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Elvis, You'll have to enlighten me about Roy Orbison. All I know is he is a rock-an-roller (was he in the Doors? Am I lighting your fire???). Sorry if callin' you a 'joker' was a problem. That is the same as 'some fella' in my vocabulary. If I was trying to be condescending I would have been more plain. I just couldn't remember who posted the $8000 figure and I wasn't going to look it up with the speed of this board and all. Anyway, I took your $8k figure and expanded it for the whole train of 40 cars, which I think is woefully small figure but it is a starting point. With 40 cars at $8k per car, the train is worth $320k. Now if it takes $320 in revenue to make a suitable profit, then that comes out to 320 passengers at $1000 each. That is the basis for the table and the table shows how terribly high the tickets have to be to make a profit. Remember though that the figure of $320k is based on a stack train having 40 cars. I would be surprised if an average express stack train had only 40 cars but I am want to be generous. The reason I factor it on a train load instead of a car load is because alot of the costs are measured per train. I am also trying to hammer home the point that it takes a lot of passengers going the same direction to make a train load. Back in the early days, when people couldn't travel by auto or airplane, then you could expect to get large numbers. But now, with all the choices you have you can't fill 'em up. This is a fundamental portion of the problem and why I keep saying the market conditions don't exist in the U.S. to make passenger train travel viable. And like you say, if people don't want to fix their roof in Montana (didn't want to say Colorado or Oregon) then why should the people in Rhode Island pay for it. - Roy(?) (a.k.a. Ed)
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