Re: WP&Y sold?????
| April 03, 2018 12:12PM |
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I've ridden the WP&Y twice and I can assure you, railfans are the very last people anyone in Skagway thinks of.
And why? Because so few actually show up there.
When I was there the second time in 2015, I got into a discussion with a nice lady who worked for the WP&Y and we discussed the line's history during WW2. She knew next to nothing about the line during the war and at the end she mentioned how nobody who rides there knows anything about trains. In short, no railfans. She said in almost a decade of working there, she'd only seen maybe a dozen diehard train fan types. The vast majority of paying customers, she said, were normal folks looking to do something different at one of the cruise ship stops. She also said that the gift shop sells most of it's railfan and modeler related stuff online mail order.
When I told her I often referred to the line as "the best tourist RR in the US that train fans never get to," she said that was very accurate based on her observations.
Heck, even during the NRHS national convention in Alaska, hardly anyone going there made the effort to get to the WP&Y (I got this from one of the staff people at that convention, and he said he wasn't shocked at all the hear that).
Dan Robirds Wrote:
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> > > Obviously serving the cruise business would be their primary focus, but if railfan oriented events produce a profit, especially with underutilized resources, they will likely continue. > >>
-Lee
Flickr photo set of my On30 layout
And why? Because so few actually show up there.
When I was there the second time in 2015, I got into a discussion with a nice lady who worked for the WP&Y and we discussed the line's history during WW2. She knew next to nothing about the line during the war and at the end she mentioned how nobody who rides there knows anything about trains. In short, no railfans. She said in almost a decade of working there, she'd only seen maybe a dozen diehard train fan types. The vast majority of paying customers, she said, were normal folks looking to do something different at one of the cruise ship stops. She also said that the gift shop sells most of it's railfan and modeler related stuff online mail order.
When I told her I often referred to the line as "the best tourist RR in the US that train fans never get to," she said that was very accurate based on her observations.
Heck, even during the NRHS national convention in Alaska, hardly anyone going there made the effort to get to the WP&Y (I got this from one of the staff people at that convention, and he said he wasn't shocked at all the hear that).
Dan Robirds Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> > > Obviously serving the cruise business would be their primary focus, but if railfan oriented events produce a profit, especially with underutilized resources, they will likely continue. > >>
-Lee
Flickr photo set of my On30 layout
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488 stops for water at Los Pinos tank on closing day Oct. 1979. Photo courtesy Don Richter
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