wouldn't steam be nice?

On March 16, 2008, Julie Melchiori and I had an email
exchange. Here's a small part of what she wrote that day:

> I thought I'd let you know I'm working with a railroad to
> get costs on tourism travel for at least the summer using
> the existing rail for passenger tourism service. It's
> something I have been working on and looking into
> for some time but now have some promising info.

[....]

> I have been working on the commercial rail part of this
> and with your input from before my thoughts about your
> projects have led me to pursuing the passenger option in
> this whole project.

And she wrote more on projects that have a hope of
improving the Iron County economy.

Part of my reply to her lit a spark that has excellent potential:

"In the 1980's I had hopes to get people interested in
skiing weekend rail tours out of Chicago, departing the
Loop at 5:30PM Friday and arriving back at 7AM on
Monday. Once you get anything established rail wise
it can nicely build into a year round thing, especially
since this area seems to be one of the few where people
can come and rent a snowmobile. Marilyn has had it
with renting bicycles and there's no budging her on
the matter so we should find someone interested in
doing that again."

Now I am all for well integrated initiatives, that is to
say that not only does one create, for example, a ski
train but one also brings in a car rental setup at the
railway station, an agency for booking future visits
also run at the train station, a bus service, a display
that has information about investing in real estate
and businesses in the county (over 70% of all US
small an medium businesses have owners who
want to sell out and retire in the next 10 years,)
and a whole host of spin off businesses that would
provide services while engaging the imagination of
our skiing guests.

As I mentioned to Julie (above) "Once you get
anything established rail wise it can nicely build
into a year round thing..."

There's no reason, especially in this age of high
fuel prices, that we can't make a success of bringing
folks to Iron County by rail, but there's no reason
not to have one or more rodeo trains as well as the
previously discussed ski trains. After all, the main
event of a weekend is only a small part of what Iron
County actually has to offer visitors.

The problems with the financial difficulties faced by
the rodeo are only one small part of the continuing
economic collapse of Iron County. When I suggested
installing a trolley system in Iron River, a system that
is not only a tourist attraction feature but also has
educational goals that would make it not only financially
viable but would also give additional reasons to be
year round operation. One of the thoughts was to entice
people who frequent, for their own reasons, nearby
communities to spend a day in Iron River. Can you
imagine the effect on local businesses if we had
tourists in those numbers shopping in downtown
Iron River every summer?

But there was the Iron River City Council and the
DDA which both failed to have any vision for the
potentials such enticements have. Similarly I engaged
Wendy Otto-Shimun about the rodeo, a former
member of the Rodeo Board who appears to lack
the vision to do more than spend the budgeted
advertising money. Perhaps she has more on the
ball, but it sure didn't show itself in her discussions
to date.

I made the trolley proposal. Once made and placed
in the public domain I no longer own the ideas, they
belong to the community, any community, that wants
to use them.

Between using the rail service we have available
and new initiatives we could do a lot to improve
on the downward spiraling local economy that
exists here in Iron County Michigan at the moment.

There's been far too much "invested" in defending
the failures of the past when that energy would be
better spent improving our future.

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The above is part of the activism and opinions of Bill Vajk

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