The Blues Train Rescue

Blues Train Friends & Supporters, 

With a heavy heart, due to the escalating situation of the COVID-19 Delta virus variant in Victoria, we have made the difficult decision to cancel our 2021 Shows, including all October, November and December shows. The Blues Train has always prided itself on putting the health & safety of its guests, staff, contractors, railway volunteers, and musicians first and foremost.

Words cannot describe the devastation that this decision has caused us.

Over the last 500+ days, we've exhausted all eligible opportunities to us to continue to run the business during Covid, whether this be via grant writing or funding applications or via government relief packages. In addition to the lack on ongoing Government support for event based businesses means that insurance is also unavailable to cover the costs of last-minute cancellations and snap lockdowns. With this in mind, we've decided that it's impossible for us to run any of our 2021 shows. We’ve made every effort to restart the business with our scheduled Revival Concert Series in October 2021, the 2021 shows would have seen an injection of funds into the business that would have relaunched the operation of The Blues Train. 

The Blues Train Rescue Go Fund Me campaign has been running for over a year now. The first leg of our campaign raised over $44,000 in the first 14 months and has been pivotal in aiding the hibernation of the business during 2020 and into 2021.  The campaign funds received helped us to continue to pay our rent and utilities to remain in our office space ($10,150), enabled our website and ticketing systems to remain live and ready for use when tickets went back on sale in 2021 ($6,464), kept our business vehicles insured, maintained and registered ($7,240), helped to continue our digital marketing campaigns and online presence of the business to ensure when we were ready to bounce back, it was seamless ($7,621), contributed towards our professional fees to ensure the business remained financially compliant and tax ready ($7,630), and helped us to maintain our Workcover Insurance ($3,925). 

The future of the blues train is not just in our hands, but its in the hands of the governments, with hopeful rescue packages for the events, tourism, and live music industry, and in the hands of our community and supporters. We're reaching out to all of you to help the Blues Train and to spread the word. 

While we are staying confident that The Blues Train will return to the tracks in 2022, we are in desperate need of your help to shake, rattle and roll once again. 

The best way to help us is to donate to our go fund me campaign, we're more than halfway to our target of $70,000, and all funds received will go into our rescue package to help us continue to hibernate The Blues Train until early 2022, when we feel confident that we can run safe, secure and viable live entertainment shows in a covid-normal event space. Below is a sample of some of our costs to see The Blues Train  continue to hibernate and return to the tracks in 2022.

You can keep up to date with all our news and future plans by joining our VIP Member list - Subscribe HERE 

Take care everyone, and we very much look forward to seeing you all back on the tracks with us as soon as possible.

Hugo & The Blues Train Team

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The Blues Train Rescue Package 2021

Digital Marketing & Online Subscriptions $6,500
Advertising $3,100
Wages & Superannuation $27,280
Workcover Insurance Premiums $960
Professional Fees $7,600
Motor Vehicle Expenses $3,620
Memberships & IT Support $2,100