In the week between Christmas and New Year's, 1995, Amtrak held an open house at Baltimore, MD Penn Station. AEM7 @929 headed a consist of Amfleet, Viewliner, Vermonter Baggage, and MARC coaches. Here's a view of the entire train and some interiors.
An Open House Train, done in 1995
- Thread starter Bandob
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Reminds of National Train Day that used to be an annual event for myself and thousands of others. They were big events very interesting and informative. I believed that these events were a good marketing and public relations tool but Amtrak apparently disagreed and eliminated them about 10-12 years ago.
Amtrak may not have disagreed, but their check book might have.
Neighbors son used to work at Amtrak and now works for Brightline and he said that Amtrak had many great idea, but the accountants had to constantly say no due to trying to keep expenses down to the bare minimum.
To be clear, I have no idea about Train Day, but my neighbors son said Amtrak is very much constrained by its finances.
Hard to justify advertising in accounting.
In the past Radio stations would run ads that referred to a specifics phone number to show effect. With internet you can show cause and effect of people interacting with Ads.
The live display or table set up at a model train show are much more challenging to prove effective. I guess you could include a discount code, but the community would hear very fast and then recurring costumers would grab those discount codes, proving nothing in the end.
In the past Radio stations would run ads that referred to a specifics phone number to show effect. With internet you can show cause and effect of people interacting with Ads.
The live display or table set up at a model train show are much more challenging to prove effective. I guess you could include a discount code, but the community would hear very fast and then recurring costumers would grab those discount codes, proving nothing in the end.
Maybe the station exhibits were costly, and may not have generated as much revenue as they cost to produce, but what about the Amtrak Autumn Express excursion's? They usually sold out within hours of going on sale, and necessitated a second day, that also came close to sellout. Their moderate fare should have easily generated a healthy profit, along with a large number of non-paid, volunteer support employees....
west point
Engineer
But what happens when the accountants use their formulas to allocate all the overhead to these excursions? More expenses not direct above rail operating costs only.
What overhead? They start and end at active stations, so if anything, their operation's "allocation" helps further reduce the share of all the trains using it, right? I don't know what they pay the freight host railroads for their one time use of their tracks, and pilot crew, but I don't think it would be enough to cause a loss in the special's operation...
