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After Sunday's
article in The Lancaster News, various comments from individuals and numerous phone calls, I felt the need to provide more
information regarding the upcoming Santa Express.
The idea for a train excursion began at our Christmas ornament preview
party held in November aboard the three restored private rail cars at the
L&C Railway headquarters. Senior management with the railway agreed to
try out the Santa train concept this year. In the past, events See
Lancaster has sponsored were not always well attended and we were looking
for something different to offer our community for this Christmas season.
I was concerned enough with past attendance and the significant cost
associated with chartering the train that I questioned whether there
would be enough people interested to fill up three train cars.
I asked Lancaster City Administrator Steve Willis if the city would
consider covering the cost of the trip if I could find sponsors to
fund other planned activities. City Council granted our request for
the Santa Express to be a downtown development event.
Founders Federal Credit Union agreed to fund Winter Wonder Land at
the depot in Heath Springs. The town of Heath Springs contributed by
decorating its depot and providing on-site activities and arranging
for food to be available for sale.
As a lead sponsor, Founders received 10 tickets out of the 300
that were available. Founders was not given advance opportunity to
buy additional tickets.
My concern is that the public perception of the sponsor benefits
is not accurate based on Sunday's news article.
None of our sponsors, especially Founders, tried to exercise
unfair advantage and prevent the general public from buying
tickets for this unique event.
The fact is I was worried about having enough people to buy
tickets. I was completely caught off guard when the
community's request for tickets started coming in.
I thought that a Santa train had potential to be a huge
event, but not in its first year with no formal
advertising, except for an article in The Lancaster News
the Wednesday before the event. After two days of orders,
it became apparent that demand would quickly outstrip
supply.
It is important for the public to know that L&C
Railway made this event possible as a public service.
L&C Railway is a working railway, moving and hauling
freight Monday through Friday. The few private passenger
cars it has are used for industrial economic development
and are not offered for daily travel. The railway is not
in the tourist excursion business. December is
traditionally a vacation month for the railway, with a
large number of their crew taking time off. The railroad
was a great community partner to take a gamble on
scheduling a new event without much lead time to plan.
Several key things had to happen in order to arrange
this event:
- The private railway cars had to be available and
not rented out.
- The railway had to have a free Saturday before
Christmas.
- Train crews had to be found and their work day
could not go over 12 hours maximum because of
federal regulations.
- The railway had to agree to share the cost of
the event with us.
- Sponsors had to be secured to fund the
event.
We were able to pull all of this together
in less than two weeks. We will have 12
months to plan next year's event and ticket
sales will be handled differently based on
the interest expressed by this community
this year.
I offer a sincere apology on behalf of
See Lancaster to the community for any
negative perceptions that resulted from
the inception of this event. Our
intention was to partner with the railway
and the business community to create a
Christmas event like no other for
children and adults alike.
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