Defunct preserved railways

True but if you take the published figure for income from travel and divided it by the published number of visitors and then compare that with the cost of a return ticket it will show if the visitor numbers is plausible.

 

That would be a really good pointer in the right direction, especially for lines in the "just starting out" or "struggling" categories.
It's much less likely to work well in comparing the bigger railways due to coach parties and schools travelling at discounted rates, large numbers of members/shareholders travelling at discounted rates, lines long enough to make travelling part-way a real option, charter trains and so on as each big heritage railway will have a different mix

 

I agree it has its limitations, it's only designed to test the plausibility of the number. If railfares/reported numbers gives a figure of say £1 when the return fare is say £13, something is amiss. If it gives a figure of £10 then visitor numbers are plausible.

 

I'm not sure what this proves. At the top of the list is Strathspey, with approaching double the figures of the NYMR and Bluebell- really?- and towards the bottom is Mangapps, whose 93 "followers" I find even more surprising, as the railway has no official presence on "social media". I'd be interested to know just what those 93 are following!

 

Heaven forbid that heritage railways should ever do this, but there are organisations in India and China known in the trade as "click factories" which undertake to dramatically increase the number of facebook likes for your page in a single day. Absolutely useless as a means of increasing your business, great for bragging rights. Often used by political parties and campaign groups to make themselves appear more credible.
Possibly the Strathspey's high rating, though, is due to people who want to know what is going on there but have little prospect of actually visiting the line other than very occasionally, whereas the Severn Valley, with less than half the number of likes, has a couple of million people within a 30 mile radius who can visit easily if they wish.

 

We should never forget that we are aiming to do what the people who ran railways in the past as their "day job" considered was uneconomic - running steam hauled trains on lines closed due to not being viable! (Flaman is an honourable exception, having built his own!)

Hence, no-one should be surprised that we need ancillary "trading" income and, let's not forget, fund raising in its many, many forms to ensure our lines have a future. At the risk of being a stuck record (again!), I suspect many lines have yet to start tackling the massive costs of keeping their basic infrastructure going long term and sadly, this is a factor that could make a thread with this title much longer in a decade or twos time.

We shouldn't be hung up about using ancillary profits and fund raising to meet expenditure - I have often heard that some type of repair or other "should be covered by the train fares", but the point is BR couldn't make it - so why should we? Of course our biggest "secret weapon" is is the level of volunteer input reducing the wage bill - but I recently made the point, if all repairs "should be covered from the fares", aren't we cheating to not having to cover "all the manpower from the fares"? I am not saying that we should (and I have seen one line where the fares don't cover the total wage-bill), but it shows the argument doesn't stand that other recurring costs can't be covered by ancillary income on fund raising.

Steven

 

Also the money they get for rent for the liner scrapyards from private owned stock, as with one line I went on last summer this most likely was one of their biggest earner.

 

I doubt that siding rental is a significant earner for any heritage railway. Usual the linear scrap yard is not a revenue generator at all, especially at the railways that have extensive facilities of that type.

 

I think we should be worrying about maintaining what we have. It constantly worries me that it is easier to raise money for capital projects than for maintenance, and there is a temptation we all have to keep adding to the buildings, rolling stock and locomotives. We must beware of creating a monster we cant sustain. who will paint all the signal boxes, station privies and running in boards? The concern about infrastructure is real, but more acute with some lines than others. If your line is on a chalk base, and most bridges are Victorian brick then the problem is smaller than if you are one sandstone or clay and the bridges are plate-girder. It is surely desirable that so far as possible the cost of providing the service operated is covered by its revenue? If you have to fundraise to run the basic service that cant be a sustainable position.

 

How many of that list are members, not passengers. ?

 

I suspect that you are on to something there, in that a large proportion of these "likes" are probably the result of conversations between members and supporters, rather than paying visitors or passengers and is in no way a guide to financial health or viability.

In the case of Mangapps, apart from the puzzling issue of how a railway which is not a member of Facebook nevertheless gets "likes", the railway has no members, so there is no-one to have a conversation with!

 

The mangapps one was strange - their official page flashes up 93 likes, but when clicked on heads to Mangapps Manor page, so i took that as the figure. Yep those are the official figures for each railways official page - i was surprised by Strathspey being top.

 

I wasnt trying to prove a railways financial health or viability through this, just thought it was an interesting comparison. If you type in Mangapps and complete a main search it shows their old page with 93 likes before the merger.

 

The railway that surprises me on that list is the Swanage, you would think being a primarily tourist line it would be further up the list!

 

Just taken the 'like' figure so can be a mix of members, passengers and interested parties.

 

To be honest, I think these figures are a distraction and prove nothing.

 

Also depends on how long the page has been in existence. Perhaps a better measure would be number of visits to a railway's main website?

 

They arent trying to prove anything - that was not the intention, they are just to for people to look at. Not as a number of people have suggested trying to prove any point.

 

I still think the best measure would be long-term financial stability! Having a good online presence may help with gaining passengers and answering queries, but it is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

(And re. web stats: if you think comparing passenger numbers is a sport open to variations in what exactly is being counted, just try comparing web stats ...)

Tom