Re: Special Charters

Since you mentioned me specifically here was my logic on 2 different deals.

First let me say my ideas came about on the heels of doing the John Craft trips in October 92. I was one of John's assisting helpers on that extravaganza and I saw all the work that went on, but seeing what the railroad could do, it was encouraging to try something else as well.

(1) 1993...The idea was to run freight trains through the recently plowed snow from the Rotary. Once we knew they would run the Rotary we figured we could draw from that crowd to get enough to run some charter ops.

(1-A) The Saturday trip was to be the big one with two Chama-Cumbres turns in one day. This was priced at $350.00, and limited to 40 people.
(1- A Sunday one-way trip was offered for $250.00 Chama-Antonito.

The reality was that soft track west of Cresco caused the downgrade rotary to derail, and even with dumping ballast car loads into the spot, it was decided by the C&TS not to operate trains with riders over that part of the railroad. We were limited to 8 miles of track. We had a meeting early in the morning and offered refunds but only about 3 from Sunday took the refund. The railroad gave us another engine and we did all sorts of interesting stuff for the weekend, getting shots that normally one would overlook if you are trying to get a lot of miles behind you.

Bottom line, the railroad still got their money, most had a great time, and we covered expenses and had about $1500 we donated to the Friends. I did not do the trip with the intention of making some grand video, but did do a little video called "Chama Freight Turns" that was on the market for a few years. The goal was really to try to pull off the scenario, and had we been able to use the railroad I had some surprises planned for between Sublette and Lava, and we would have had a surprise freight meet, and another train option. But alas that never happened.
At least we had the 0503 in Rio Grande for that series of trips, and we did a couple of mid-train helpers out of Chama which had not been done in decades.

(2) 1997. This was not a public charter. Given the mess with our 1993 charter, I decided not to have to deal with being responsible for everyone should things get fouled up. Instead we were out there on this trip for several reasons...(A) Les Jarrett and I were working on our fourth and Final America By Rail-Route of the SW Cheif(, we were there to do a video on the Rotary, and (c) trying to make our trip pay in other ways for our travel and time.

So I came up with the idea of chartering the train for the day, and we did the deal where I shot video from a coach pulled by Diesel 19 AHEAD of engine 484 with a 4 coach passenger train...Chama-Cumbres. We turned there and went back, and took a 10 car freight up the hill in the afternoon doing the same scenario. We paid the one-day, one-engine charter fee for the 484, crew and cars, plus an additional fee for the use of the #19. This was a preseason price, and we asked about a second day and were told there was a very favorable 2-day rate. So Les and I decided to splurge and we would run a one-engine train to Osier and Back after doing the Chased by A Steam Train deal with 484. John West got wind of this, and wanted to join us and paid for the all-day helper fee, as he wanted to do multi-engine trains in the snow. That went well until we had issues at Osier, and never got to do Westbound freight ops.

So, looking back, we got to do some interesting things at a reasonable price, but on both charters things did not go as planned. Looking at what they charge today, I am glad we did what we did in 1993 and 1997.

Given the current costs, and the numbers of riders needed, to me the ticket prices have gotten out of hand to where expectations are so high due to cost the patron has to fork over.

I know this has been windy, but hey you asked!!!

In conclusion, might I suggest to the C&TS management(John Bush), that they consider operating some charters under the C&TS name. This might be in the form of railfan charters, or railfest type events. Perhaps there are patrons out there willing to go for something that is railroad sponsored versus something that is privately sponsored. Just a thought!
Greg