We are at a critical time in our history. No, I’m not talking about rising unemployment, $4 for a gallon of gasoline, or the $700 billion Wall Street bailout package. I’m talking about declining attendance at heritage rail sites throughout North America.
After launching its new visitor center and museum facilities, Steamtown hosted nearly 212,000 visitors in 1995. In a dozen years, visitorship dropped by two-thirds, to just 70,726 in 2007. What happened to your attendance or ridership from 1995 to 2007?
As an industry–and as individual railroads, museums, and railcar owners–we need to reverse this downward trend. The overall economy is beyond our control, but I believe we can increase (or at least stabilize) our revenues by meeting customers’ needs. This requires some creative thinking. [click to continue...]
