Far be it from me to propose train robberies, fake Civil War battles or full-course lobster dinners on the WW&F! But -- the idea of special events is exactly the kind of thinking the original article about the Nevada Northern was advocating. I know we hold such events at the WW&F, but we seem to do a lot of them as freebies for friends and neighbors. If we truly want to grow our patronage (and our membership), we have to do some things to make money beyond our regular train rides and fares.
Let me give one example. At the little 2.7-mile Wanamaker Kempton & Southern here in Pennsylvania, where I volunteer during the rest of the year, we run our Santa Specials the first weekend in December. It's a conveyor belt operation. We load the four car train and it leaves. As it runs up the line, Santa and elves walk through the train, chatting with kids, leading some songs and handing out inexpensive trinkets with our name on them. (This year, it was a wooden ruler.) The train comes back, the passenger get off and go into the book shop. The next set of passengers gets on. Repeat. We make four one-hour trips each day of the weekend.
We've been doing this for 25 years, and among our passengers, we have parents who were brought to the ride as kids now bringing their own kids. All eight trains were completely sold out the week before they ran. In fact, we probably could have added another train each day and sold it out, but who's greedy? We charge two bucks more than our regular summer fare for adults ($8) and kids ($4) and we carried 2,500 people in two days. After expenses, we probably netted something like $15,000. We do this with a minimum of costly advertising, relying mostly on word-of-mouth and our web site, and all tickets are reserved.
Other outfits do pumpkin patch trains around Halloween, buying pumpkins in bulk and putting them out in a field along the line where the kiddies can select one. I know of a place that does an ice-cream ride on Friday and Saturday evenings a couple of times every summer, handling several hundred people each time. You go for the regular train ride, and on your return, you get an ice cream cone. In each case, the ride is priced a buck or two above the regular ride cost, which makes it something special. And I hasten to point out that in each case cited, the railroad is at least as remote from large population centers as the WW&F.
There are purists, of course, who pooh-pooh such crass commercialism in a museum setting, but heck, even fancy art museums aren't above renting themselves out for a wedding or corporate reception. Think outside the boxcar!
