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

Russo Loco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 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

That's a big reason to have the rider boxcars. I was getting something big off my chest about those rider boxcars! I'd love to ride one of those freight trains for sure, but I'm a poor high school student!