I feel I need to clear the air in reqards to the 315. First of all the 315 will never be leased to anyone, period. Its not debatable or even worth discussing the reasons why. Anyone who has ever restored a locomotive to operating condition knows why. There are options though, one being, there are several locomotives on the D&S and CATS that are in need of restoration, one is very similiar to the 315.
There are several reasons the 315 hasn't run in the last two years. The first being money. Of the approxmently 25 excursion days we have run, only one has produced enough revenue to cover costs. Rail fans in the states don't come out in enough numbers and buy tickets to support the continual operation of the locomotive. The only excursion that has been financially acceptable included a large European ridership. In order to include these rail fans in numbers it is necessary to get an excursion advertised by the early or mid fall of the preceeding year of the excursion. Thats where a big stumbling block has been. Last year I attempted to get an excursion set up for 2012 during August of 2011. I had a sit down meeting with one of the railroads and afterwards my repeated calls never were answered till December, to late. So we didn't run this year.
Another reason is the fact we have several other restoration projects going on and contract dates are well past due. There is not enought volunteers to keep projest moving along quickly. We also underestimated the time it would take us to do a quality restoration and bit off to much. I also didn't realyze the very poor condition there open freight cars were in, they are really rotted.
When a guest locomotive operates on anothers trackage the amount of revenue to us is very limited. In the past we had grant money to fall back on, now we don't, so if we want to run excursions it is necessary for us to be relatively certain that it will pay for itself.
The last reason I'll talk about is the dwindling interest if the 315 runs every year. I will attempt to run an excursion in 2013 if we can get a reasonable deal where we can cover our costs otherwise I am content to let it sit, protected from the elements and from someone else profiting short term from her.
