Steam in Chicago

[railiner]

I was a volunteer with the Intermountain Chapter, NRHS....we ran annual trips on the UPRR with either the 844 or 3985 out of Denver over Sherman Hill to Laramie.

We also ran a few other lesser known trips on short lines and also excursions on scheduled Amtrak or D&RGW trains....

 

[Seaboard92]

That sounds like a lot of fun. I want to work behind those UP engines. And by the way we have cancelled the next weekend if trips due to low ticket sales

 

[railiner]

It was a lot of fun.....after handling the drudgery of being the "ticket agent", and making over four hundred tickets and mailing them out (all by hand in those pre-internet and computer days {our leader insisted we do it the old-fashioned, time-honored way with Rand McNally type authentic style ticket stock, hand validated with our own validater die and machine, as well as individual car reservation diagrams}, my reward was playing "traveling passenger agent", wearing an authentic style uniform, and collecting tickets on board the train. The UP even supplied us with "lunchbox" railroad Motorola radio's to help coordinate station stops and photo runby's. The ultimate reward was scoring cab rides on the Northern and the Challenger for at least one segment between runby's....

 

[George K]

https://fortwaynerailroad.org/2016/06/galesburg-zephyr-annulled/

Cancelled for lack of sales.

Our operations have experienced a tremendous amount of success throughout the years, but ticket sales for the GALESBURG ZEPHYR have been less than satisfactory. While interest in these trips has been meaningful, we’ve made the difficult decision to cancel our excursions on June 25th and 26th.

 

[Seaboard92]

I wish we did a traditional type ticket. My biggest complaint is the tickets actually. It's hard to tell which car from a glance the PAX are going to when I'm pointing them the right direction on a platform. Plus the traditional is a nicer keepsake for passengers.

 

[Metra Electric Rider]

Too bad it's cancelled, money and time got in the way. Perhaps one of our resident social chairs could cross promote it in one of our local non-train-specific organizations, are you listening social coordinator....(or are you social director)

 

[railiner]

What a shame that trip had to be cancelled....would have been a great mainline excursion....

 

[railiner]

I wish we did a traditional type ticket. My biggest complaint is the tickets actually. It's hard to tell which car from a glance the PAX are going to when I'm pointing them the right direction on a platform. Plus the traditional is a nicer keepsake for passengers.

Like I said, our leader insisted on all things "railroad authentic"....my right fist still aches from years of pounding that validater....so hard, that a blind person could read the stamp in the ticket by feel.... . We also had ticket jacket 'boarding passes' with the car and seat numbers duplicated for easy direction on the platform. We even had nifty little seat checks we issued as we lifted the tickets. They had a 1930's graphic of a steam locomotive headlight beam with the slogan: "For better times, ship and travel by rail"...a pun that could be interpreted as a better schedule than competing means of travel, or as a nod to the Great Depression....

Our ticket stock was was not pre-printed...we had to either stamp or hand write the origin and destination on the going, the return, the passenger coupon, and the auditor's coupon. We had stamps for Denver as well as Cheyenne and Laramie, where our steam excursions usually ran, but one year we went to Sterling for a change of scene, and I had to hand write that ....

The tickets were also used for the various short line roads we rode from time to time.....

 

[Seaboard92]

Now a days a person could probably print them. I still miss the Amtrak paper tickets. I like that system. And I love seat checks. Like last week I had passengers getting off in two stops. It would make it so much easier for me to see which stop I need to retrain them from.