Friday, November 20, 2009
Railroading groups join to woo tourists
The latest from The Ticker blog
Old settler routes. Mountain vistas. Hiking trails and outdoor sports.
Tourism gurus have a plethora of options for marketing the Roanoke Valley and its surrounding areas as a worthwhile stop for out-of-towners to spend money.
Railroading is the newest push.
In March, the Virginia General Assembly agreed to tap the Roanoke Valley, Alleghany Highlands and parts of central Virginia as Virginia's Rail Heritage Region. Collectively, these areas have housed the state's largest concentration of rail facilities, such as Norfolk & Western's Railway shops in Roanoke, the Southern Railway in Monroe outside Lynchburg and Chesapeake & Ohio's shops and rail yards in Clifton Forge.
Executives at six railroad-related museums and organizations believe that combining their marketing efforts will draw more railroad buffs to the region and boost tourism revenues. These groups include the O. Winston Link Museum, the Blue Ridge Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, the Virginia Museum of Transportation and the C&O Railway Heritage Center in Clifton Forge.
These entities sent a letter to state lawmakers with this request, and lawmakers granted it.
But they don't have all of the money they need. The next step is paying $1,000 to $2,500 to create signs with the region's new name and image of a train wheel, its official logo. The signs would go up on interstate highways and other roadways, said Bev Fitzpatrick, executive director of the Virginia Museum of Transportation in downtown Roanoke.
The Virginia Tourism Corp. has given the group a $3,000 grant to match the $3,000 already contributed to the project by the Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center, the O. Winston Link Museum and the Virginia Museum of Transportation. The $6,000 will go toward online marketing and promoting the region in Trains magazine, Fitzpatrick said.
"The bottom line is money for the region," he said Thursday, when he announced the designation to the media and regional tourism representatives. "The best kind of return on investment comes from heritage tourism."
Rail buffs often spend "extravagantly" on their hobby and interest, said Rick Tabb, executive director of the Chesapeake & Ohio Historical Society. Often, rail enthusiasts are male baby boomers or retirees who either have worked for the railroad or had family members who were rail employees, according to research by the Virginia Museum of Transportation.
Fitzpatrick could not estimate how much money this kind of designation may bring to his Roanoke museum.
But a 7-month-old rail history museum in Clifton Forge is counting on the marketing strategy to revive interest in the faltering rail industry in the Alleghany Highlands.
In 1987, CSX Corp. closed the Clifton Forge C&O Railway shops, which employed 4,800 people or about 80 percent of the area's work force. The closure was economically devastating, Tabb said.
Now, fewer than 200 people work for the railroad, he said.
The C&O Railway Heritage Center opened in May in Clifton Forge to document this history.
Tabb said he hopes the appeal of the larger region's rail history will draw rail buffs to the small town of Clifton Forge, creating a new kind of "economic boom."
