WHAT
IS Rail Travel Center®?
Welcome to the
Rail Travel Center® website! We hope you enjoy browsing through our
current tour offerings. We try to make our tour descriptions as
complete as possible so you can determine if a program is of interest
to you, but we do not take bookings on-line. We want you to talk to a
real person when you book a Rail Travel Center tour! Please call us,
(or your local travel agent), if you have additional questions or
would like to book one of our products. Our toll-free number
(1-800-458-5394) operates in the U.S. and Canada. If you reside
elsewhere, send us an e-mail, and we will quickly respond.
Please note we
are a tour operator; we do not book individual rail tickets. If
you are interested in individual rail travel, we suggest you contact
Gateway Travel, located down the road from us in Brattleboro, Vermont,
at 800-639-3706 (802-254-8844 outside the U.S.) They are highly
skilled in rail travel and would be happy to assist you.
Please be sure to mention that Rail Travel Center referred you when
you call them.
And now for some information about our company.
Rail Travel Center® Tours originated in 1983 in Tacoma, Washington,
where its owners still reside. Our operations unit has been located
in Vermont since 1987. From this location, the company directs
approximately 20 fully escorted tours, each of which operate once
during the year, primarily to destinations in the United States,
Canada and Europe.
![[Carl Fowler's Essay "Trains of Memory"]](images/buttonB.jpg)
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Escorted tours usually have a minimum of ten and a maximum of forty
participants. Our philosophy of touring with fewer
participants than many other tour companies require has allowed us to
operate nearly 90% of our advertised departures in the last ten
years. This is very important when it’s your vacation!
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We do not offer the same escorted tour program each year,
as we have a very high repeat rate among our customers. Therefore, if
you see something of interest, consider booking it now rather than
being disappointed if it isn’t offered next year. We specialize in
rail products, and these systems are at the mercy of governments and
the vagaries of man and nature. Routes are discontinued (such as
British Columbia Rail), liability insurance skyrockets and forces
preservation railroads to cease operations, and sometimes even Mother
Nature gets into the act (such as taking down part of the Kinzua
Viaduct with a tornado) and the ride is gone, perhaps forever.
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In addition,
we offer six to
eight “hosted” rail tours with multiple departures to locations in
North America. These programs usually are available every
year. “Hosted” tours are guaranteed to operate from the first
passenger.
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As
much as possible, we use trains for long travel distances and motor
coaches for connections and local sightseeing. Other forms of
transportation such as boats, ferries and trolleys, may be used to
vary the travel experience. Tours depart from a variety of locations,
depending on the tour destination. Connecting travel to and from our
tours is not included in the tour prices, as our clients live all over
the U. S. and in other countries.
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Our preference is to feature interesting historic hotels and inns for
multi-night stays.
Beautiful scenery, history, classic sightseeing, restaurants
specializing in regional foods, museums, and nature all feature in our
tours. We refer to this as touring “with a sense of place”. At
the end of one of our tours, we want our clients to feel they really
have been somewhere “not just like home”.
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As
the Cunard Line and the New York Central used to say, “with
Rail Travel Center® Getting There is Half the Fun!”
Rail Travel
Center®
is a member of the National Tour Association, American Bus
Association, the American Society of Travel Agents, and Cruise Lines
International Association. We hope to have the opportunity to meet
you soon on one of our programs! All aboard!
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