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The #250 used to be at WK&S in Kempton, PA from 1963-1972. It’s a short landlocked section of former Reading track about 4 1/2 miles but only 3 1/4 miles are normally used for train rides. If you go to Jeff Z’s WK&S site you can see photos of #250 at the WK&S. They ran longer trains with...

Yes, the Reading and Northern is a good place to ride a long excursion, and they have open window coaches which are verboten on class 1 railroads now. One exception to the rule is that 765 will have an open air car for railfans on its Chicago area excursions on Metra. Steamtown also runs a variety o...

I’m afraid except for UP’s 844 excursions which happened last month, and the New River Train this fall, which they fought Amtrak to run this year, there will be almost zero mainline excursions on any class 1 railroads with Anderson in charge of Amtrak. That’s steam, diesel, everything. Autumn Expres...

What exactly is NS’s policy on steam excursions now? 611 has no excursions scheduled yet. Have they really banned excursions again? With Amtrak also banning excursions that means that now the entire eastern US will be mainline excursion free. Which is sad.

Pretty soon only the very rich will be able to ride on mainline excursions, wait, Bennett Levin's E8's aren't running anymore after the May excursion, which is $1,000 a ticket. I think there were 10 left. But if Amtrak bans everything then the mainline excursion market in the US will be almost dead....

Squires and Anderson just killed the mainline excursion business in the east. NS is also no longer willing to host excursions like 611. Maybe some western trips will still operate like 844 from Denver because Amtrak is not involved with UP’s special operations. Maybe 261 will still run its Duluth ex...

I guess it is the insurance companies in light of the crashes seeing excursions on Amtrak as a risk now. It probably means that cities without Amtrak service like Asheville, NC and Allentown, PA which had NS and Amtrak excursions a few years ago will no longer have any public excursions to, from, or...

Yes, Amtrak excursions like the Autumn Express which covered rare freight only mileage on part of the routes were popular. Some trains sold out in minutes after tickets went on sale.

I wish Amtrak would at least keep that so that there will be future opportunities to ride rare mileage that doesn't normally have Amtrak service, like the NS freight lines (ex-Reading) east of Harrisburg, etc. It's usually only one weekend a year in October or November and probably doesn't disrupt n...

What about bus companies? They have charter trips that aren’t part of the normal schedules. As for Amtrak, you can still ride it for fun on the regular routes. For example, a circle trip from NY to Chicago and back via the Lake Shore Limited, Capitol Limited, and NEC. You could layover at Chicago ov...

Here we go again, lawyers. They kill all the fun. This is truly the end of most special excursions on class 1 railroads operated with Amtrak. I guess this means no more opportunities to ride rare mileage routes like the NS freight only lines from NJ to Harrisburg and Philly, which were covered by pa...

What about 611 then? Looks like VMT is screwed. If neither NS or Amtrak will host excursions then 611 will have no place to run and will probably sit at the VMT. Mainline steam in the East is now over, again. Except for Reading and Northern, TVRM, etc. which have their own railroad to run on and in ...

But who made the decision? Anderson or Congress? I guess if you want to ride a long train ride you can still ride the Pennsylvanian to Pittsburgh or ride to Boston or Washington on a regular Amtrak train. Too bad for the rare mileage collectors, though. This will most likely kill most if not all rar...

611 excursions are now suspended indefinitely due to NS’s and now Amtrak’s anti excursion attitudes. It will probably sit at VMT again as an exhibit. Say bye bye to mainline steam east of Chicago.

But will this affect Amtrak's Autumn Express? Does this mean that they won’t have an Autumn Express this year? I thought that was a neat way to take a day long trip by train and travel over rare freight only mileage to boot. I missed the ones that ran out of Philly and NY/NJ and ran on NS’s freight ...