PROMOTIONS officer for the Inverell Transport Museum, Kevin Dunn, recently found himself haggling over the price of a second monorail carriage with the same demolition company that supplied the museum with the first.
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He wanted a second carriage to compliment the first, but at $8000 it was a pit pricey. Then he employed an old retail promotional strategy to his advantage.
“There’s nothing wrong with ‘buy one, get one free’, everybody does it,” Kevin declared.
“After I asked for a donation from the demolition people they said they couldn’t make a donation, but they came back with a price that was much lower than the original price.”
When Kevin had finished the price was down to $3000 and the museum had two monorail carriages to display.
The front carriage of the monorail arrived at Boss Engineering on Monday morning, where it will be stored until it is mounted outside the new museum, currently under construction on Rifle Range Road. Its arrival was delayed because there was trouble mounting it onto the truck that transported it.
“I think it will add increased interest to the museum,” Kevin said.
“…the Sydney Rail and Steam Museum and also the Powerhouse Museum received a full set of seven carriages plus track and the only other museum to have received this north of Sydney is us, that’s been well established now. All the rest are in Sydney.
“I’d love to be able to get another carriage too, but I’m looking for someone with a bit of money who might be able to fork out a bit extra.”
Kevin said the second carriage was paid for through a donation.
“I won’t go into specifics as to who the donation was from yet, at a later stage we’ll say who it was from, but we received a $2200 donation and made the other $800 up ourselves,” he said.
“There does seem to be a misconception that Inverell Shire Council fund the museum, it does not…council did not outlay any money in the purchase of this. It’s entirely out of the finances of the museum, which has been running at a profit for quite a period of time now.”