Hi Michael,
That post on the C&TS website is difficult to understand. As noted, the tickets for the VIHR excursions were sold in January of 2020, before any COVID restrictions were developed. At that time, COVID was just beginning to make the news and was thought to be just a China problem. My tickets are dated 1/28/2020.
Unless the railroad becomes aware of ticket holders who cannot make the event, and is waitlisting people, I would not expect any more tickets to be released. Remember, some of these excursions are photo events, and can’t just add patrons without potentially affecting the quality of the event. Photographers make decisions about what events they will attend, based on knowing the size of the photo lines. In addition, these are all small locomotives, and there are limits to how many cars they can pull.
/Kevin Madore