David Benton wrote: ↑Sun Jan 05, 2020 6:09 pm
Tad, you need to search ebay.co.uk, even with international selected on ebay.com , it doesnt seem to bring up as many items as searching the country specific Ebay.
Something like this .
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BR-British-R ... Sw7rReBQaS
THanks! One of these days I'm going to buy a bunch of stuff and ship it to a friend in London and make him carry it over... he'll shoot me but its worth it.
Pensyfan19 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 05, 2020 6:45 pm
David Benton wrote: ↑Sun Jan 05, 2020 6:09 pm
Tad, you need to search ebay.co.uk, even with international selected on ebay.com , it doesnt seem to bring up as many items as searching the country specific Ebay.
Something like this .
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BR-British-R ... Sw7rReBQaS
That is very good for British Rail merchandise, but I do not think this has to do with Amtrak merchandise from their gift boxes. Very helpful website for other railway merchandise though.
David was responding to my question, it's alright. Usually comparison to other operators is fair game for questions we have. Quite a few of us have international passenger train experience and the perspective is always useful, even if a bit depressing at times. David is in New Zealand, GBN and John Perkowski have travelled the continent quite frequently, and I've got some far off experience as well. It's always interesting to see what the other government operators are doing and if it's working.
For comparison's sake, Via has an okay sounvineer shop but nothing compelling. I get the feeling they asked the same company that does the corporate merchandise for Zerox or GE to put the Via logo on a bunch of similar stuff. Alaska has a dynamite SWAG shop as they know most passengers are tourists that are willing to pay big $ for SWAG. It's baffling how bad the souvineers are for the Caledonian Sleeper as many passengers are riding for the experience ($400+ and 12-14 hours as opposed to $120 and 1 hour on Ryanair). I'd put Amtrak at second place behind Alaska.
The reason for that is this: Amtrak's revenue system is set up to do one thing: sell tickets. It was explained to me that the corporate culture and IT systems are really not optimized for much else, so promoting and thinking about SWAG take a serious backseat to coach and sleeper tickets.
The new Acela: It's not Aveliable.