Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, November 21, 1994 TAG: 9411210085
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In small railroad towns and rail-industry centers such as Roanoke, rail buffs are launching a letter-writing campaign urging NS to continue the 28-year-old program. They also are asking elected officials to chime in.
Their motto: "Save Our Steam train."
Spokesmen for the railroad, which posted record-breaking profits of $492million in the first three quarters of this year, said the 50-odd steam excursions it ran annually interfered with freight operations on the 14,500 miles of line it owns.
"We just want [NS executives] to reconsider their decision," said Gary Gray, president of the National Railway Historical Society's Roanoke chapter.
The 300-member group is one of four chapters spearheading the campaign. One of the others is the Watauga Valley Chapter, based in Johnson City, Tenn.
The grass-roots effort has just begun, but already NS has received about 200 letters at its Norfolk headquarters, said Bill Schafer, director of the railroad's strategic-planning department.
Schafer is replying to each correspondent, firmly but politely explaining that the bullet-shaped Class J No.611 and the big-barreled 1218 engines have chugged into their last station and that the decision is final.
Perhaps because both those fabled engines were built in Roanoke, the company's announcement hit here like a sledgehammer banging a railroad spike. But the reverberations are being felt all along NS' massive web of track, Gray said.
The move has derailed fund-raising plans for 40 to 50 National Railway Historical Society chapters and other nonprofit community organizations, most of them concentrated in the Southeast, he said.
The organizations contracted with NS to run the steam train, sold tickets for the excursions and staffed them with scores of volunteers.
The rides usually returned a tidy profit to the groups. The Roanoke chapter annually earned $15,000 to $25,000 from downtown-based excursions during the annual Roanoke Railway Festival. Those funds accounted for about 50 percent of the local chapter's annual operating budget, Gray said.
The money was plowed back into the community. The group sponsors educational programs, refurbishes antique rolling stock and donates miniature train sets to the yearly Toys for Tots Christmas drive for underprivileged children, Gray said.
The Roanoke chapter also leased five passenger cars to NS for the excursions, which were restored two years ago at a cost of $100,000. Gray said the chapter planned to recoup that money over five years, "so we're out that $100,000, too."
The rides also were important to commerce in the cities and towns where they originated. The J-611, the acknowledged star of the annual Roanoke Railway Festival, brought thousands of people downtown each year.
Of the 2,900 steam train riders this year, roughly half were overnight visitors, Gray said, citing demographic studies the Roanoke chapter has conducted for several years.
They stayed in hotels, ate in restaurants, and shopped at downtown stores. Those customers probably are lost for future railway festivals, Gray said.
"It's probably going to at least cut in half the number of people who attend the festival," he said.
Kay Houck, executive director of the Virginia Museum of Transportation, one of the festival's sponsors, said she expects changes for the 8-year-old festival.
The museum's board is brainstorming to come up with new ways to draw train fans. Houck wouldn't mention specifics but said there may be some sort of train ride - probably not by steam - in the festival's future.
The board will "just have to think up other ways to make it exciting," she said.
The problem with the steam program was not that NS found it too costly to operate. Ironically, the steam program has fallen victim to the railroad's success, said Bob Auman, NS manager of public relations in Roanoke.
"Our business has never been better," Auman said. "We are using all of our locomotives and rail cars."
The railroad has found it increasingly difficult to schedule its money-making freight shipments around the generally break-even steam excursions.
Surveys of NS freight customers have shown they are most concerned with getting their merchandise moved on time, Auman said.
Although it was a great public-relations tool for the railroad, the program also was plagued with minor breakdowns, delayed excursions and a few major mishaps.
Perhaps the most notable was a 14-car derailment in the Great Dismal Swamp outside of Norfolk in 1986. Eighteen people were hospitalized after that accident, which occurred during a 1,000-passenger outing for railroad employees. Another accident occurred in Lynchburg this year.
Liability, skyrocketing insurance costs and downsizing of the company's work force in recent years also worked against the excursions.
"Can you imagine how long a mule train would last on Interstate 81? I think you get the picture," Auman said.
by CNB