Re: Taking care of the 'Summer of Seventy' Volunteers

Hi, John -

Last year Soni, Alan and I talked this over briefly; Soni wanted to simply invite all of
the volunteers who could be located to ride for free, and even - as noted elsewhere -
suggested 'spiking the punch' by tossing out a few styrofoam "rocks" for some of the
volunteers remove from the track in The Narrows as part of the re-enactment pageant.

Lots of things haven't turned out as hoped for this year.  Per Alan, the budget won't support this extra train in August (it wasn't even part of the original 40th B.D. schedule published a couple of months ago); Alan is sticking his neck out yet again to do everything he can to ensure that this special can be run - honoring the 'Summer of Seventy' volunteers is the whole reason I've been pushing for a 40th Anniversary Celebration for the past five or six years - but he doesn't have any money to pay for it.

The idea of having 40 extra seats available to the public at $100 each occurred to us, but that seemed a bit steep for an oddball afternoon train with limited photo ops, so I suggested that $100 might not seem so bad if the buyer could feel he was helping out by sponsoring a ticket for a volunteer as well.  I have chartered the caboose for $1,000 and hopefully a few people will kick in $150 or $200 instead of just $100 so that fifty or sixty volunteers - not just forty - will be able to come along.

- Russ