Episode 9: Unsupervised: Foam with Eric and Rowdy

In this episode of Off the Rails, Bethan is MIA, and the "talent" is upgraded, with Eric Mencis volunteering as Podcast Tribute. 

Left without supervision, Rowdy and Eric dive into the deep end of the foam. 

Then things take an unexpectedly foamy turn. What starts as a straightforward conversation is both informative and hilarious, as the two discuss what goes into planning and executing a successful photo charter/photo foam and talk about "what if," scenarios for our operation. They also take a deep dive into the future of Mt. Rainier Scenic’s car restoration work and what the future consists will look like. Yes, consists, plural, because we will have two steam engines operating this year. 

Of course, we’ll cover current news in the industry and feature a robust segment of questions from our listeners. So grab your coffee, crank up the phonograph, and let’s go Off the Rails!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Off the Rails, the podcast where steam locomotives meet modern maps. Joint executive director of the Mount Rainier Sonic Railroad, Beth and Mahr, and Rowdy Pearce, Superintendent, Professional Catherine, and occasional out a go tour. Together they pull back the curtain on the wild, weird, and often hilarious world of tourist steam railroads. You'll get a front row took the ins and outs of this truly unique visitors. So grab your ticket, hold on to your sense of humor, and join us for a ride into the unpredictable world of steam. This is off the rails.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

So welcome to Off the Rail Rails with Rowdy and Beth. Bethon's changed. Today we have Eric, the hospitality manager, with us because uh Bethan is currently having a terrible plane ride across the country to go to Washington, D.C. for Railroad Day on the Hill.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

Yeah. I heard uh seatmates. Well, seatmate is interesting. And her her seatmate and you would get along great. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

It's bad. It's bad. Uh we'll we'll talk about that here in a little bit. So today we are going to go over basically what it what it looks like on our script here is all the stuff that Rowdy and Eric do. And bear with Rowdy on this one because um I said it to the guys. I'll say it so it's on record. When it comes to this kind of stuff, I am terrible without Bethon. So I'll just be myself. You just be yourself, and it'll get it'll get bad. It will get really, really bad. That's just the the Wranglers back there are gonna have a full day today. Let's just put it that way. Sweet.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

So last night at the bar.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

So and so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

How's Eric? What do you do, Eric?

SPEAKER_02 2:09

Eric is good. Eric had a fun weekend. Um, but I am the hospitality manager, and um I handle all the customer service side of the railroad, um, and still manage to go out clubbing every night. Lucky you. And do it on the weekend. Lucky you. Yeah. Um, and then come back and still do it again and again. Um, but yeah, this weekend was a good weekend at the rail. We had our new ticket system people out um examining what we do, and they realize that um people don't just come up with email confirmations and QR codes like they thought.

unknown 2:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

People just hand us the phone and say, you find it. Yeah. And they're like, oh, so that's what it's like in real life. Yeah. And I'm like, yes. Thanks for coming on the sea. But manage all uh the customer service side, ticketing side, retail side. Um, and I try to improve the onboard experience. We do. And um, this year we made some improvements with uh recorded sound uh narration um to stay consistent and all that because you know when you're operating with one engineer, one conductor on the trains right now, uh the conductor needs to be present throughout the passenger cars, but when your sound is only out of a baggage car and you can't leave the 10-foot space, it does take away.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

So it does take away that. And it's different every time, and somebody might forget something. And the onboard experience is is important, and most of that has come from the fact that we're not running a steam engine currently. Yeah. To distract people away from the burgling diesel at the front of the front of the train. Yeah, it is a completely different ride. It is a completely completely different. It's completely different. Um you don't really realize how much you lean on it until it is no longer there.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

Yeah. It goes back to um a lot, as we talked about before, a lot of people say, Oh, no one cares about that steam engine up front. Um, yes, they do.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

They do, they do they do the sales say they do. The sales say they do the adjustments. Comments on the on the socials say they do. I know a lot of people are doing the on the socials where they say, Well, you know, I'm I'm gonna come to ride this year, but I'm I'm waiting for you to have a steam engine. And and that we know what steam engine they're waiting for.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

But you know, any steam engine for the regular person is what the waiting. And where I think the misconception is for a lot of tours are oh, we don't care what what is pulling the train, is the misconception is they don't know what a steam engine or diesel engine is, but they know they want a steam engine, the average customer. Yeah, the the knowledge of it. It's our job to teach them. Yeah. If you think you don't need the steam engine and you're renting the diesel and you have that mindset, you might not be teaching them what a steam engine is. And that might be impacting your sales. Yeah. And you don't know it.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

And if you're asking the question of if you're I mean, I I saw one group on Facebook the other day, they literally said their post literally said, um, do people really care if it's a steam or a diesel? And the comments lit up with yeah, if you have a steam engine, you should probably be running it. Yeah. I mean, some places can't run them all the time, but you should be running it. That's that. So the next part of our script says, What makes a good train excursion for photographers?

SPEAKER_02 5:50

You know, me and my speedoes. Oh wait, that's that's a different thing. That's the other site. That's the other side. That's the other side. That's the other side. I'll say put the jock stops away for that one. In the choke collars and and all that. Um text method right now make them panic. Rowdy's asking about his kinks and fetches now.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

Yeah, but Rowdy asked the question about balls in the mouth. Not those type. Um She would be sweated on the flight. She's already sweating on the flight. Um we're gonna this is just gonna be one of those lessons of when the two of us are apart trying to do something that we always do together, this it's not comfortable. No, it is not comfortable at all. For us, maybe, but um so for one, we have a on a the foamer level, we have a terrible railroad to try to film or take pictures of because it's the same three places to catch the train all the time.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

Yeah, it's not that long of a road between here and LB.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:55

And um, I've never done a photo shoot here, you have, yeah, but I've done them other places, and um a lot of them have multiple like 20, 30 locations to take a picture of the train. Yeah. Uh when I was in Ely, you have vast opportunity um to take a picture. That being said, there's the liked spots that you went to every yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Um but in case for us, it's like the you know, the S-curves are always brought up as a place to do a photo run by. Well, the S curves had a chunk of them wash out a few years ago. So the curve now hugs the rock a little bit tighter. And that spot that everybody used to stand to get the picture of the train coming around the curve is no longer there because it's the railroad now.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

Yeah, I was looking at that on the ride the other day. I was like, uh, we were talking about photo excursions the other day. Where do you stand? Yeah, you don't anymore because it's gone. Yeah. Um and that's something you always have to think about. Yeah. You know, and that determines the the size of your photo excursion. Yep. Is where the where do you stand?

SPEAKER_01 7:57

Yep. Where do you stand? How do you stand? Um, what are you doing? Uh we've talked about like going over drawbar before. But if you're doing multiple trains going over drawbar, because that's one of the things they used to do here, is they had multiple trains. Yeah. You know, and you have to have those trains hiding somewhere, otherwise, when you're taking your fit picture of your run by, you got a long line of other trains in the background. Some people don't like that.

SPEAKER_02 8:22

No, that takes away from the effect sometimes, unless you're doing it staged. Yeah. Um, at the siding or something like that. But yeah, you can't have your passenger chase train in the shot if you're doing the chase train.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Yeah. It has to be somewhere way away from whatever you're doing, and then it comes to pick you up after it's dropped everybody off.

SPEAKER_02 8:43

Yeah. When I was at Western Maryland, you know, with the 1309, we did all the cold cars and a caboose behind the steam engine and had a diesel chase train. And the diesel chase train had to go way up the line. And that took time. Oh, it takes a lot of time. 10, 15 extra minutes sometimes to get the train staged, so you can just start to run by. Yep. And then you gotta do everything in reverse.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 9:11

And that all needs to be planned out carefully.

SPEAKER_01 9:13

Planned out, letting letting the people that have paid big money to get set up before you're ready to go. Uh, one of the things that we've done here that that works out great is that one of our volunteers actually was a crew member at one point in time. And so he he could he was kind of the guy that you would send out there to wrangle everybody and then okay, we're ready to go. And he could communicate to the crews very well. And kind of, okay, all right, here comes the Heistler, bring it up. Yeah, the Heistler does its run by and then goes off somewhere and hides on the railroad, and here comes the climax, and here comes the little lammet, and then oh, the the other engine dragging the passenger cars just shows up. Yeah, because that's gotta be involved too. It does. Um so on our railroad, you know, in the yard is normally a go-to spot. Going up Mineral Hill used to be a go-to spot. Um, going up the S curves was the premier go-to spot, but that's probably gonna change. We got upwards of 11 miles of railroad, soon to be 13 miles of railroad to use at this point. Yep. Um, and you're here here first, folks. You and I are planning on a photo excursion next year.

SPEAKER_02 10:26

We are.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

We don't know where it's at or what it is, but we are planning one next year.

SPEAKER_02 11:06

Now, with um the steam coming back and having two steam engines, the five and the 70. It's time to get back into that stuff. Um, yeah, we won't have the geared engines like before. Um, but it's time to get back into that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And it's time to show off um what the would have looked like um back when it was in operation, pulling these trains pulling freight cars or a log train or something like that, and give that impression once again. Um, because that's important to the mission we preserve here.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Yeah. So let's shift gears a minute and get away from the photo excursion itself. Okay. And go into every day is a photo excursion on a tourist railroad. Yep. It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Every day is a photo excursion on a tourist railroad. So what do you do to make sure that everything is, I mean, because you you take videos and all that other kind of stuff yourself for the social medias. So when you look back and say, I'm gonna catch something to put on social media or from our own personal like or whatever, what are you looking for?

SPEAKER_02 12:19

I I take the lighting into account still. Um, I take um, you know, for social media, you can't always just take a picture of the train in the station. No. Um, you know, I will meet the train at some crossings when I'm like, oh, I actually have time to chill and actually go see the train. Um for social media, but then I also, you know, um, I try on an everyday thing try to get the people. Yeah. Yeah. The people is a big part, um, whether it's crew or passengers. Being the social media guy, the passengers are just a point just as important as the regular um crew and all that. But for a guest, you know, photographers come visit us all the time. When the engines in LB at the run round, you know, it's surrounded by cameras. Yeah. Um, and crews have to be mindful of that. Um look the part, be the part. Um we all know that, and we all have done it, but we all know that time where we're like, uh, let's hide in the cab. Yeah. Um, and there's nothing wrong with that sometimes, because it's a lot. You know, you're basically paparazzi movie star.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Well, for the most part, and the the YouTube equation also talk about the paparazzi movie star thing. The the YouTube equation all has also changed it because we got a lot of people that come up specifically because they've seen the YouTube and they want to see the locomotive and they also want to see the people. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 13:54

And you can't just be a gruff guy that no, and with us and how popular our YouTube, this podcast, everything, people know us by name. Yeah. They know me as Eric. I might have not seen them. Yeah. Well, I'm going like, did I meet you last night or not?

unknown 14:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Um, you have that situation where the kid walks up and goes, Hi, Rowdy. It's like, whoa, whoa, where's your mom? Yeah, see your mom.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

Yeah. Um, but no, people know us here by name. And so we kind of are celebrities, um, always under the camera spotlight.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:34

In that sense of every day is a photo, something. Um, because we'll end up on someone's YouTube, we'll end up on someone's, you know, someone could be shooting a little documentary, yeah, um, type deal. It might not be of an official thing, it might just be for their own personal YouTube. But some people on YouTube do present themselves that way. Yep. Yep, yep. And social media and um the influencers present themselves that way.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

And but go back to something I said earlier, is our railroad is a terrible railroad to foam. Yeah. Because you only get to foam the train when it's in the depot. At the crossing, leaving the depot, at the crossing at the horse farm, and at the crossing at park junction.

SPEAKER_02 15:17

Yeah. You know, without any other special permission or permission from us, you don't get to see the train. You don't get to see, you don't get to see much of it.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Which is a plus for the ride experience. It is, but then it's also a negative when it comes to your exposure. Yes. Because, you know, I I don't know how many times I watch other people's YouTube and go, oh wow, that's really cool. They got these big long hour and 15-minute long videos going over the railroad. And they present the video like it's a documentary and all that other kind of stuff. And you see Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad, and you I mean, they're they're working hard to stretch it to 20 minutes because it's the same three things. If you don't catch the engine going forward, you catch it going tender first backwards. Yep. Yeah. Which was what that's one of the things we've Beth and I have talked about. One of the reasons of opening up more railroad to be able to run on is to be able to rail fan the train easier. You know, there's a whole almost mile and a half of the railroad being next to the road out here in Mineral.

SPEAKER_03 16:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

You know, why not run up that direction every once in a while to be able to, you know, hey, go out there with a passenger train and take people to a new part of the railroad, but you know, give the people that like to do that experience some time and material to be able to do it.

SPEAKER_02 16:31

Yeah. You know, and most rail fans that come out here, I know there's always those people that go, hey, you're just chasing the train, you're not giving them any money. I have experienced that most rail fans who come out here and make the drive ride at least one of the trips. They do. And so we got our money from them. Yeah. And then foam all you want for the rest of the day. Um, but that also means the equipment has to look good and be ready for being on camera and all that.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

It does. I mean, one of the things we're gonna find a problem with with ourselves this year is that we have no real atom that came out once a week to wash the train.

SPEAKER_02 17:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

So it's already starting to look a little gungy from sitting in the sun, rain, sun, rain, sun, rain, and moss is trying to grow on it again.

SPEAKER_02 17:18

Yeah, the windows definitely need it and attention. I saw that um the other day riding the train. It was like, ah, the the wetness and then the sun and dryness in the same weekend, you don't have a chance to wash the outside of the train, and the outside of the train is just as important as the inside. Yep. Um and the engine's just as important as anything else. Oh, that's we we wash the engine every every week before it goes out.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Now, by the end of the weekend, it doesn't look like it's been washed, depending upon the day. Yeah. But we wash the locomotive every every Wednesday when it's getting fired up for Thursday. You know, you got six hours of sitting there babysitting it. The guy that's usually firing it up's got a mop bucket and a a scrub brush scrubbing the thing down and wiping down the jacket and steam cleaning the running gear and and all of it and touching up the paint so it looks its best every time it goes out.

SPEAKER_02 18:10

Yeah. And some people, I know, I know the some rail fans would be out there and be like, ah, we want the grungy, dirty, yeah, grime-covered steam engine. Well, if you look at railwoods back in the day, the only ones that truly had the grunginess and grimy were the ones poor enough that they weren't gonna last. Yeah, but they were getting they were getting. The rail fans were taking pictures of them because they were not gonna be around.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

And that brings up a good that brings up a good kind of side topic too of smoke. Ah, everyone's favorite photo. Every more smoke, more smoke. You know, I I sit back and when we do our photo thing, it's gonna be explicitly said that the locomotive will only smoke if that's what it takes to get the locomotive through that spot. Yeah. It will be fired what it needs to be fired to be able to negotiate what it's doing. If there's smoke involved, cool. If there's not, okay. And the reason why we're leaning into that is for one, back in the day, a railroad that took really good care of their equipment, black smoke is money out the stack. They wouldn't have done that. No, um, railroads rule books to do it against it. Yeah. And then on the other side of that, we live in a state that is trying to lead the charge on climate change. Yep. So what does black smoke out the stack of your steam locomotive say in that argument? It says a lot of negative. It's a target, is what it is.

SPEAKER_02 19:38

It is. And um even back in the day, you know, people didn't like it. Yeah, you see some photographs where they did turn it on for the photographers, even back in the day. Um, whatever that photographer bribed a fireman or whatever um before that train left the station, which is what they would do a lot of times.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Well, you and you can see it in some of the old videos. You can see that the locomotives coming, and all of a sudden, oh, yep, they notice there's a kid with a camera there, and the stack goes black. And it's like, why are you doing that? I mean, back in the day it was probably, oh, we're just gonna ruin their shot, or or whatever it might have been. I don't know. But to me, knowing enough about what I know about how railroads were operating and talking to people that did it, they it it's it was absolute no. You you only kept a dark stack if you needed that to get over the chunk of the railroad that you were doing.

SPEAKER_02 20:32

And I would say all the um generation nowadays who post the videos on Instagram who um are photographers and attend these rail phone events, will see what we're talking about because you just look up uh any photo of any other railroad where they have turned on the smoke for the run by. Yep. And with Instagram, a reel is viewable to anyone and everyone, and not just the rail fan world anymore. Yep, your comments will get hit by those who don't understand.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

But those who don't understand are also those who may buy a ticket or not on the regular train based on your image in that video.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

One of the locals down here who grew up in the area, he he said, What did you guys change? It's like, well, what do you mean? What did we change? He goes, What did you guys change? Because you guys run by the house, there's no smoke. Because there might be a little bit of a haze coming out of the stack, but there's no smoke. Even before it was like everywhere you guys went, the the stack was just there was this black smoke and it'd hang in the air, you'd choke on it, and it stank, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, Well, we didn't change anything other than our operating practice, which was you don't make smoke unless you absolutely have to. Yeah. And there, towards the end with the 70, we figured it, we know why. I mean, there the tube bundle was getting scaled up pretty good, even though we were washing it. It needed an acid wash. Yeah. You know, so the the heating efficiency of it was starting to go downhill there at the very end. And that's gonna happen. So it's more smoke. And we had bad fuel. That's gonna happen. That's gonna happen. But for the most part, it no smoke, no smoking. But when y'all come to our photo event, if anybody says, Well, can you make more smoke? You just be prepared for rowdy to yell explenatives at you from the cab because it's it's not happening. You know, someone's gonna do that just to hear you yell. Yeah. Just cut you being you. Yeah, exactly. More smoke, more smoke. Oh, okay. Yeah, I'll I'll show you smoke. Yeah, you know. How do you guys want it? More than anything. Or it's just the you know, I know when people are trying to goad me too. So okay, maybe not. I did it one time. The first time we ran the Willamette, you could ask Carl this. We were up at Divide. I wasn't even supposed to be on the engine. I didn't want to be on the engine, but Brian Wise had said, um, hey, you know, you're one of three people here that knows how this thing runs and it's its first day in the public. You need to be there. So they okay, so I went. And we were up at Divide, and we were doing the we were doing these runbys, and I took over firing, and I had said something to Carl, don't know what it was. He looked at me and said, Your job is to sit over there, look cute, and make smoke. So I did. A lot of it. The smoke was so bad that it came out of the stack, went up in the air about 150 feet, and then came right back down to the ground.

unknown 23:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:30

That's a lot. That reminds me, I've seen a photo where it was a Colorado and Southern engine street running and like Fort Collins Colorado back in like the 50s, and it's just black sky. And I'm like black on a street running trackage, too. I hate to wash everyone's car after that. But yeah. The reality is people do see it as a bad image, and when a video can end up in the national public eye of whatever, you gotta think, be conscious about those things nowadays.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

You really, you really do. It's not about it's not about the full-size jack-off, is basically what it is. We as the business have to sit back and say, because uh unfortunately a big chunk of our business isn't that.

unknown 24:18

No.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

I mean, we're doing we are doing a photo event to cater to a very minority of what our ridership is. We're doing it to to say, hey, we want to get back into that because it is good exposure. It is good exposure.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

It doesn't necessarily even make us money. No. We've talked about that. That sometimes uh photo excursion can cost you money. Exactly. If you don't do plan it or do it right. Yep. Um, especially when you could be operating a regular train.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

Yeah, the regular excursion train will always pay more money, will always bring us more money than a photo opportunity ever will. It doesn't matter. I mean, if we wanted to say, all right, because I mean for a photo train, you can't run the train at maximum capacity. You can't have 180 people on that train. So you're down to what, 40, 50? 40 or 50. So to be able to match what that train does for us in that same 48-hour period, the tickets would have to be thousands of dollars. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:16

Yeah, we know that your average person might not pay more than 300, 400, 500, depending on whether it's a weekend, a day, or this or that.

SPEAKER_01 25:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:26

Um, but when you can make so much more selling a$35 ticket to the general public, yeah. No, photo trains, if you don't do it right or you don't plan it the right time of year. Yes, the money and income, but if you don't do it right, you can lose money. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

It it just because it's money and income, income can still be outgoing. Yes. Income can still be like the conversation that I had with Calvin on one of the YouTube videos. I think it was the last one where we talked about that we lose money six months out of the year. Yep. So all that a photo thing does between January and May is just help that losing money alongside if you if you don't do it right. Yeah. So um yeah, photo excursions on Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad are gonna happen. We are planning on them, but we're planning on them to happen in a certain time frame, make us money. If it doesn't make us money, then it's at least very well done.

SPEAKER_02 27:19

Very well done. And if it's not making a huge amount of money, it is at least helping us till we get to the summer crowd. Exactly. And that's the behind the scenes of a photo uh shoot that people don't realize.

SPEAKER_01 27:31

Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, I I the the railroads that go out and spend thousands of dollars decorating up old freight equipment, that that's all that the freight equipment is going to get used for, you know. That's a lot of money. You don't want to be in the situation. This happened to a railroad where they went and they painted their entire passenger car consist to kind of match the era that they were trying to go for. And the rail fans skewered them because it wasn't the proper shade of green and gold. Yeah, that's and that just makes you sit back and go, you know what? I just spent, you know, for us, it's$4,500 a car to paint them. Yeah. And a good paint job. I just spent$4,500 a car for to paint eight cars for you guys, and you want to treat me like hammered crap because I tend to make the right decision in the paint.

SPEAKER_02 28:20

Yeah, it's kind of like I remember years ago the Congress told I there was a big argument on which tilt the real brand, the flying real grand, had to have. And sometimes you just gotta be like, well, we tried. Yep. We might have got it wrong. But we tried. But we tried. And you should appreciate that we tried. And the next time.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

Don't be surprised if we don't do it again.

SPEAKER_02 28:43

Yeah. Or but if you appreciate that we tried, we'll try better next time.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and we're back from getting shots of whiskey in our key.

unknown 28:53

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 28:56

No kidding.

SPEAKER_02 28:57

Um can I get the CC's pour where the vacuum in the bottle goes up to here and then just a shot of one juice or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

Just top it off. Just tap it off. There you go. All right. Next thing on the script says, Discuss Mount Rainier train consists of the future. You and I have been doing a lot of talking about this in the last couple of weeks, as a matter of fact. I feel like that's all we talk about.

SPEAKER_02 29:19

That's all we are talking about. We are both all the daydreamers of what this place can be. So, like we see the Milwaukee cars and the polar cars sitting off to the side, and you go, what can it be used for? And then you ask basically are asking me, what was in your head? Yeah. Because we both thought about it already.

SPEAKER_01 29:39

Well, last year the Milwaukee cars sat from January until basically October when we start started getting them ready for Christmas. Yeah. And what kind of mess did we find in? We had to evict all the rodents because Monty and George will not were not doing their job. Not in the train cars that are. We had, you know, water problems, we had electrical problems. I mean, we've we sorted all that stuff out fairly quickly. But uh for for like example, right now, if the steam engine were pulling the train, the um Mountain View would probably not be on the train and the parlor car would probably be on the train to be used for parlor car things, whatever that is. Yep. Um, but it about two or three weeks ago, I remember stopping you, and and we were standing next to those cars. It was like, what can we use these for when we have two operational steam locomotives?

SPEAKER_02 30:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

Because we have got to find a use for them.

SPEAKER_02 30:36

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 30:37

And we'll have more cars coming.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

And we got more cars coming. And we have, yeah. And so we know that a four-car train is what we can run.

SPEAKER_01 30:47

Because of the limitations, we could run and sell a five-car train.

SPEAKER_02 30:50

We could.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

We could we have shown that we can run and sell a six-car train. But if you're not going to be able to do the limitations of Elby is what we can run out of LB. All we can get around an LB is a four-car train. So, what that basically says is that okay, if we want to use the Milwaukee cars and the parlor car, then we have to be running a whole separate train to make sure that train doesn't step on the toes of the bread and butter, which is the regular excursion train doing its hour and 15 hour and a half thing. What does that experience look like?

SPEAKER_02 31:25

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

And what does the what do those cars have to be set up to be able to perform that way?

SPEAKER_02 31:32

And we know the regular hour and a half hour, 15-minute train out of LB is butts and seats in coach class and moving people.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 31:44

Um, we know that if we use the Milwaukee cars, those windows don't open and it's a totally different experience. Yeah. And when you have one open car between everything, you need it on the train that's might be using the one that doesn't open because people will still want that experience. Yep. What does that mean for the other train?

SPEAKER_03 32:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:05

Well, if all the windows open and they're all open in the summer, technically all the cars are open cars, right? Oops. Yeah. At that point, um, yeah, some rail fans would be like, but it doesn't have the open car. Well, we still let you stand on vestibules. We will make sure the safety is there for that kind of stuff. But yeah, it's figuring out what the best set is for the best experience, especially going back to when we know steam sells this railroad and the experience is selling the steam.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

Is it is selling the steam exactly. And maybe if you're running like a dinner train, what we've talked about, dinner trains and lunch trains and brunch trains and all that other kind of stuff, and the whiskey tasting trains and and all that. The if you're pulling the train with a steam locomotive and you're using enclosed cars that the windows don't open, you have to have a car there that serves the function of being able to enjoy the steam locomotive. Otherwise, people are gonna be stuck inside the tin box going, I paid to ride behind a steam engine and I don't even know it's out there because I can't hear it. In the case of the 545, you can't hear it over that stadco underneath the car running full tilt. No. Um, that's the reason why on the regular excursion train we don't run statcos, we don't run head end power, we don't need it.

SPEAKER_02 33:24

No, and you gotta think about where you put the 545, but the stadco and the open car, so it's separated.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

So it's a long ways away. So you barely hear the stat co versus it's sitting right there blaring in your ear the entire time. Yeah. Now, one of the worst things that ever happened to this place was that stat co being put underneath the train. Uh the the diesel generator that was on the 520 was a lot quieter. And though it didn't have 480 and wasn't able to push power down a six-car train, it was much better for what we're doing.

SPEAKER_02 33:59

Yeah. How often do we run a six-car train when even when we do there's multiple generators?

SPEAKER_01 34:05

There's multiple generators, there's and all that. And so, I mean, uh it's like right now, um, well, when we first started back up in 2024 when everything was going gangbongsters, and we were saying, holy crap, we could put one more car on this train. We had to put the 545 on the train. We did we wanted the 520, but because the power systems had been changed, we couldn't just put the 545 on the train and plug it into the regular generator. It probably could have supported it at the time because the power was different. Yeah. So when you're building a consist, you have to sit back and think, okay, it's all about redundancies. It's all about um, you know, for example, we've hot swapped a generator on the train in the time it took for the locomotive to go around to the other end because everything is redundancy.

SPEAKER_02 34:52

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

So if you don't have that, you're setting yourself up for failure. So right now, if we want to run the 545 and the 520 with the parlor car, the parlor car has got its own standalone generator. But if anything happens to that Statco, the other two cars are that the other two cars are dead. And if it's a 90 degree day, you're dead. You're dead. You're dead. You are saying everybody get back to the back of the train so you don't cook, and then you're calling the engineer and saying, hey, take advantage of that class two track speed to get us home. Yeah, and I'm canceling the next trip. You're canceling the next trip, and then all those people that were on that train, guess what they get? Yeah. Another train refund or another train ride. So redundancies are important when we sit back and talk about what it would be in the perfect world. And, you know, how does the engine impact the consist? It does. It does. Because, you know, the five and the 70, uh, we we really don't know what the five can do. Not yet. Not yet. We talked to the old boys and they sell sit back and say, on the case of like Carl, you know, well, I shoved six cars in the dead F unit through the S curves with it. But it's not supposed to do that.

unknown 36:01

It wasn't supposed to.

SPEAKER_02 36:02

It wasn't supposed to. It's kind of like um Garrett's video of the K-28. Yeah. Pulling two extra cars up Pomosa Hill when the K36 died, and it's it's not supposed to do that.

SPEAKER_01 36:14

It's not supposed to do it, but it did. How long is it going to be able to do that? Well, you're just taking life out of your parts that much quicker. Yeah. So not knowing what the five can do, but how we always build stuff around the 70 is that we know that the 70 is is comfortable with five cars. Yeah. It can do six if you really want it to, but you have to have good crew in the cab, good track condition, and you gotta be ready for it. You gotta be ready for it. Um, well, I think when we did Christmas, the whole Christmas show is plotted around how to get the 70 up the hills.

SPEAKER_02 36:47

Well, it was kind of goes back to the fact if you weren't ready. Yeah. Like we knew you could keep the time um and all that, and we you know, we all sat down and said, you need to run every trip to help us get through Christmas with one locomotive. Yep. And the timing and the six cars and all that because we were planning five, but we didn't get everything done, like the bathrooms and the coaches and all that.

SPEAKER_01 37:14

So we had to add that sixth car. We had to add the sixth car, and and we knew that we could add the sixth car because the 70 had pulled six cars across the railroad for the brunch trains, you know, two years the year before. But, you know, so when we talk about these excursions and stuff, it's like the dinner train thing that we've talked about that it's gonna be five cars, it's gonna be the kitchen car, the two dining cars, the mountain view, and then the parlor car doing its bar thing on the back.

SPEAKER_02 37:39

And we know that that five cars cannot start in LB. No. We have to start at East Creek Junction down here by mineral because that's where you could we could put a switch in to run around. Yeah. And it has to go to New Reliance.

SPEAKER_01 37:53

It has to LB is out of the equation for that.

SPEAKER_03 37:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:58

And you know, that's that's one of the bad parts about, you know, LB having been used as the crux of this place for so long, is that that runaround limits you in damn near everything that you can do car-wise. I mean, you know, we we sit back and just are absolutely floored that we have no bathrooms in the 901 and the 902, and we have dead space on the train with the concessions car. Yeah. Because the only reason why the concessions car is there is to provide bathrooms for the 901 and the conversation.

SPEAKER_02 38:34

The concession side of it is to take up the rest of the space. Yep. And as we talked about before I came on and the railroad first opened, that concession car made a lot of money. Yeah. But I have transformed the gift shop into different and newer and branded merchandise. And now people are waiting to spend their money. Yeah. They're still spending their money, but the concession car went from seven, eight hundred bucks on a uh sold-out day down to three to maybe four hundred bucks, which is still money. Yeah. But it's not as money to take up that whole space because those people are spending the other five, six, seven to a thousand bucks on the gift shop merchandise.

SPEAKER_01 39:18

Well, we took the mountain view off so because of the the Alco can't pull four cars. Well, it goes back to it probably could, but it who's in the cab, you know. All right, we're stressing the hell out of the locomotive to get it across the railroad. Yeah, you know, on the side. So we didn't do that. So what did that sacrifice us? That sacrificed our walk-up room. Yes. You know, when we're sold out and it's hey, standing room only. Now we can't do that because we don't have that car. So when you're building your consist, you got to sit back and think about what's what it's being used for. What you know, what the revenue side of it. And the revenue side of it gets to be real tricky because remember last year when we had the parlor car on board and it didn't look like there heart there's hardly anybody in it because you know, the state of Washington won't let us sell liquor in it yet. Yeah, that's a mess on its own. That's and we're calling that's a podcast. You you, Beth, and I should sit down and do a three-fer where we talk about all the ways that the state of Washington is just not helping at all. No, maybe an elected official will hear this and step in and be like, y'all need to start being able to serve booze on your damn train.

SPEAKER_02 40:21

Especially when I've had to argue with them three weeks that I'm not the dining car restaurant. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:25

How many people get us confused for the restaurant in town? Um but when we went back to when last year and we sat down, we're like, is the parlor car even worth having? And we we went over Calvin's pay, Heidi's pay, everybody's pay, what it cost uh the cost of goods sold on board of it, and all that, and we realized holy crap, the parlor car is actually putting damn near$1,800 a day in the bank.

SPEAKER_02 40:47

Yeah. Covering its costs and doing that. And mind you, for the folks at home, is there was a few things that we think we could have done better with the public car. One, the way ticketing was set up, and I've changed ticketing systems that you can see there's a difference on my end. That's a whole nother topic. Um, so maybe it wasn't getting the exposure it needed. So we would only end up with 12 people somet on a lot of trips on it. And we're like, oh shit, there's 12 people on this car. It can't be making money. But when we sat down, we're like, oh shit, it only takes four or five for it to make money. Yeah. Even with the snacks and all that for a weekend.

SPEAKER_01 41:26

Yeah. And so it it it lived to fight another day for it lived to fight a lot of days. And how and how many times have we sat down right now and been like, oh, that'd be great to have the parlor car on the truck. But yeah, now with a new system, knowing what we know, a new this, we're like, well, probably just embrace the attitude of the n of the roaring twenties and just sell booze on it. And what are you gonna do? You know. Fine us, it's cheaper. Well, then we'll be making it.

SPEAKER_02 41:55

Uh but we start your own still in the backwoods.

SPEAKER_01 41:58

There you go. There you go. Uh pulsing 70 whiskey. Right from right from the boiler. Right. Um, but there's there's stuff like that. And when it came down to the only reason why we even looked at going to New Reliance was to be able to support a five-car train that had that parlor car on the back of it, because we spent so much money getting the thing done that it was like, okay, we have to use it. Yeah. You have to use it. If you're gonna spend money on a car, you gotta use it. You gotta use it. Unless you're a museum that you're just, you know, it's gonna sit there and people are gonna look at it. That's not us. No. We spend money on something, we sit back and go, Well, we're gonna use it.

SPEAKER_02 42:38

We have to use it.

SPEAKER_01 42:39

That's it. Exactly. You know, with the there's 1,472 days that you can use on a steam locomotive. You're gonna use it, though. We're gonna figure out how to use that.

SPEAKER_02 42:49

Yeah. And so I have a plan for the polo car even for this year. Um, but I'm waiting for the steam engine.

SPEAKER_01 42:55

Yeah, we're waiting for the engineering. We're waiting for the steam engine. We are literally waiting for the steam engine.

SPEAKER_02 42:59

And that also means, yeah, the train's gonna have to go back to New Reliance at one point once um the track work gets done and all that that we need to do. Um, but yeah, it's killing me that the polo car isn't running. Yeah. Um, because it changes my staffing, my this, my that, and which makes it uh like Easter. As I said, last year I had 12, 15 people to help me with Easter. This year I have five on my staff.

SPEAKER_01 43:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:25

Yeah. Yeah. Um, because I could for one weekend I took all my car attendant staff, gave them a break, and oh, Calvin, make hot chocolate for the Easter trains. Yeah, it was a nice little break, but it and it was something different, but it helps me pay for my staff year round.

SPEAKER_01 43:44

Yeah. Well, and so let's let's just you know throw the script to the side here for a minute. Okay. The events. The events, yes. You I think you brought up a damn good topic without really really analyzing it, is that that train also helps support your events? Yep. Your big events, your Easter, your pumpkin, your Christmas, your Christmas. How important is it that you are able to pay that staff through the year to keep them instead of a week or two before the event, start looking for part-time employees, praying to God that you can find them to be able to pull off a good event.

SPEAKER_02 44:25

If I was to look a few weeks before, I would be firing half the people I hire. And I have to actually hire and take that into account. Yeah. Um, and all that. You know, we saw it last year where when I did have to kind of panic hire. Not really panic, but hire, you know, I took who I could and that. And then by midsummer, those who stayed stayed. And by those who wouldn't, I replaced them. Yeah. That's just hiring in general. You gotta be ready for that no matter what. But once you have a good staff, you wanna keep them. You wanna keep them.

SPEAKER_01 44:59

You just said uh the perfect number for you to be able to pull off like Easter and what we've done is fifteen. Yeah. And you're not gonna have 15. I'm not gonna have 15.

SPEAKER_02 45:11

Am I gonna manage? Yeah, of course. I've done this long enough that I've managed. Yeah. Um, but it was kind of like when I was at Western Maryland, Scenic. The dinner trains on Saturday night. didn't make money in the sense that uh it paid for itself. Right. What it did though was make enough money to pay the staff for that week. And that same staff was a dome car attendance or polo car attendance, and that made the dome car tickets and the lounge car tickets all the profit of the railroad. The dinner train, yeah, it made money in the sense it covered its own costs and all that, but it allowed me to have a staff all week for one training.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

And some of the things you plan. I mean, so this is how this is how things work around here is I'm sure a lot of people think that Bethan just says, This is what we're gonna do. You guys need to figure it out. It doesn't, it doesn't start that way. No, it's actually me and you. It's actually you and I. I usually wind up being the first one coming to you guys with the schedule at the beginning of the year saying, Hey, I think this is what we can accomplish with crew, with equipment, with what we have. And you look at it, and I I usually just at that point, you know, pull out and just say, I'm gonna go over here and play trains. And then you and Bethan and Jared take it, and and you know, I'm involved in the conversation of yeah, no, yeah, no, yeah, no, basically. But then you take it, you look at, okay, this is what I need to do to be able to do that. And then Bethan takes it and bases a budget off of it. And we either get a yeah, this is great for the budget, or this freaking like this year, you know, this year she hates it because we took brunch and all that stuff out of the equation, which were good revenue generators. Just we don't have the ability to do it. No, and they would no one thought to have a commissary kitchen here. They thought about six steam locomotives, but no commissary.

SPEAKER_02 46:56

And that's a whole nother discussion, which a good revenue generator, but a quality experience is a different thing. And so we took brunch out because yes, the people we had catering the brunch did a good job, but we could see that they were barely keeping up, and I was uh my hair was going gray. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 47:16

Um you were skipping the gray and going to white just like me.

SPEAKER_02 47:19

Yeah, uh, because with the businesses around here when the national park gets going, no one can keep up. No one can keep up, no one can keep up.

SPEAKER_01 47:29

And caterers think, oh, well, I've done a wedding of a hundred people. A train, like what we're trying to do, is a wedding of a hundred people every hour. Over and over. Over and over and over again. Yeah. So you always wind up with caterers that that come walking through the door swinging dick, thinking, oh yeah, I I got this in the bag, and after the first three weeks, they're running home crying because it is it is a task. Yeah. It is a massive.

SPEAKER_02 48:03

So, like for us to do two brunch trains and keep everything in check with the health department and all that, the caterer had to do two deliveries. They couldn't just drop off everything at once. Because if they dropped it off for the first train, it hit its time limit of what food can sit out for the second train and trying to drive the seven miles from Ashford and make it through the national park traffic and all that, and get and then get back. And when your the national park line is past the restaurant and all the stuck in it, it creates a stressful situation for all. It creates a and it was by sheer luck that we didn't have anything drop. Yeah. Um, but it also meant me being here 50, 60 hours a week all constantly last summer. That just became um to babysit everything. Yes, and that's not sustainable. And part of our job is to make sure it's sustainable for the railroad that ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 49:01

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that's one of the things that we, you know, you and I have talked about we're gonna build a kitchen car. Yep. Because we have to have the ability to be able to do brunch, dinner, lunch, whatever that might be. You have to have the ability to prep everything here and take the whole commissary kitchen elsewhere. Cater, not having a prep space or anything like that out of the equation. Yep. You have to take that out of the equation to be able to do that. So, you know, we went to Beth in last year and said, We're not doing brunch. Yeah. And what was her reaction? She was like, Oh my god, how she reacted pretty hard to that. And I mean, it's to the point of you have to provide me a damn good reason why you two want to take this out because this is a revenue generator. And we came back with quality. Quality. Look at the reviews.

SPEAKER_02 49:52

Yeah, and we got we got the reviews, and so the old sys ticket system didn't solicit for reviews. Now I do um because I want to that's my quality check. And I bet if we did brunch, we would get a whole new look.

SPEAKER_01 50:08

I could get this quiche at Costco.

SPEAKER_02 50:10

Yes, you know, you know people were nice enough not to say anything. Yeah, let's just put it that way.

SPEAKER_01 50:16

But you and I saw the writing on the wall. But we could see on the wall. The menu was a decent menu, but the menu also sucks for what brunch is supposed to be.

SPEAKER_02 50:24

And for those of you at home who oh, I work for a tourist road, I think a dinner train may be good, I think this may be good. Uh no. It always can be good, but the quality has to be there too. Otherwise, quality has to be there. First thing you'll hear back is the food sucks. The food sucks.

SPEAKER_01 50:41

If the food is cold when the people get it, it's there's nothing people will. Here is the thing about a dinner train. You take the worst thing, you take the worst part of the railroad world and the worst part of the restaurant world, and you put them both in an 88-foot space.

SPEAKER_02 50:55

Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 50:58

It can be done successfully, but the moment something drops, um, the moment quality goes away, the moment experience goes away, the moment, the moment anything in there drops, you're done. Yes. And you will hear about it. You will hear about it in space. I mean, to do a dinner train, you're looking at$129 for a ticket to do a good one. Oh, yeah. If somebody spends, you know, seven, eight, hundred thousand dollars on on doing it and they don't get what they think their experience needs to be, they're gonna be pissed. I mean, I'd be pissed. Yeah. I mean, I'm mad when I don't get my my food in a timely manner at a regular restaurant. Oh yeah. And I mean, doing this long enough has broken has pretty much well broken my restaurant going experience because I'm critiquing the second I walk through the door.

SPEAKER_02 51:49

No, and man, I've managed dinner trains, I've done it all, and you realize that you know, yeah, in the restaurant, well, everyone can buy the same steak. It meant you go to a different restaurant based on how they cook that steak. Yeah, not because it's the same. This here and A, B, and C here. It's all the same. They all the same provides. It's what they do. It's what they do it that makes it the quality.

SPEAKER_01 52:17

So draw it all up, draw that part of it all up into a close. You know, discuss the Mount Rainier train concept of the future. What would it be in the perfect world? It's all gonna be circumstantial based upon what we decide we're gonna do. An excursion train is always just gonna be coach seats with the bare bone minimum experience that's being drugged by a steam locomotive through the woods.

SPEAKER_02 52:37

And when we get to a point where we don't have to have the baggage car, we put a concession car in one end of the coach's snaps. You need that. Yeah. Yeah. But always coach seats for one and um for if it's dinner trains, it has to have an outside car. Yep. Uh so people can leave their tables and go enjoy. And have a quality and whiskey.

SPEAKER_01 53:01

We gotta have freaking whiskey and cigars. My God. For Bethan. For Bethan. What is she doing, anyways? You know more about that than I do. She's she's actually right now, currently, she might have been landed, but she's actually currently hating her plane ride across the country because she flies cheap. I like to fly fly business class, but she likes to fly cheap.

SPEAKER_02 53:20

For those of you it at home, uh I've heard the person next to her was 16. The partner and significant other in very plain sight.

SPEAKER_01 53:31

Very plain sight, and that was very descriptive. And Bethan thinks in pictures.

unknown 53:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:36

As you said, I might not enjoy that one better. You would have definitely enjoyed that one going off of her description. Anyway, so Bethon is currently in Washington, D.C. Every year there is what's called Railroad Day on the Hill. And it is basically, now I'm probably gonna screw it up because I've spent most of my time in the five. Um, basically, what it is is it's that time of year where short lines and railroads can get with elected representatives and you know make their cases heard on certain things, whatever that might be. It might be funding, it might be laws, it might be whatever the case may be. It's their time. You know, the cattle people do it, um, loggers do it. Everybody has their time on the hill. And this this is their our time, railroads. Bethon is going back to try to help bring a little bit more legitimacy to tourist railroads and help get tourist railroads a voice in the fight when it comes to you know funding, when it comes to regulation, when it comes to, you know, insert an excuse here. That's where Bethany's at right now. Um, and it's it's the first time since this place has opened up that we haven't gone to one of these together. So she's probably having a grand old time. Oh. We'll hear about that. As the week goes on, I'll probably get at least two or three phone calls a day about it. But that's that's what she's off doing. And it's important, it is very important that people, we he, the tourist railroad community, have a voice in some of this stuff. Because right now we are not legitimate. We're not legitimized in any way, shape, or form. And you and I kind of talk about this. Beth and I talk about this all the time. It is that the tourist railroad industry unfortunately steps on its own toes when it comes to talking to the general public, or not so much to the general public, but when it comes to talking to elected officials and stuff like that. Because people are passionate about it. People are passionate about preserving the history and all that. And so trying to get that message across doesn't people really don't give a crap about the whole preservation thing. They sit back and look at what dollars, what are dollars doing? What are dollars doing dollars going in, going out, money going in, money going out. When we write you a grant, are you spending that grant responsibly? Yes. Or are you hiring a contractor to come in and just rape and pillage you until that grant is gone, and then you're begging for more money because you're getting the project done. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 56:15

Yes. Are you actually raising don't donations to get a project done? Exactly. Are you not? Um No, I get that, and it's kind of a first to for tourist railroads to start moving in that direction.

SPEAKER_01 56:28

Um we don't qualify for any fun federal funding. No. Well, with the same federal funding that regular railroads get. I mean, we're a common carrier now. No. And that opens us up to Chrissy and all that other kind of stuff. But if we were just a regular tourist railroad trying to apply for Chrissy, we wouldn't even make the muster. No. And trying to get, you know, when Tacoma Rail owned the railroad, trying to get Tacoma Rail to write a Chrissy for our part of the railroad to hold it to snuff, they're gonna sit back and say, well, we don't have to do that. We're writing a Chrissy, we're gonna write a Chrissy for ourselves. Yeah. You know.

SPEAKER_02 57:01

And a lot of it is, you know, it the industry has just changed so much. It's rapid when you realize it or not, we are in a rapidly changing industry because a lot of rails are moving away from the all-volunteer organization who could get a lot of funding for volunteers and donors and all that. But as people got older and can't do stuff anymore, we're coming into new paid staff, uh, more and more paid staff. Insurance.

SPEAKER_01 57:31

Insurance. Insurance is a driver for some of that. I mean, especially out here in the good old Pacific Northwest, where one of our neighbors got into multiple accidents at grade crossings, and you know, they were at fault for every single one of them. That affects us. That affects us. Um it was easier to get cheaper insurance for our operation by having an all-paid staff running the train all the time than even the volunteers on there.

SPEAKER_02 57:56

Um, for those of you, oh, I filled out a volunteer application. Well, our insurance tells only we can do only so much. Yeah. And we can only do so much training to bring do that only so much right now.

SPEAKER_01 58:11

Making the train go forward and backward is not a volunteer thing anymore. No, unfortunately. Some places it can be and consider yourself lucky. To be able to do things that the volunteers would be able to do stuff with, if you can follow what I just said there, because that's a mouthful. You got to be able to generate revenue. You gotta be able to have money sitting in the bank. And if you're open to, I mean, if if if we got a Chrissy that allowed us to open the entire railroad back up, start hauling freight out of Morton, be able to run a train the entire length of the 32 miles of railroad that we currently own. Go into that conversation that you and I have had about well, you could have three or four different trains running all over the railroad at any given time, doing multiple different things, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's money in the bank at that point for the volunteer projects to be funded.

SPEAKER_02 59:01

Yes. And so what would what she's doing right now is helping us get to that.

SPEAKER_01 59:06

She's she's back there starting to make a voice with the people that matter. Yes. And, you know, not trying to throw any shade here. The HRA used to be that voice for tourist railroads. The HRA, my personal opinion, has started to founder in that. So I can see that. Now Bethon, as part of the ASLRA, which we are a member of, is going to Capitol Hill to start to try to say, hey, the tourist railroads need to be involved in some of these conversations.

SPEAKER_02 59:45

And the Shortline Association is even more interested in the tourist railroads than ever before.

SPEAKER_01 59:51

Because I mean, look at look at Reading and Northern. You know, look at the numbers of people that he's drawing. Yes. Look at, you know, Drango and Silverton's numbers, great, Smoky Mountains numbers, the R numbers, Skunk Train's numbers. You know, look at all the big players in the game and what they draw for their area and the the um economic impact which they have in their area, which whether whether people like it or not. I mean, I know the poor skunk train down there deals with Fort Bragg having their head in their ass constantly going, well, that goddamn train, but the people don't realize that the people that are stopping in town isn't for the goddamn muffins, it's for the rail bikes and the trains.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:32

You can see the same coast 10 miles out of San Francisco than you can 150 miles where Fort Bragg is. You can see the same redwood trees and bigger ones. Yep. Um, than you can in Mendocino County and other places. But when you have an attraction like the Skunk Train, and I work for the Skunk Train for a while, so I see it. Um even before when they ran the Northspore or the trips they're doing now, as they work on everything, people come for the train because they see an attraction and they buy a hotel.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:07

Just to get distracted for a minute, just to get distracted for a minute. Their railroad's not abandoned. No. They're using damn near every square inch of that railroad, especially when it comes to the rail bikes. Yes. So look at the environment, the uh economic impact of that. That is what elected officials like to see. Yes. But when you get the trail type people that keep the elected officials tied up with, well, we need to save the owls and we need to feed the whales and we need to this and we need to that, it's really easy to start to skew that spotlight and that microscope away from, hey, you know what? The Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad generates nine million dollars a year in economic impact in the town of Elby, in this itty b tiny little corner of Pierce County, that yeah, the big rock also helps with that, but what else is it doing? It is also bringing that same economic impact wherever it stops and lets people on the train. Yes. And what could mineral use right now? A lot of economic impact. Exactly. What could Morton use? A lot of economic impact. So if there's federal dollars out there available to be able to open that up to where we're not going bankrupt to be able to do that to help the communities involved, that needs to be brought to the table in front of the people that can make that happen. And that is exactly what Bethon is doing in Washington, D.C.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:29

Yeah. And I would suggest everyone at a tourist railroad, small museum or not, sit down with your board, sit down with your people, sit down and just shoot the shit over some coffee, but figure out your economic impact for the local area. And actually, you might be surprised how big it is. Yep. You might be surprised that yeah, so-and-so coming to us may have had to stop for gas three times.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:56

Well, the thing of it is, Bethan and Hamish and Jared have proven this time and time again. How easy it is to track the data. Oh, yeah. Where people are coming from, where people are going. Did they come just for us? Are they using us as a side stop on going to the big rock because they know it's it's full up there and they're not gonna be able to get up to the road?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:18

Track the data of what is the big rock looking like today. I was up there yesterday. Um, there were I hiked five miles at Mount Ainion National Park and saw two people. That's a good day. That is a good day. That didn't have to wait in line. And I would date a popular hike. Yeah. Um, but the fact that, yeah, two people on a Monday I saw hiking, that's impact. But on the weekend, we had a sold-out train at 115, 170 people. The scale burger ran out of the burger burger pack. Scale burger ran out of burgers, and that's just one train out of the three of the day.

unknown 1:03:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:56

Um, there is some impact, and I would say only half those people went to the national park.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:01

Yep. A good majority of the rest of them are just out looking for something to do. And if they would have seen the steam rising above a steam locomotive at that depot, they probably would have swung in and been like, this is a novelty, let's do it.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:12

So that's what Bethany's doing. That's where Bethany's at. She's fighting first. She'll tell us more when. Yeah, she's she's gonna tell us all about what it's like being in the land of MAGA when she gets back. I want to hear about the plane ride. I know you want to hear about the plane ride. So we are in the questions from our listeners. These are good. So, first question. So, honest question on your hypothetical steam versus diesel on freight discussion from last episode. Would something like an early SD type be better for your operation? It's like an SD7, SD9, 10, 20, whatever they are. Yes, uh, an older SD would be better, but um there's economics involved in that. What do you think? You're a foamer. Finding one.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:05

The business side of me goes, finding something. Well, um, I mean, anything on that road, I would film. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:15

We had a S D we had a SD9 here. As a matter of fact, um the guys over there in Idaho, Jason Hills Railroad, they're they're using our old the the it wasn't ours, it was privately owned, but the the SD9 that was here is over there currently. And it was a good locomotive, and it made it all over the railroad just fine. Um we can have a quick couple minute discussion about the economics of it. Where the economics of it come into is right now we are at$250,000 plus or minus on our rebuild of the five. Yep. We are at um when we finally pay for them, it's gonna be less than$20,000 and doing a$1472 on the 70. Find a good dependable operating diesel for that money. Even if you add the two of them together, it's gonna be tough. Yeah. So from a business standpoint, if we are gonna be running freight right off the bat, and freight is only gonna be starting off maybe one to five cars a week at$600 and some dollars to make that car go from our interchange to be loaded and back with some switching fees and that kind of stuff, it doesn't pencil out to go out right off the bat and buy a diesel.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:43

No, it's kind of like Alan Maple's the Everett when I lived there and they had the steam engine fired up. Um you know, in Holidaysburg is the passenger station. Yeah, but the steam engine lives way over here.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:57

If they had a freight car that was going somewhere that evening, the steam engine just took it. Why run an extra train when it was already fired up?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:07

You know, firing something up to go get something on its own and then shutting it back down might be a different story for you. Yeah. But if it's all we have that can do it, it comes down to what do you have to do it right now?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:19

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:20

And and you know, say we did get a ninety ton Mikado. I'm not Saying that we're going to, we're going to go poach one or anything. But if one became available and we did get it, no matter what money we put into it, you know, it would still be more money ahead for what we're doing to use that locomotive for freight and passengers, because it goes back to what we were talking about earlier with the experience being the steam train.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:47

Our money is better put ahead with steam locomotives. Even if it's what is the freight gonna be paying for? The freight's not gonna be paying for anything other than the maintenance of the railroad. Yep. That's where the the big the biggest cost, the biggest cost to our railroad isn't the steam locomotives. No, it's the amount of damn money we have to put in every year to maintain the railroad, especially since it hasn't been maintained right in 40 years. So an SD style locomotive, yeah, that'd work. But were you gonna get one? Were you gonna get one? The amount of money you're gonna have to put into it to get it running again. I mean, that's the biggest problem with the F unit, other than you can't see shit going backwards. It needs wheels. We could get by for a little bit. Yeah, they're not as illegal as we thought. Okay, eat some crow there, but it needs$150,000 worth of low voltage wiring to be dependable.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:40

Yeah. And is that worth spending the money right now? Then we need a steam engine on the passenger trains as much as exactly we say we do. Um, it is not.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:51

Barry asks, do you own the right-of-way to Tacoma? Could a train get there these days? Technically speaking, a train could get there. No, we do not own the right of way to Tacoma. We own the right-of-way from mile post 32, which is just a hair north of the yard in Eatonville, to mile post 65 and a half, which is at the depot in Morton.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:12

Yeah. You're talking radio rail owns. The rest of it. The rest of it, other though where Tacoma is.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:19

North of, I think it's 72nd Street is where is either 52nd or 72nd Street is where Tacoma Rail takes over again. The railroad is still in place for the time being. But it's a matter of time because Tacoma Rail or the City of Tacoma, not Tacoma Rail, but the City of Tacoma is one of them people that, oh well, bike path, bike path, bike path. And one of the biggest problems with the gulch is that it's a massive homeless city. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:47

So living in Tacoma, I don't drive through the gulch often, but I drive enough through it.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:54

And the thing of it is that we used to go to Tacoma quite often. We'd go down there before. I mean, I guess this could go into the whole entire, you know, old and new and some of this other stuff she's got written down here. Anyway, we used to go down there quite often for Tacoma Rail. And then it'd be with the sounder situation at Freight House Square, it got harder and harder and harder to be able to pull off going down there for anything. And it costs money to do that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:18

Anytime we would take the train to Tacoma, we never got money out of it.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:21

No, this cost to the whole do photo shoots make money? Does this make money? A lot of times your rail fan events don't actually make money, but we do it for you guys. Yeah. What's that?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:33

We we do it for the exposure and to keep rail fans happy. Have we talked about going out onto Rainier Rail? There has been discussion about that. Yeah. There's been discussion to us. There's been discussion to us. I mean, he's they've come to us and hey, what do you guys think? We've we've sat and talked with Paul Dedelius several times about, well, if we were to do something, and this it's one of those, you know, the turd circling the punch bowl type of situations where it it's it we're going around in a circle, you got a turd over here and a turd over here, we flush the toilet, and we're going around in circles, circling each other, but we haven't gone down the drain yet. That's basically the analogy that I would work use for that situation is that we're gonna go down the drain at some point in time, maybe, but we just don't know when. We don't. So uh going to Tacoma, that going to Tacoma itself, probably never gonna happen again. Uh going out somewhere other than our railroad, the chance is there. Though it is slim, the chance is there. Yeah. Now it's your turn to ask way.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:38

So really, when did the old MR uh MLSR become the new MRSR?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:44

You've been here throughout the years. So the original MRSR changed over from uh changed over in 1984 to another MRSR. And then that MRSR changed over to what it's most remembered as in about 93. And then that MRSR went bye-bye in 2005, end of 2015, beginning of 2016, when um American Heritage Railways took over at the behest of Tom Murray, and it became Mount Rainier Railroad and Logging Museum for that three-year period. And then um the new MRSR started up in 2022. We got a hold of it in September of 2022, if I remember correctly. Yep. And Bethon did all the groundwork. Um, the the meetings about us taking over started in June of that year. Uh, I met with them with the the board first, but because Bethan was off, you know, being wife and mother. Well, her husband climbed the mountain in California. I think there was where they were at. And they um I I got the phone call, came over, sat down and met with the board, and just basically said, well, if if I were to do it, this is how I I would do it. And and I I said very clearly, I'm not doing it without Bethan. And then she got involved and lit and I'll did all the the setting of it up, and then I came over in February of 23. So the new MRSR took over in 2022.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:21

And so here's a my own question for you. We talk about all the time that some things from the past, and of change. Yeah. What are the some of those things that the new MRSR should learn from the old MRSR?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:36

Haul a lot of people. I mean, so a lot of people think the Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad was um was couldn't support itself, but it could. I got financial statements from years that say that you know this place regularly made upwards of six hundred thousand dollars of profit. What drained it was, you know, they'd be rebuilding locomotives, uh, whatever the case may be. And it got into real trouble in the 2000 in the 2006s and tens and teens and stuff like that, because we went away from the three trains a day out of LBL 11, 115, and 330. We weren't prioritizing the experience. We were ex we were prioritizing a look more than we were prioritizing what the people were really coming to pay for. And it ended up, I think, just going completely and totally backwards. And and one of the things I always tell people is I learned everything about how not to work on steam locomotives and run a railroad at Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad. And now look at you now. Yeah, look at look at what's going on now. So that's a that's a very interesting question. And that one's gonna ruffle some feathers no matter how many times we talk about it. But there was just the the the back in the day, it was uh you got a locomotive, you put it on the train, you run that train, you run the hell out of the train. One of the first things they got away from was running the train seven days a week in the summer. And then they started complaining about not having money.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:04

And while we're on the five-day week of schedule, we know we want to get to it. And you have had that.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:10

We've had that conversation of we know in the future we will be running this railroad seven days a week. The only thing that is me and you both need days off. We we need days off. So does Chris and so does Nate. Yeah, um, you know, and and Bethan needs to take days off herself. So yeah, that's that.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:27

Um someone wants to know what do you like about the minarets and Western and the sugar pine lumbo company?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:34

So I geek out about that. Uh there's a book, it's called The Rails to the Minarets. It's about the sugar pine lumber company out of um, I think it was Modesto, California, or Fresno. Anyway, this guy had got access to his daughter's trust fund, which was millions of dollars in the 20s. And so millions of dollars in the 20s, you could just spend and spend and spend, and you need not know you're gonna spend all of it. And so they got a hold of some timber tracks and they built what had to have been the most elaborate and modern logging operation ever seen.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:10

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:10

I mean, they built this 54-mile-long railroad that was built to mainline standard. From the end of that, which was the Minarets and Western, up into the woods, they made their entire railroads uh uh able to have rod engines run on it. They didn't have a geared engine one, and that's where the tank engines like the 17 came around, is because they went to Balco and said, we need this specific engine built. And so they built two eight two tank engines to be able to wander around up in the woods. So the whole railroad was built to accommodate rod engines, nice up to and including the only minaret type, which was the 210-2, which was the basically the 17 on steroids. Okay, and they they they didn't even have a steam donkey, all their yarders were electric. Oh, cool. They had the the central camp was built like a town, it didn't have logging camp buildings like what we're sitting in. It had these massive dormitories that could fit like 50 to 75 loggers to a room. The loggers were not allowed to bring their own bedrolls because they had a linen linen service that every day that the logger went out to work in the woods, there was a group of maids that would come through the dormitories and redo all the beds, fresh linens.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:28

That's what I find interesting about all this is the variations between different companies. Some you had like that, and some with bare bones.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:36

Bare bone. I mean, they they the the central camp, when you read about it, and some of it still exists up there, but when you read about it, the the the guy spared no expense in this in this company, and he didn't get enough timber to support it. So they logged all their timber off in like this eight-year period, and then um one of his other family members realized that he was raiding the hell out of this trust fund to support everything, pulled them from it. Company was bankrupt by 1933. Oh, geez. They were bankrupt before the depression even started, but by when he get lost access to it, they that was it. It was just funding it all and yeah, it it never made a profit. But the book is called Rails to the Minarets. I think it's by Jeff Johnson. The last the guy's last name is Johnston. It it is it's not very thick. You can read it in a couple of hours, but the it the level, I mean, the mill itself was modern. Pinedale in California is named after the mill. Okay. It was like 400 acres of the most modern mill known to man at all.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:40

I'll have to look that up because I've known about that, those railroads, yeah, but I don't know much about those.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:46

Yeah, so then all the tank engines went, you know, they got spread out. Um, one of them is very close, the one of the actual sugar pine ones. The the 40 at Essex is actually one of the Minaret and Western locomotives. Oh, cool. That was built for that railroad. It's the only one that exists from the Minarets and Western. Very cool. I'll have to look more into it. It's a very, very, very. I mean, I geek out over that. As a matter of fact, I geek out over so much the novel that I'm writing, the logging camp and the operations based off of that operation. And the level of just it was just extravagance. Everything about it was extravagant.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:21

When he finishes the novel, it'll be for sale in the gift shop.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:26

If. Okay. See you guys next time.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:29

Yeah, that wraps up this episode of Off the Rails. A huge thank you to our totally real, definitely not made up production crew. Sound designed by Microphone, catering by Cornelius Cobb, track maintenance provided by Rusty Switches, and marketing brilliance courtesy of souvenir. I'm your host, reminding you to keep your hands inside the train at all times, because around here, things always go off the rails.