Canadian Railroads > Sightseer Sunday - Rocky Mountaineer at Vinsulla, BC

This is the fourth of a Sunday series from the chase of this train on July 1, 2004; the most recent post was at https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?15,4725104. Not much to say except it's #609, Jasper to Kamloops (and next day, to Vancouver), at 1550. The sun held for us, and this was our last shot of the chase.
Fred

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Great piece on RM in this month's TRAINS...

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA

Rocky Mountaineer has built a GREAT product over the years. They have transformed themselves to purely going after the high-end revenue - Silver Leaf or Gold Leaf. Gone is the Red Leaf basic coach class, exchanged for Silver Leaf with large picture windows that wrap around. They continue to add more cars to their fleet, grow the routes that work, and reduce frequencies (Whistler to North Vancouver) on other routes. The infrastructure and business ops that enables Rocky to run, should be duplicated in the United States. Could something like:

1) Oakland to Portland/Seattle
2) Oakland to Salt Lake City/Denver
3) Oakland to LA/San Diego

Need a hub and good daylight routes with great scenery. Would have to be the "West" - involving the Rockies, Sierra Nevadas, or Cascades mountains and the Pacific Coast.  

Problem is that in the United States, Amtrak has to get involved somehow on the train's movement and that adds to the cost structure. 

Rocky's business model should merely be duplicated, with same emphasis on capturing the high end revenue and emphasis on to good onboard service experience.  

Recently, Rocky Mountaineer acquired several former gallery style commuter cars which had been modified by a tourist railway which operated east out of Quebec City to a casino resort at La Malbaie (Murray Bay, an old steamship resort).

It was a very expensive ride and was competing with tour buses for the business. While the train still operates with European railbuses, the gallery cars were sold on. The galleries had been removed, and lounge seating placed where the commuter seats had been. I believe the cars had been modified with HEP. There was a smaller car included in the purchase, possibly a generator car. I've only seen very distant images of the cars at Kamloops.

I wonder what Rocky will do with them?