Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Pikes Peak in Colorado or the mountain railways of Switzerland. There are
also heritage railways such as the Grand Canyon railway in Arizona or the
Santa Fe Southern Railways in the USA (Halsall, 1992), which offer services
hauled by vintage locomotives and carriages; these appeal to those seeking
nostalgia and authenticity. With regard to the Grand Canyon railway, this has
been developed with accommodation and attractions so as to offer inclusive
packages (Davis and Morais, 2004). The Harz Mountain Railway in
Germany, for example, is one of Europe's most popular steam-hauled rail-
ways, essentially packaged for a wide tourist market.
The association between railways and tourism dates back to the 1840s in
England, and the ensuing decades of the 19th century and early years of the
20th century elsewhere in the world. Railways used iconography to good
effect in relation to tourism destinations, and attracted a new breed of travel
writers keen to make their way by train. The importance is highlighted by
McCauley when preparing a visitor guide to Spain (1949, p156):
The frontier is within a few miles of Velez Rubio, a town on a
gentle hill, on which most guidebooks are silent because the rail-
way does not run that way, and the guidebook writers find it
troublesome to leave trains.
However, the fortunes of the railways were lost as rapidly as they emerged.
By the middle decades of the 20th century (earlier in North America), passen-
ger numbers began to decline in the wake of competition from the private
motor car and to a lesser extent from bus and coach companies. The decline
of the railway as a form of transport and consequently as a way of travel for
the tourist has been more or less relentless in many countries throughout the
latter part of the 20th century. This is particularly the case in central and south
east Europe during the 1990s (Howkins, 2005).
There is, however, incremental evidence to indicate that a rail revival is
happening, not only in Europe, but also in other parts of the world. This is
being driven principally by an increasing market, albeit from a small base
in some countries, such as in the USA, although the economic recession in
2008 has retarded this trend. The structure and ownership of railways differs
from country to country. In the main, there has been a move towards privati-
zation across the world, and especially in Europe, although public sector
involvement remains a defining characteristic of many passenger railway
systems. This has involved some restructuring, deregulation and partial priva-
tization (Jensen, 1998; Thompson, 2003). There are institutional barriers to
market development, such as a lack of adherence to market pricing to com-
pete with air travel on short to medium distances. There have been
improvements to information and ticketing systems, but these have been slow
to develop (Mintel, 2008b).
The renaissance of the train is also a consequence of investment in new
lines, or a renewal of old ones and improvements to some long-distance serv-
ices (European Commission, 2001). This has been strengthened by the
introduction of high-speed trains to more peripheral areas across Europe
