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Creative Thinking for Future Heritage Railway Schedules

Discussion in 'Heritage Railways & Centres in the UK' started by 21B, Dec 16, 2020.

  1. flying scotsman123

    flying scotsman123 Resident of Nat Pres

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    I've no aversion to integrating new technology on heritage railways where it would be beneficial. For what it's worth I think it's a good idea for railways to provide Wifi at main stations and cafes etc. I just don't see how installing USB charging ports and portable wifi on trains is worth spending all that money, and I imagine it would be a lot more expensive than "land-based" wifi too. I don't accept that the comparison with local buses or even ordinary trains is valid in this instance. Neither of them are particularly selling you a journey in the way a heritage railway is, buses and normal trains merely sell you a ticket to get to a place. The usb and wifi is there to make the time between you boarding the service and you receiving your "product" (arriving at your destination) more appealing, and thus make customers more likely to use their service. That's not what drives sales at a heritage railway.

    Yes, leaflets end up on the floor or in the bin and waste resources, but USB ports sitting empty and unused is an even more fantastic waste of money to convey (or not convey) the same information. And in any case, who doesn't have a fair amount of mobile data on their phone per month anyway? I'd suggest those that don't aren't really your target audience for this sort of thing anyway. I'd be up for integrating people's use of their smartphones using their mobile data on the trains, and wifi at stations to better explain and show off features of the railway, but not the expense of installing a load of gubbins on trains.
     
  2. johnofwessex

    johnofwessex Resident of Nat Pres

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    A telegram service?
     
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  3. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    You forget one important catchment - the teenager dragged along by their parent, who just wants to bury their head in their device of choice!

    As much to the point, wifi access isn’t necessarily cheap. I understand Manchester have removed it from their trans, saving both £300k/yr in subscription charges, plus a kit refresh.


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  4. flying scotsman123

    flying scotsman123 Resident of Nat Pres

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    Of course, but they will almost certainly have mobile data!
     
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  5. burnham-t

    burnham-t New Member

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    Having volunteered during the Covid period as a museum attendant at a heritage railway that runs from a picturesque and busy small town to a significant National Trust property, I'd comment (1) there was no opportunity for passengers to visit at one end of the line and come back on a later train, accepted in the light of Covid hygiene precautions, but this would be a distinct drawback in normal times, especially for repeat visits, (2) pre-booked passengers tended to turn up in good time and a higher proportion visited the museum than normal, suggesting that pre-booking needs to be associated with a bigger car park and interesting attractions in the station area, and (3) there were a significant number of museum visitors who "were in the area" and had looked in on spec but found trains fully booked. They were very understanding under the circumstances, but in normal circumstances it would be desirable to be able to sell them a ticket.
    Even at the museum, which might be expected to be a rather specialist interest, the proportion of dyed-in-the-wool, rivet-counting enthusiasts is pretty low, but there are a lot of people who generally like trains, often with some family connection.
    I don't much like TripAdvisor, but I'd suggest that if you haven't done so already you look and see what visitors to railways you're interested in post there.
     
  6. Monkey Magic

    Monkey Magic Part of the furniture

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    I suspect something in between. I suspect some people will be very gun-ho about return to normal and others will be more cautious. For example, pre-Covid but post-SARS it was not uncommon to see tourists to the UK wearing masks.

    I'd suggest that lines will need to take a flexible approach and their won't be a one size fits all. It might be that some lines will really benefit from turn up and go and others from book in advance and some from a mixed system. It may well depend on the surrounding tourist industry, what alternatives are there? are people day trippers, long weekenders, week long people, from a nearby area, international? Is the line a day out/afternoon?

    What I don't know is this - do lines near a big centre (London, Birmingham, Manchester etc) have more 'walk up, day trippers' than lines in tourist areas where people are in an area for a week (Norfolk, IoW, Wales, Cornwall, Yorkshire(?), Somerset) and people may look at the weather and decide between going to the beach or going to a railway/indoor activity.

    Location may also impact on volunteers. If is somewhere where you can volunteer one day a week for the summer or is it somewhere where you have to go for a week/fortnight to make it worthwhile?

    I think it will also be about 'what/where is your destination' - do you get the train in the morning, spend the day in wherever and then head back mid-afternoon, is it somewhere where you go, have a 'train ride' go out and back. Is your destination weather dependent? Is your surrounding area whether dependent? Do people use your line when the weather is awful, do they use it when the weather is good to get somewhere?

    I think it will be about striking a balance of secure, safe, flexible but dependent on where you are and who your customers are and what they want/need.
     
  7. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    I don't think there's much between our views - different operations will have different factors driving them, and will find different balancing points for their market.

    However, reading your post made me reflect on one other dimension - cost. There's been a lot in this thread, as others, about the cost of operation and the need to get maximum value out of the railway's expenditure. I agree, but do worry that it may be the wrong framework through which to look at how to sell to customers. When looking at options, there has to be care to try to sell what those customers want to buy, rather than just what you want to sell to them.
     
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  8. Nimbus

    Nimbus New Member

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    There are significant parts of my local heritage railway where there is no mobile phone signal so no mobile data, and not just in the very long tunnel. And this is in the 'Home Counties'!
     
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  9. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    To be fair, when making my original post (on the WSR thread) it was with the specific instance of the WSR in mind, which has particular characteristics: long, and relatively tidal. A service pattern to match the tidal traffic flow seems right for that sort of line, and I was then thinking of the "fill in" options, on the grounds of meeting a secondary market at relatively low marginal cost. (As @Steve notes, once the train has been taken out in the first place, a second trip costs little more than the cost of the coal for the mileage, so taking 50 or 100 people on a ten mile out and back trip may be preferable to having the stock lay over for four hours while the main trade are enjoying the beach).

    Clearly that is a model for a long, tidal, line, a mid length line probably requires a different model; a short line different again. The pre-book option is probably more viable for a line like the WSR that is always going to be a "whole day out", whereas a short line may have more "what shall we do this afternoon?" type trade that it has to cater for.

    What is interesting is to see the debate. One hopes that if nothing else, this year has been a wake up call to try to really understand the cost of delivering a service, and the pattern of demand, and then trying to match the demand while minimising the direct cost as much as possible.

    Finally, it might be helpful to define terms, since these are getting mixed up. I'm hopeful enough that Covid will pass, if not in 2021 then by 2022. So my thinking was about service patterns post covid, rather than with the rather more stringent conditions of social distancing, rigorous carriage cleaning and allocated seats of the covid era. For example, the MHR model of a gala (fixed seat all day, engines swapped) was clearly a good solution in a covid era, but I am not sure it would be attractive for all galas going forward, because it seems to assume that the primary attraction at a gala are the locomotives, which is far from universally true. Many of the memorable galas I've been to are memorable because of the ability to explore attractions off the trains; I wouldn't want to be constrained by getting off to look at a particular station but then maybe having to wait several hours until "my" seat came back past on its next round trip.

    Tom
     
  10. johnofwessex

    johnofwessex Resident of Nat Pres

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    My view though must be that there are many things that can be tried.

    Going back to the early 70's the VofR had cheaper tickets on the morning train as it filled up the less popular train, so clearly there are possibilities for maximising revenue or perhaps attracting passengers on less popular days and times.
     
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  11. Monkey Magic

    Monkey Magic Part of the furniture

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    I think a good example of the variation of models will be somewhere like North Wales where you have tourists but not so much day trippers. You may or may not have as many international tourists anymore. (Who knows what Brexit and Covid may do to that market).

    For lines like the FR/WHR the booking model no doubt works well. Perhaps also allowing for booking fairly close to departure time online? I think for somewhere like Llanberis, Bala or WHHR the ability to take walk up traffic would be better?

    The flipside might be say Swanage or Bodmin where they are the only line in an area with a lot of different types of tourist attractions around, again maybe more flexibility is necessary because of the nature of the competition?

    I think one other market that needs to be developed is the 'people who wouldn't normally go for train ride' market - I don't know how many of the Dracula fans in Whitby go for train rides, or the surfers of North Cornwall etc (tourists in the area for another reason or attraction).
     
  12. Seraphim

    Seraphim New Member

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    In essence, the proposal seems to be to incorporate many of the worst features of the current "Main Line" railway into the heritage railway. The move towards fixed train time ticketing on the main line had absolutely nothing to do with customer convenience or choice or any of the other convenient untruths trotted out by franchise holders. It has everything to do with the ORCATS revenue attribution model. If you sold a ticket which could only be used on Train X, then the Train X company kept 100% of the revenue. The idea of moving towards a similar model on heritage lines is madness.
     
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  13. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    Fixed bookings predated privatisation, and were about yield management, learned from the airlines; gaming of ORCATS is a later and depressing focus on individual operators over the network or customers.

    It has mixed results; advantaging some and disadvantaging others. But dismissing it like that is a complete over simplification.


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  14. Seraphim

    Seraphim New Member

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    I think we will have to agree to differ somewhat on the historical elements - but yes, yield management was a thing. I still stand by my point that implementing systems of fixed-time ticketing in a heritage railway environment will be a complete turn-off for many punters, myself included. It will be a brave railway, in a post-COVID world, which tries it.
     
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  15. tor-cyan

    tor-cyan Well-Known Member

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    I'm sorry but what do you expect, that train company X give you 10% when you catch the train you booked to travel on? . As I have previously posted theaters sell you a ticket for a certain performance but that does not entitle you to randomly turn up for any other performance and clam a seat. Now granted some venues and TOC's will, if there is the availability, change your ticket but that will still incur re-booking fee. Now some people find that wrong, but from the company's point of view they are giving you a new ticket for a fraction of the price they could have sold it for.
    I just find it strange that people seem to think that this an ether or proposal I fail to see why a middle ground can not be achieved, with a percentage of bookable tickets and walk up ones. I also find it strange that people feel that if customers fail to get there train ride that they will never return, if you don't get to see your favorite show because you turned up on spec and it was sold out, do you boycott that venue?

    Cheers
    Coin
     
  16. Seraphim

    Seraphim New Member

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    The comparison between railways and theatres is fatuous; a railway has huge elasticity of supply compared to a theatre. Moreover, the culture of railways historically has been turn up and go. The level of aggravation caused by mandatory reservations and fixed time ticket on the modern railway is astounding; in pre-Covid time it was very rare to see a conductor doing revenue duties without at least one major confrontation per coach. Are we really going to put volunteers into that situation? Unfortunately, any argument against new ideas is always stereotyped as resistance to change. It's not resistance to change. It's resistance to bad ideas.
     
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  17. tor-cyan

    tor-cyan Well-Known Member

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    But we are not talking about the big railway, its there to provide a public service, the preserved railway is very much like the theatre, as like it or not it just another form of the entertainment industry, yes it has an information and education element but so do museums art galleries and zoos. I would think that a high proportion of the public that visit our lines are there to be entertained, and if they learn something along the way that's all to the good.

    Cheers
    colin
     
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  18. Big Al

    Big Al Nat Pres stalwart Staff Member Moderator

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    This whole thread is about being creative and being prepared to consider something unusual if it will work. Whilst the view of purists in heritage (however you may describe that) must be accommodated that doesn't mean that they should always be taken notice of. I wonder how many of them scoffed at the first 'Train of Lights' or before that the first time that someone put a face on the smoke box of a tank engine, painted it blue and put a No.1 on the side?

    Into the mix has to go new ways of allowing the public to book on the trains and also timetables that suit the flow of business. It just makes sense to me but what works for the WSR may not work for the Bodmin and Wenford.
     
  19. JBTEvans

    JBTEvans Well-Known Member

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    I think a mix would be a good thing. Being able to pre-book seats on trains between certain sections of line on a particular service would be a good idea, or being able to pre-book a compartment etc.

    I'm sure we've all been at Paignton or Kidderminster and can't find a seat despite the train not leaving for 20 mins yet!

    Turn up and go is key to many of the longer railways. A lot of the SVR ideas this year, while good for families, do not appeal to me as an enthusiast.

    I think the NYMR should definitely look at Whitby services being able to be booked in advance, maybe up to a limit of 4 of the 7 coaches with choices of departures either way like the Dartmouth Railway did this year, yet still cater for those on the day.
     
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  20. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    I agreed with you that the comparison between theatre and railway was fatuous, so it’s unfortunate that you’ve then used the comparison yourself.

    The difference that needs to be noted is the degree to which a heritage railway is a day out rather than an event. That creates different expectations, and different reactions.

    Perhaps a better comparison is between pub and restaurant. I almost always reserve a table when I eat out but expect to be able to walk into a pub, but with a risk of it being full when I arrive. My hunch is that heritage railways are more pub than restaurant; the next few years will see whether I’m right.


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