GWSR Broadway Developments

I think you mean councillor.....counsellors are for those with mental health issue.......oh the other hand may be you are correct!

 

Whoops, bloomin' autocorrect!

 

Ithink we would have to see how Vintage trains get on for steam services off the mainline to Honeybourn. It must be remembered that any train SOA to Broadway would have to reverse at Honeybourn which would give a time constraint

 

Meanwhile, back in the real (webcam) world, I see a tarmac paving machine has now arrived on Platform 1 north at Broadway. Time is ticking!
http://broadwaystationgroup.blogspot.co.uk/

 

...and the loco roster is now up covering the period up to and including the Broadway opening weekend.

 

The GWR now needs as much as possible to promote the extension and gets bums on seats. Perhaps get on the local radio etc to promote it, or offer some free tickets to local journalists. I read somewhere they currently have around 100k visitors a year so they need to set a target to increase that by.

I was given some Bluebell railway members magazines recently and was an article in one of them about how the Bluebell are wanting to promote themselves as much as possible and increase visitor numbers and spend. It said in the article that they now have less visitors since they opened to East Grinstead that they had before they opened the extension, so it doesn't automatically mean an extension guarantees increased visitor numbers, particularly after visitors have been once to travel on it and then ticked it as done.

 

Some of this is already being done. See: https://twitter.com/GWSR?ref_src=twsrc^tfw&ref_url=https://www.gwsr.com/
The GWRT have already been in Cheltenham town centre with a promotional stall, local radio is covering the opening and the Broadway chamber of commerce (or equivalent) is very much on side. Broadway itself is among the top 20 most visited locations in England but that can't be taken for granted of course.

 

The tarmaccers came today.
They did the footpath this morning,


then tried and failed to get on to P1 south. How they will solve that issue remains to be seen.



No problem-o though, they chugged round with their 12 ton machine to the other side of the building, and made it on to P1 north. They did about half of that by the end of their working day.

The BAG gang did more slabbing out front, in a steady drizzle all day. Work was also done on fettling the 4 cast iron crowd barriers, and on assembling the first of three 3 legged platform benches. One is now ready, and can be sat upon

 

Tom (@Jamessquared ) will confirm but I think you have mis-understood. As I have understood, passenger figures rose sharply in the first year when the extension opened, and have now fallen back but not below pre-extension levels.

Steven

 

Just had a look you may be right, he doesn't give any figures ? , It is in the Bluebell News Autumn 2016, page 10. It is a long article from their Chairman Graham Aitkin and the bit where he says it is as follows:-

"As our visitor numbers have actually reduced since we opened to East Grinstead we need to make changes and urgently. .......

 

According to Steam Railway's 2017 results round up, passenger figures on the Bluebell were 146,224 the year before East Grinstead opened, 188,144 in the reopening year and have dropped back to below 160,000 since, being 153,372 in 2017. Rather disappointing I suspect - I can understand both the Chairman's comment and certainly how you interpreted it.

Broadway is more of a destination, whereas East Grinstead could be said to be a potential starting point for passengers. Where an extension is to is as important as how long, unless it turns a very short line into one wroth travelling a greater distance to visit.

Steven

 

But the GWSR seem to be fairly careful how they spend their pennies; look how the siding plans were trimmed when the extra (unforeseen) expenditure had to be made to the embankment into Broadway; how few paid staff (a recurring expense!) they manage with; etc, etc.

Noel

 

That's about the gist. Probably more important than passenger numbers is revenue, which is also higher than before, but arguably only after a long period of stasis, so certainly not at comfortable levels. Of course, the counter factual is you don't know what would have happened had we not extended.

The two lessons I'd draw would be that (a) it's a hard market, and I'm sure if anyone knew a magic bullet to increase revenue they would apply it, and (b) the management skills needed to build (and plan, and finance...) an extension are probably not the same as those needed to run it successfully once the initial sheen wears off. In the Bluebell's case, the extension was (just) within the length that we didn't need to increase the provision of rolling stock and operational locomotives. That isn't the case for the GWSR and is one of what I see as a real challenge they will face: providing, sustainably, sufficient locos and carriages and crew to run a viable service over a line that will be, I believe, almost 50% longer than they currently run.

Tom

 

About 30% longer than the current line but you are right I'm sure in the case of sustainable resources although a trawl through the various GWSR blogs will show that such resources are not being ignored. (One reason why a carriage shed at Winchcombe is on the cards just as one example).

 

To be clear, visitor numbers peaked in 2013, then tailed off, though still above their pre-extension level.
Going a bit off- topic for a mo- There is a regular narrative that comes up on the Bluebell chat group, that the railway is under-marketing itself, particularly as a comfortable day trip by rail from London. It seems to have very little exposure in the capital, which surely was the principal reason for a mainline connection.
Likewise, the .com website (the customer facing one aimed at Joe Public by the PLC) is notoriously poor and continuously inaccurate in its content.
So Graham Aitken is right; we (Bluebell) do need to make changes. Opportunities are going begging.
The bottom line here, and for all heritage railways is that just one person could make all the difference to bums on seats, and spend per head. A really good, hotshot Marketing Manager with a burning enthusiasm for his railway, and knowing how and where to place it will make it happen.
With the GWSR you are very lucky in having high profile attractions at each end of the line, even if one of them is on just a few occasions a year, but all I'm hearing on the radio ads at the moment is "Cheltenham Festival"
So long as your marketing is good, targeted, pervasive and memorable, they will come, and will keep coming.

 

The racecourse at Cheltenham has a dual purpose for us I suppose. For one week of the year it's direct passengers, and a very welcome cash injection it is at the beginning of the season, but for the rest of the time it's a big marker, everyone knows about the racecourse.... And there's also a steam railway there.

AIUI the main reason we're being rather selective on how many days we run three trains is number of signalmen rather than any other department, which whilst it is a problem, is a relatively surmountable and contained one. Train and loco crews don't seem to have too much trouble. A carriage shed will certainly help with carriage provision, we've also had some bad luck on 2 or 3 coaches over the past couple of years that weren't just a bit worse than we feared (that happens much more often!) but were significantly worse, and is why we'd ask folk not to look too closely at the gleaming Mk1 SO in the third rake!

 

I do agree that having a mainline connection is vital almost all my recent visits have been via NR - mhr, svr, didcot, even IOW. Would not have gone to iow without the connection for example, others were doable day trips from where I was living at the time ie ‘I fancy a train ride, where is running today?’

What I want to know is why is he holding a scythe?

 

We managed 6 meters of slabbing yesterday and will be working today, hopefully in better weather. Unfortunately, there is a fair bit of cutting to do around all the man hole covers where we are working at the moment. On Wednesday, the tarmackers should be out of the way, so we will move to the platform side to complete that before returning to the forecourt side of the station and try to finish there before the first train arrives.

The tarmacking machine they used was actually quite narrow, but was too wide to get through the narrow entrance to P1 South, so they intend to hire a smaller machine to do this part. They ran out of tarmac after doing about 1/3rd of P1 North so will resume there later this morning. I did wonder if the tarmac machine would get under the footbridge as when it passes you it looks very high, I was pleased to see it did.

 

Technically its a sycle. Sythes were longer

 

If tarmaccing P1 is problematical, what is the modus operandi for P2?