had his head in his hands as he talked with me and opined that they would not be able to make it another year.  They did not.  Then there was a fire of suspicious origins in their enginehouse which damaged the steam locos and other equipment;  the remains were auctioned off, and the Knox and Kane is no more.  

Pity it is so, but the sad tale amplifies your thesis.  Just not enough indigenous tourist traffic in that part of Pa., and absent whatever draw the Trestle was, no way to make a tourist railway with minimal freight traffic viable.

Dwight

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Fred Schneider 
  To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org 
  Sent: Friday, 17 June, 2011 14:01
  Subject: [PRCo] Re: Steam Into History


  Beautiful reconstruction.

  Will it be successful?  

  It is very unfortunate that even historians do not look at history and learn from it and are therefore doomed to repeat it.  

  Tourist railroads that were created in the middle of a tourist center are generally successful because they siphon off a small percentage of the people who are already there while tourist railroads which were built to create tourism in an area generally failed because, by themselves, they simply are not an attraction big enough to carry their own weight.  It is the same principle we see with heritage trolleys that are unsuccessful because they were created to create business while light rail lines built to haul people who are already going somewhere are successful.   

  The Strasburg Rail Road was rescued from abandonment in 1958 and by 1960 they were back in business hauling passengers.   Their peak years saw around 425,000 revenue passengers, substantially more than any other tourist railroad simply because millions of people came to Lancaster County to see the Amish and Mennonite farmers and the railroad simply sucked off a little of that traffic.   Linn Moedinger told me they still haul around 400,000 a year but today half of them are the result of Thomas the Tank Engine.  General revenues are way down.   They make a lot of their money rebuilding locomotives for other railroads like the 844 for the Union Pacific.   (No, you won't see the 844 here but you will see its driving wheels in Strasburg.)   

  Lancaster County has over 100 hotels and motels.   Back in the 1970s I made a comparison with other areas in the state showing that Lancaster had more 5,000 tourist related jobs compared to the average that would might expect in the state for a county of similar population.   We cannot really document how many tourists come here but I think that 5,000 addition hotel, restaurant, gas station and retail jobs gives some idea what the Strasburg was so phenomenally successful.  

  Of course the success of the Strasburg caused others to venture into the same business but most of them were not in tourist areas and they failed.   The public really didn't care to drive miles just to get cinders in their eyes.   Examples:

  1.  Wannamaker, Kempton and Southern bought three miles of a former Reading Company branch in upper Berks County, Pennsylvania about 1963.   They bought a former Bonhomie and Hattiesburg Southern 2-8-2.   When it needed work, they sold it and downgraded.   The line is still marginally in business ... summer weekends I think.   They run about 36 to 38 days a year, 4 trips a day ... they might haul 15,000 people a year ... maybe.   Means they cannot pay anyone to do track work.   

  2.  Wolfsboro Railroad in New Hampshire bought the WK&S engine.   They failed and went out of business.   They were actually in a summer tourist area but the difference was people came to spend weeks or months or the whole summer in one place in a cottage on Lake Winnepesaukee whereas the Strasburg was dependent on daily turnover.   Wolfsboro was out of business almost before it started.

  3. East Broad Top is still struggling along.   I think the businss peaked at about 35,000 riders in the middle 1960s and has dropped to around 6,000 a year.   The Kovalchik family lost money running it and tried to find some other victim.   It is open again this year but only weekends and only one engine runs or out five or six on the property.   They are simply where no one goes.

  4.  Gettysburg Railroad was that Sloan Cornell attempt to take over the Reading branch from Mount Holly Springs to Gettysburg and run passenger and freight.   The man had his daughter working as an underage (the law required 18 year olds) brakeman in sandals the day I was there.   I looked closely and decided I didn't want to be anywhere near the place.   He was hauling perhaps 15,000 riders a year on weekends only and loosing more than he was making on passengers by delaying getting empty freight cars to the Conrail interchange track and thus paying outrageous per diem charges on the empty freight cars.   It eventually ended with a boiler explosion on his ex Mississippian 76, ex ex Frisco locomotive because the fireman didn't understand that the water glass was clogged and didn't know to blow down the glass.   That catastrophe resulted in a rewrite of the FRA rules for steam tourist railroads.    That man was working in the middle of a tourist area and still couldn't pull i!
   t off.  A replacement corporation still hauls diesel freight.   

  5.  Has anyone ever bothered to go up and look at Steamtown in Scranton?   It is only a mile off Interstate 81 but, by itself, it isn't a tourist attraction.   People don't really care about steam trains.   The most recent account I can find shows that 211,000 people visited the site the year that the National Park Service opened it.   In 2007 the count was down to 70,000 visitors.  

  6.  You want a really desolate place, try Promentory Utah.  I'll bet they don't get more than a few hundred people on a good day.   But it would be difficult to count because people like me use a Golden Age pass and are not counted.   My guess of a few hundred might be based on my being there at just right time on an exemplary day.   After all, how many people are going to go to the middle of a desert?  

  And now someone wants to get us to drive off Interstate 83 and get lost in southern York County to learn about history?   I guess the History Channel has proven people don't care about history because they keep changing it.  

  Linn Moedinger has told us in Trains magazine that the Strasburg is no longer in the nostalgia business but in the entertainment business.   Their greatest revenue producer today is Thomas the Tank Engine.  With that in mind, do you really think Matt, that anyone cares about Lincoln's funeral train through southern York County?   How many do you think even know who the man on our penny was?    

  Matt, it is not some into which I would place my pension money.




  On Jun 17, 2011, at 9:42 AM, Dennis F Cramer wrote:

  > Steam into History Inc. plans to build and operate a steam train to chronicle the role York County, Pa., played in Civil War history and to promote the area as a tourist destination.
  > Steam into History Inc. lauded York County Commissioners for setting the stage for construction of a Civil War-era locomotive that will operate between New Freedom and Hanover Junction. 
  > 
  > The commissioners approved a lease with the nonprofit Steam into History to use the county-owned rail lines, which have been in limited use since Hurricane Agnes in 1972. The rail lines are remnants of the fabled Northern Central Railway. 
  > 
  > President Abraham Lincoln rode into York County on the Northern Central lines on his way to deliver the Gettysburg Address in 1863. Steam into History hopes to have its train operating by 2013, coinciding with the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's famous speech. 
  > 
  > Passengers would board train in New Freedom for a nine-mile excursion north, through the southern York County countryside to the Civil War-era station at Hanover Junction, where, after a brief stop, the train would turn around and return to New Freedom. 
  > 
  > 
  > http://www.steamintohistory.com/
  > 
  > The builders
  > http://www.leviathan63.com/projects.html
  >