West Somerset Railway General Discussion

They were sold out, but the decision was taken yesterday to add another coach to the Santa Express trains.
My contact at Minehead tells me that these additional tickets are selling very fast.

 

Ah right, thanks. Extremely popular from what I've seen over the years and certainly a good market for both.

 

There clearly is demand out there for the Trains of light, and Santa's, and it's good to hear that extra coaches and additional trains of light being added, no one can afford to turn away business, or to sit on their laurels, every pound the railway can bank, over what it costs them to put on these trains , may well be the difference between being still in business in 2022, or going bust. just don't waste it .

 

That's good news, but why were there were so few (I read somewhere that there were less than 4000) available in the first place?
Given the alleged parlous state of the finances, I would have thought that the level originally on offer was a very pessimistic number, as adding coaches would be a very marginal additional cost.

 

It would appear that the local punters are not put off from supporting the railway. It bodes well for the future.

 

I think it must me very difficult to gauge/guess what public interest will be. What was fashionable last year might be passé now, or maybe those who didn't do something last year heard it was great and now don't want to miss out. Interest and custom also rely on how good a year your potential customers have had- however interested they may be, is it something they will pay for? The set-up costs of a santa operation can be significant, Imagine the criticism that there would be if the management had committed money, time and resources to such an offering only for the trains to be running a quarter full.

 

Agree completely - predicting demand at the moment is challenging, and I wouldn't criticise anyone for planning an event at a smaller scale and then stepping it up when demand becomes clearer. I would also hope that the extra capacity is at low marginal cost given that the costs of the event will already be sunk.

 

Appeal total yesterday on Facebook is £117,420, an increase of £57,956 from the total of £59,464 four weeks earlier. There’s no information on the source(s) of the increase.


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Could be that they were always planned but didn't make full availability available? Better to run full trains and release more than run all at 50%. They can't do right for doing wrong?!

 

Not really. I am sure that @Aberdare can give the full figures, but I remember being told that adding an extra coach added a significant percentage to the coal costs on a complete round trip.
Better to start cautiously and add capacity rather than running semi-empty trains.
Well done to all involved.
Ian C

 

But people will not travel on a leisure trip at full seat occupation. I would expect Santa services to maintain social distancing, either by selling compartments to families or by seating people in alternate seating bays in open stock.

 

But OTOH, the coal bill is a small amount of the total cost of running a train. It probably costs you about £40/mile to run a train, and the coal might be, say, £5/mile contribution to that. And then if your loco+train weight is say 320 tons (110 ton loco + 6 coaches) and you add another coach, the train weight goes up by 10%. So maybe your coal increases by 50p per mile in a train that is costing you £40/mile to run. It might be a big percentage increase in the coal bill, but it is a very small increase in the total cost of operating the train.

People seem to obsess about coal costs, but it is nowhere near the most important cost; moreover, you have to think of the fixed costs of running a train which get amortised over the number of passengers. Clearly there is no point dragging round empty seats but, for example, your marketing spend on promoting your Christmas services are likely to be similar whether each train carries 200 passengers in five carriages or 240 in six or 280 in seven ...

Tom

 

The West Somerset Railway Gala Planning Team is pleased to announce our gala events program for 2022. As usual, further information will be announced closer to the events, we will have some surprises in store for you!

SPRING STEAM GALA - Celebrating the return of train services to Minehead with the first WSR Spring Gala since 2018.
Thursday 5th May to Sunday 8th May 2022

1960s DIESEL GALA - Recreating the sights and sounds of the 1960s with vintage diesels powering through the Somerset countryside.
Thursday 9th June to Saturday 11th June 2022

AUTUMN STEAM GALA - Returning this event to the calendar for another year, with the theme to be announced closer to the time.
Thursday 29th September to Sunday 2nd October 2022

Please ensure you have these dates in your diaries. Our new Gala Planning Team led by myself hope to put on some excellent events for you all in 2022.

S.Welsh (Gala Planning Team Chairman)

 

The plc announced, this month, plans for 'a new joint planning group ....' which has every appearance of being a crude attempt to supplant the established Partnership Development Group ....... having read the Minutes of that group's meeting in May. ................... Beware !

 

This appears to be well established, that once you have steamed an engine, of the costs incurred that should be attributed hauling 20% more load ie more cost for more fuel is little more - certainly this has been expounded here some years ago and no one has differed. No one has shown any working to suggest this might be otherwise.

The number of carriages on steam hauled trains on the main line organised as specials would appear to support this - basically as many as the locomotive can reasonably haul, 12 or 13 over Shap or Aisgill - which helps the economics no end making it possible to get more passengers by charging possible rather than not generally affordable fares.

 

On a positive note, the WSR TV team have produced a superb video to promote the first series of Winterlight trains.

WSR Winterlights - YouTube

Thanks to wsr.org for the link. <BJ>

 

Good to see that the initiative that Trustee Di Ricketts-Tanner and I set up at the start of lockdown is being taken forward. The 'monetisation' of videos with adverts should also bring a small but growing income.

 

I confess I was always a fan of the Spring Gala being in March but I will be planning and booking my accommodation for May all the same. It will be good to get back to one of my favourite railways. It's been far too long for me to be away, but it's the WSR and it's worth it.

 

We thought it was sensible to plan for later in Spring. This year we have Seaward Way Crossing staff competencies to consider. The decision was made that by late Spring more crews will likely be competent to work the new crossing, so we will be able to run a more intensive timetable with hopefully plenty of crews to spare. We were aiming for late April, however we wanted to avoid clashes with the SVR and MHR galas, which left us with the dates we've decided