Re: [VIC] Enthusiast Tours vs Tourist Trips (was: high speed tours (was: [VIC] R766 and R711 Ballarat tour.))

[James Brook <ajmbrook@ozemail.com.au>]

David Bromage wrote:

> In the good old days when everybody cooperated, Steamrail ran the public
> trips and ARHS and ARE ran the fan trips. In these enlightened days when
> competition is supposed to be a good thing, it's nothing more than a
> fading memory.

I think the problem is that Steamrail are trying to do a bit of both with
some of their tours. They aren't completely fan trips but they aren't
completely public trips either. Steamrail have run plenty of good fan trips
during the late 80's and 90's but there hasn't really been any this year,
and next year it looks like more of the same (apart from the 38 and
Robinvale tours). This year Steamrail seems to have been planning trips that
try to cater for both groups instead of concentrating on one or the other. I
think the best thing would be some pure enthusiast trips and other general
public trips instead of trying to combine the both groups into one tour. In
addition to this, the ARHS never run any tours with Steamrail rollingstock,
so instead of having the best cars possible for the F class trip we ended up
with a high speed train for a 30kph loco, where's the logic in that? If
Steamrail aren't going to run proper fan trips I think they should work in
with other societies. The ARHS and ARE can organise the proper fan trips but
with Steamrail rollingstock. Then Steamrail could concentrate on the charter
trains and general public tours. For some trips, you think it would be
cheaper to hire Steamrail cars instead of bringing them down from Seymour.

--
- James Brook -

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