West Somerset Railway General Discussion

On a more positive note, this week I was talking to a member of the volunteer staff who reported that passenger numbers have returned to 2019 levels.

 

I doubt it. I watch the trains pass my window most days. Let’s have some figures.

 

There are two separate pages. The headline prices one is what I referred to, and is silent on eligibility - not even a mention of being a UK taxpayer.

The declaration is entirely as expected, and fully compliant. But it is already some way into the user journey, so an ineligible visitor would have to reverse and restart.


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I wish that all heritage railways posted their monthly figures with some commentary on the members website (or equivalent). I think it would give members both confidence and insight into how things are progressing.

 

I can think of a few good reasons why they shouldn’t and don’t. Far too commercially sensitive a piece of information to share other than in a Q and A after an AGM or similar.

 

In my experience, heritage railways are only too delighted to publish passenger figures when they are good, but suddenly become very secretive when the figures are poor.

 

There’s truth to that, but the numbers are very often not accurate. I have been surprised a couple of times with the honest number compared to the quoted, and rounded up number! I don’t blame railway’s for talking up their numbers btw.

 

I quite agree - good news is always welcome. The deafening silences are worrying - like when the teenagers go quiet upstairs…

On the subject of the advantages of charitable status, one that I don’t think has been discussed, is the rate relief available to charities, which can be substantial, I believe.

 

Be careful - one day they may find a way of charging your for that too

 

In what way would it be commercially sensitive? Bearing in mind their financial accounts will be published.

 

I think you have to account for the time delay. We are well into 2024 and most railways are only just publishing 2023 figures.

 

Apologies for asking, I should know this, but what is the last year for which WSR passenger figures are available?

 

That applies to most companies regardless of the business they are in I believe. Why would you want to headline poor results and further reduce investor (or probably in the case of HR's) member confidence. Plus publishing poor pax figures may end up with some suppliers putting the railway on a cash only basis. All best avoided I would think.

 

Well if you headline one years results (because they are good) but then do not headline a subsequent years results then many will draw their own conclusion. If the passenger figures are poor then it is likely that secondary spend will be poor which impacts the amount of supplies being bought in which is visible to the supplier.

Mind you of course as one heritage railway has done, running a campaign called Save Your Railway or similar might be a bit of a give a way as to your financial position whether you publish the passenger figures or not.

 

I suspect it would cause more heat than light.

Heritage railways are very complex businesses. They have some features that make monthly reporting difficult to interpret, for example, a cost base that is predominantly fixed with a fairly small variable (i.e. demand-led) component; and assets that are very expensive to renew but tend to have very long renewal cycles. The risk of publishing monthly figures is then that you will get a lot of back-seat driving and a tendency to micro manage, without necessarily knowing the full picture.

There are some big indicators of health that very rarely get reported, but might give you a good annual feeling of the health of a railway. For example:

• What length of the line is subject to a TSR? Is it changing, and if so, which way?
• What is the average age of the track since last major renewal? Is that getting better or worse?
• How many carriages are available for traffic? Is that getting better or worse?

And then probably some subjective indicators - cleanliness of carriages, state of the line side ("green tunnel" syndrome) and so on.

The long asset life of much railway equipment means that both improvement and decline tend to be long-run things. So I think you need to look at trends over similarly long lifecycles to form a real picture of health. Managers and directors absolutely should be keeping a close eye on things, but for external stakeholders, you need to look at the big picture: monthly stats would likely lead to much discussion about a poor week of trading when maybe the answer is just a simple as "the weather was crap", but in the process risk missing the big picture like "how come we only have 16 carriages in traffic this year when five years ago we had 21?" (*)

(*) Made up numbers not intended to refer to any specific railway.

Tom

 

That's all true and valid, but the candour shown in the reporting of some Spa Valley events suggests that there is a middle way - and which might be helpful.

The bit that's missing in this discussion, and where @80104 is I suspect aiming, is that sharing results can help with volunteer motivation. That's especially true of special events (we had 10000 people on a weekend we're normally closed, and took £50k instead of nothing*), but is also relevant over a season. The challenge for managements is balancing this against the tendency of some to back seat manage, so that figures (especially disappointing ones) don't generate negativity.

* - as with @Jamessquared, entirely illustrative numbers.

 

Yes, it's a fair enough point. But a lot of the requests to get more detail on performance often seem to be based round focusing on the wrong questions.

Bringing it back to the WSR - often talked about on this thread, one of their key weaknesses is about communication; there are probably plenty of things they could do in that direction that would massively change things while remaining short of providing a running commentary on passenger numbers.

Tom

 

I think if a railway is running a Save Our Railway campaign then by definition you are publicly stating things are not going well, at which point then @Jamessquared comments about communication become extremely important, to let those contributing know how things are going. Although it seems maybe on the railway related to his thread it would be communicating how the issue apparently disappeared overnight.
The point about events from @35B stands because it is useful for those involved to know be they volunteers or just members if the expenditure, which of course was over the norm, was worthwhile. So did hiring SNG this weekend prove profitable (from comments on here sounds like it) or was the "risk" of 8 Bulleids worth while (yes) or is say Polar Express better than lights or old style Santa.

 

Bear in mind that there are audiences other than volunteers and potential volunteers. Rival visitor attractions and the bank are two that immediately leap to mind as being interested observers. As @Jamessquared has also explained numbers of visitors are but one marker, and not an especially good one either.

To turn the question around what advantage do you think would accrue to any specific railway if everyone published accurate numbers annually? I would suggest none. It might encourage a migration of support to the “most successful”. Or indeed to the least for those that like the underdog. In neither instance does it do anyone else much good at all.

 

There was a time when railways had to inform HMRI in their annual returns and these figures were published. The HRA was then tasked with collecting the information on behalf of the ORR but I think even this has fallen by the wayside since the passing of Bill Hillier. I haven't seen a request for a long time. Having said that, the HRA have just sent out a simple survey asking how visitor numbers, income and expenditure have all faired compared with last year, percentage-wise. I doubt they'll be published though, except perhaps the headlines.