West Somerset Railway General Discussion

Yes, but most people just use Ferrets to catch 'em. Although I suppose a shell would have them skinned, roasted and delivered to the table by air mail...

 

Ferret armoured car? Bit over the top IMHO!

 

Well , if the bunnies are lobbing shells at the railway they will probably need them.

 

Makes you think tbh, I've walked past that spot fewtimes in the last month or so, bit scary that if it was a bomb and not just some rusted metal

 

For avoidance of doubt it subsequently became clear that it ended up beside rather than on the track. I just relayed what I, as a passenger, was told at the time. Inevitably news gets garbled in repetition. A very interesting experience that was well handled by the staff and in good humour by all concerned.

 

2015 Annual Report and Financial Statements


Interesting reading. In 2015 182,764 passengers were carried. This contrasts with the peak 226,000 carried in 2009 since when there has been a year on year reduction. Is this just a market balancing itself?

 

That doesn't compare well. Was 2009 an anomalously good year or had numbers been steadily building up to that?

I suppose its difficult for somewhere like the WSR as there's not a huge amount of public facing stuff that you can do that is "new". You've got museums, you've got a long line etc. etc. What we on the GWSR are doing is trying to introduce new small special events, that still use a normal timetable so no extra strain on staff, but encourage visitors who wouldn't normally visit, for example we've got our first food and drink fayre in October I think it is, standard timetable, but external traders invited and so on.

 

Must admit the GWSR gala I went to last year an extremely good pasty was supplied by a catering van that specialized in Cornish Pasties .

 

The WSR does have events designed to bring more people in - just look at the official website and you'll see things like fish and chip specials and cheese and cider specials as well as family-friendly events with meet and greet events like Peppa Pig. The Dunster Castle Express is a very popular 'add on'.

There is usually a Cornish Pastie van at Minehead at galas.

 

The passenger numbers are disappointing. This is indeed a trend and one that needs reversing ASAP. I've mentioned before that the whole railway family and the extended family represented via the PDG should be looking at this as a matter of some urgency. I know the plc already have some initiatives to gather data but once this exercise is completed the data needs to be taken seriously. We also need some comparative data (e.g. from Dunster Castle and other local attractions) to see if the trend is specific to the WSR or indicative of a more general drift of visitors away from the area.

 

There is some interesting reading here, particularly in Section 9.
Note that much of the data is 'anecdotal', so open to interpretation.

https://www.westsomersetonline.gov....t/Appendix-3---Minehead-Health-Check.pdf.aspx

 

Are there any diesels out on Saturday 28th May.

 

No locos - only the DMU.

 

Google is your friend. http://www.depg.org/Loco_Running_Dates.html

 

Thxs that's what I was looking for.

 

Lets not forget that the passenger numbers are based on two very different baselines. A family used to be counted as 6 passengers. This has been corrected to a more realistic 4. A more reliable measure would be the takings at the booking office after adjusting for increases.

 

This is a good point. Do you have restated figures for the last 5 years based on the new baseline? Also the post by @ mvpeters above contains a document which suggests a peak of 250,000 visitors to the railway. Again I can only presume a different baseline was used.
Given fare increases and changes cash at the booking office is not a perfect measure either. We need good data on bums on seats all produced to the same baseline.

 

Surely the real yardstick is the financial one. Not all passengers are paying ones, and the crude overall passenger numbers clearly don't tell the full story. That is not say that passenger numbers are unimportant.

 

Whatever definition we put round passenger numbers we are told : "insufficient revenue was generated to cover costs". Aldfort's point is well made.

 

In crude terms yes it is. Whatever measure is used needs to inform if we are doing better or doing worse than we did the year before. So to your points lots more passengers who travel at a discount may not be a good thing but failing to increase like for like sales year on year is not a good thing either.