645 posted:Today Amtrak just announced they will no longer operate excursions and charter moves effective at end of April 2018. Pretty much all the mainline public excursions run in recent years became reality thanks to partnering with Amtrak to keep insurance costs down from what I understand.
If this Niagara project is a success where is it planned to operate? It may be cost prohibitive to obtain the insurance needed to operate a public excursion if the Amtrak partnership is no longer possible.
That's not good at all. We did plan to operate as Amtrak partners, but now that doing so is no longer possible, we may be in trouble. I do know that Metrolink here in Southern California is not opposed to steam excursions, so perhaps they are an option.
The previous plan was to run wherever made economical sense and wherever we were allowed to go.