There's lots of ways to become an apologist for this failed institution. When we discipline ourselves to make the judgement strictly on the facts at issue the result is clear and not debatable.

To supe's point that $ 6 Million dollars a year in taxpayer subsidies is not enough to fund actually running steam powered trains ( beyond a sometimes little switch engine) is classic public sector reasoning. Throw more and more money at it and that will fix it.

Look at the facts. The place has burned through over $ 130 million, yes $ 130 million dollars in taxpayer funding since its 1995 opening and has not restored a single mainline locomotive. Not a single one. It took them 15 years, yes years, not 15 months but 15 years to restore a little switch engine. Supe says it costs a lot to run & heat the place. Get real.

Any competent DO could produce a very viable operation there if given an annual management fee of say 1/2 what Uncle Sam now spends. My guess is that with that fee a Strasburg, R&N, NH&I would walk away with a handsome annual profit and over 5 years would at least triple the current anemic attendance greatly benefiting the Scranton area economy.

The changes a private sector DO would immediately institute are obvious...1. Close Jan.- April. 2. Reduce the full time/year round staff to the single digits needed during shut down months and supplement with part timers as needed, 3. operate mainline steam frequently and add crowd pleasing features such as real runbys, occassional all day trips to the Delaware Water Gap etc,.4. make the facility attractive to heritage tourists of all stripes.

Anyhow, it's highly unlikely that letting this black hole be run by competent private sector folks will ever happen. Guess we'll just need to accept it for what it is and when you look at an annual federal budget deficit of TRILLIONS of dollars, $ 6 million is not even a rounding error.

Sad but true. Ross Rowland

Steamtown; proof positive that railfans, photographers, and history aficionados will NEVER satisfy the financial needs of sustaining any museum. You will never find a demographic/stereotype of a human being who is more thrifty than a railfan.

To build on this premise, you will never find individuals with more opinions about EVERYTHING in life, than a railfan.

Cheap opinions, a revenue shrinking disaster...

When you consider that malls are a thing of the past (Metro Scranton can't even support what retail is left in the valley), and the quantifiable fact that experience-driven, family moments are driving the preservation economy (event and themed products), it's easy to identify the void in Steamtown's business.

Every historic, scenic, or preservation railroad succeeding in 2021 is doing so because they have figured out how to use their trains to communicate to the masses.

Historic Preservation 2021 - "Still stumbling over how to relate to the average family."

The requested budget of Steamtown in 1995 when it opened was $5m. To keep the same level of funding but accounting for inflation that budget should be $9m today.

If it's so simple to run Steamtown on $2m or $3m a year I suggest detractors start a company and submit their proposal to The National Park Service. I bet they'll find a million doesn't go as far as they think it does (hint: as far as it used to).

@IC382

“Steamtown; proof positive that railfans, photographers, and history aficionados will NEVER satisfy the financial needs of sustaining any museum. You will never find a demographic/stereotype of a human being who is more thrifty than a railfan.”

Precisely and there’s a reason for this. An operating locomotive produces “public goods” defined by Paul Samuelson in The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure as something that is non-excludable and non-rivalrous. You can’t stop people from enjoying/photographing a passing train without a buying a ticket, and minus photo line jostling, the enjoyment produced doesn’t accrue to one person in a way that precludes another person from receiving the same thing.

@CO614

Thank you. I’ve been accused by PMC of have a cryptic anti-government agenda and by you of having public sector Stockholm Syndrome in the same thread. This is awesome! I am the “Sum of All Fears”. Of course money alone will not solve the problem, but it is essential given a huge backlog of equipment exposed to the weather.

One of the things that was impressive about Strasburg when I took the shop tour years ago was the project status board that greeted you upon entry to the shop. Each open project was listed, the project manager's name and a brief status statement. Simple and effective.

@Emmo213

You are on to something with the inadequate growth relative over time. So let’s crunch some numbers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s most recent private sector wage release (09/16/2021 for June 2021):

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf

The average cost for Civilian Employees was $26.85 per hour; and benefits costs were $12.06

Yes “fringe” benefits are now 31% of total payroll costs and 45% of cash earnings

Now back of the envelope hypothetical payroll for a bare bones staff:

Let’s optimistically assume we can staff a 60 acre site with 35 FTE’s (about ten less than recent years) and Scranton as less than vibrant labor market is 90% of the Nat’l Average-keep in mind it’s not a huge area and you are going to have to attract outsiders-who aren’t going to respond to submarket earnings, so maybe you can't assume 90%.

Salaries: $1.76M Benefits: $.79M Total: $2.55M

You still have to pay for the maintenance and utilities of the "core complex", the administrative and MOW buildings, staff PPE, coal at close to $200/ton, water, tools, lubricants.

Promising annual furloughs isn't going to get you a stable and experienced employee census.

I really don't see Blackrock bidding on this job.

[sigh]

I remember the good olde days of Steamtown when they had visiting locomotives. The best of the bunch was MILW 261 which came out to Scranton for grand opening in 1995 and stayed a while. I remember going on a Scranton - Syracuse excursion later that summer.

Another noteworthy visiting locomotive was R&N 425 https://www.railpictures.net/photo/15344/

Back in the early 1990s, before the grand opening, they had some awesome "Railphoto" events. We rode a double-header up to Moscow https://www.railpictures.net/photo/12091/.

And shot a photo freight. https://www.railpictures.net/photo/61708/

And had a night photo session. https://www.railpictures.net/photo/12092/
https://www.railpictures.net/photo/61705/
https://www.railpictures.net/photo/61706/
https://www.railpictures.net/photo/16164/

But the best part of Railphoto '93 was the Saturday night banquet at the Lackawanna Station hotel. The guest speaker was Steve Lee, back from taking 3985 to the Clinchfield and full of funny stories from that trip. If anyone has a recording of that speech, please let me know. It was awesome. Who knew those would become the good old days?

It sounds as though the superintendent has enormous latitude, enough to run the place properly (or as close as one can get under current budget guidelines) or ensure that staff is plagued by poor morale, volunteer efforts are stymied, and nothing on park grounds ever turns a wheel.

765 visited in 2015 as well. Would be nice to have more of that.

That trip was not as successful as they had hoped. They had trouble filling seats and several trips were cancelled due to the timing of the ROW changing hands from CP to NS. Although SNHS allows open windows on coaches, Fort Wayne does not, and the price of admission was much higher than a traditional SNHS ticket (one of the only advantages of gov't ownership).

They are welcome back any time, so long as they leave blowhard Rich Melvin in Indiana.

If you ever have the opportunity to ask Steve Sandburg if he'd ever take the 261 back to Scranton ( off the record) you'll find his answer very enlightening.

Thanks to supe's sharing with us the aborted attempt in 2015 to have CNJ 113 visit Stemtown the odds of there ever again being a mainline capable steamer paying Scranton a visit are between slim and none......... and slim left town.

And the 113 abortion was before the current do nothing Super was in charge!!!

Sad but true. Ross Rowland

Rich Melvin is very capable of speaking for himself and now that he's working hard to be fully retired he may wish to stay silent.

As in the case of Steve Sandburg/261 if you ever have the opportunity to ask Rich Melvin whether he'd ever want to take the 765 back to Scranton you'll find his answer very interesting.

Ross Rowland

I'd like to nominate Ross for RYPN's "Understatement of the Year." lol

I would not be surprised to hear that it was a clusterfark with 261, but it was nice while it lasted.

So where's the proposal to do better?

If a DO would be a better solution, why not create an organization and explore it?

If that's not the plan, then why waste your time with a public axe grinding?

Just a point of clarification, Fort Wayne does not and has not had any sort of stipulation regarding open window coaches or open-anything. We ran open-air cars on the Joliet Rocket just a few years ago and several crew members, including my dad, owned open window CB&Q commuter coaches for use behind the 765, and for several years we've pulled open window NKP coaches at the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad. They've always proved very popular.

Only the viaduct trips were canceled due to CP ownership taking longer than imagined to change over. Both Steamtown trips were profitable, but the Labor Day/Monday trip was the comparable Steamtown offering and most riders who had opted for the Viaduct trip initially were not interested in the other.

Using the search feature, there are 231 previous topics on the subject of Steamtown. The first one dates to 1998. At least six threads were locked before I stopped counting.

Meanwhile RyPN slowly drifts off into irrelevancy as several have noted in posts to this thread.

Perhaps its time for a new sub-message board called "Echo Chamber" where topics such as this current thread can be moved.

Steps off soap box.

Wesley