The concept of a Tourist Train is new to me. Well not really as I rode the narrow gauge between Silverton and Durango as a teenager back in the late 60s.
There’s a club near to me in Baldwin, KS (Midland) that has about half a dozen old, but working diesels, a few cars, and about 10 miles of abandoned track that they maintain. How much would a club like that be worth? Can there be any profit if you only have excursions on summer weekends and special events? I think they charge about $10 for a trip to no where.
The biggest obstacle to running any tourist train operation is the cost of liability insurance. While I am no expert, I think you would have to have high numbers of people riding the trains on summer weekends and special events in order to make a go of it. And a multi-million dollar umbrella liability policy is something that you can not affort to be without. If you have ten miles of trackage which passes through some pretty good scenery, plus some vintage passenger cars, then you would have something worth promoting. And with the proper recourses, you could operate a dinner train.
Actually, the biggest obstacles to tourist lines are the operating costs. Insurance is just one cost. Employee costs including wages and benefits, costs of keeping the operation up to State DOT and FRA standards including equipment, employee training and track and structures gets VERY expensive fast. Even a museum using volunteer labor needs a small cadre of employees with operating mechanical and track qualifications to keep it going and that is expensive. Worse yet, the farebox revenue is rarely enough to offset costs, especially in areas that cannot draw large crowds. If you can’t draw 40,000+ riders in a year with a straight tourist pike (no dinner train, freight or other major revenue stream) someone is subsidizing (whether they realize it or not) the operation. in answer to the original question, the tourist pike described is worth whatever you can get for the equipment and if the track is owned, the scrap value of the track, structures and real estate.