Robert K posted:I wish 611 could have come to Pennsylvania without a mainline excursion ban as they could have run longer excursions to Rockville Bridge and return using the modern coaches that were used during the more recent NS excursions minus the five red ones NS sold off. NS apparently kept the generator coach Tennessee for some reason. Oh well, I’ll be riding behind it for the second time on Strasburg in September. First time was the 102 mile excursion from Manassas a few years ago. What prompted NS to say no to more excursions and to make Amtrak host future 611 excursions then Amtrak started the charter ban thus preventing 611 from running any more public excursions on NS? On Strasburg you get open windows though.
Wick Moorman, the reason the second Steam Program and Heritage Units existed/exist, retired from NS as CEO. The new CEO pretty much didn’t think it was worth having, so he cut it. Amtrak is a similar story. I believe (I’m not certain) that the pro-steam CEO retired or was removed and replaced by Richard Anderson, an ex- Delta Airlines CEO/board member. He wants to run the railroad like an airline with out the unnecessary entities such as a steam program. The PTC implementation also killed off steam for a while until a package can be installed into such locomotives. It wasn’t just NS and Amtrak, but also PTC mandates issued by Congress.
