In advance of any announcement for our next RailFest, which is agreed to take place in the Boston area some weekend in March of 2020, we need to discuss details, such as which weekend is best. As always, anyone is welcome to participate in any portion of the Fest if not all of it.
To lay out what a weekend would entail by the proposed itinerary, Saturday would be spending all day riding the Downeaster round trip between Boston North Station and Brunswick, ME. By the current timetable departure would be shortly before 10 AM. There would be approximately 1 hour 15 minutes layover allowing off-train lunch. Arrival back in Boston would be a little before 6 PM, at which time we could have dinner together. Sunday would involve riding two commuter rail lines, namely the Fitchburg and Fairmount Lines. Sunday we would be involved with riding from about 8:30 in the morning until about 3 PM. I also recently added a Monday morning trip to Foxboro (something not available on a weekend), following the debut of service on that line. Monday's ride would be completed before 12 Noon, allowing participants to start travelling home midday.
For someone doing all the above, unless you live in the Boston area it would involve 3 nights in hotels, plus of course your travels to and from the city.
We need to discuss here what weekend this can be done. None of them are holiday weekends, thus we don't get the extra day for travel that we got with the MLK weekend in January. There are 4 full "weekends" in March:
- Saturday-Monday March 7-9
- Saturday-Monday March 14-16
- Saturday-Monday March 21-23
- Saturday-Monday March 28-30
What we ultimately decide may be based on hotel availability and affordability which can be driven by other events taking place in the city (such as observance of St. Patrick's Day). We should stay away from such events anyhow as they could tend to make the trains more crowded. Anyone willing to do the homework involved in checking whether hotel rates are any better for one of those weekends would be doing us a big favor.
Let me know your thoughts, and hopefully I can make an announcement in the next few weeks.