Re: Friends RGS September charter 80% sold out

Every time there is an expensive charter, people complain about the price, but it seems that every time the C&TS or the Friends run a reasonably priced trip, it is a struggle to get it to sell out. The high end trip is only a few tickets short of selling out and will no doubt sell out by September, but there are about 20 tickets still left for the reasonably priced (about 1/2 the two day trip daily rate) September 4 trip. I see that the Friends trips on June 3 & 4 have the same problem. The Saturday trip has sold out but the Sunday trip is still nearly 20 short of a sell out. Anyone riding Sunday is going to get a great trip with uncrowded photo lines at 1/2 the usual price for such charters!

I think there are a couple of issues. Number one is lack of advertising. It's expensive to advertise in the Narrow Gauge Gazette and in Railfan or Trains, so that hasn't been done. I have posted a couple of the flyers here on the NGDF and the thread very quickly drops down the page and out of sight, so I assume that the forum isn't a big market for low cost charters. If it's on the Friends website anywhere, it's probably hidden in one of the news forums and the average person isn't going to stumble across it. Anyone have any suggestions on where to post to get wider coverage that would target the more casual railfan? The people interested in more intensive, and therefore more expensive charters, find out about these without much difficulty.

Number two is are there really very many people, other than the dedicated photographers, that are interested in photo freights? Are the casual fans more interested in a nice ride on the railroad with possibly a few runbys thrown in? Any ideas on how to appeal to that demographic?

Of course, when they run the rotary they will have the opposite problem. Too many people!

Michael Allen