What *would* attract you/your family to visit a heritage railway?

Has anyone mentioned soft play area, play ground your onto a winner for young families. Just somewhere for adults to have five minutes peace. Hot food facilities not necessarily on site but a short stroll away

Young children are not interested in muesums. Unless it has digital interactive displayS.

I'm a Stepfather of two now entering there teens.

 

If you want to have "interactive" displays in a museum, any museum, then that kit must be robust enough to withstand much mis-treatment - and if it breaks, then get it fixed asap.

 

There are several museums that do interactive well now.

As well as kids play area , a dog friendly walking/ letting off steam area really good too, some railways do this but not all.

 

What would attract me and my son to visit a railway differs from what it would take to get Mrs and miss Simon to visit with us.

It's reasonable to assume your average railway enthusiast will know a fair bit about what they are looking at, what is authentic and what is not and will, generally, put up with dirtier conditions than a non-enthusiast visitor.

A non-enthusiast visitor is more likely looking for something similar to the standard NT offering: clean facilities, cafe and gift shop attached to a reasonably interesting house and gardens.

 

Being friendly to Dogs isn’t a bad shout, we certainly try to be accommodating to them at work otherwise we know we’re losing out on a decent share of customers.

 

The thing that attracts me to any railway is usually that they have an event on, ideally with some special trains running. That way you get to see the most that, that railway has.to offer.

Ideally there should be a place to get some lunch but if there isn't this should be made clear so you can either eat elsewhere or take sandwiches.

The best railways have something to see at each station.

 

Weirdly- we are 100% the opposite of that, railways offer an escape from the soft play type venues- and I'm glad of that, there's any number of those miserable hell-holes that can be visited.

My perspective on this has been that just keeping our 2 feral children engaged with seeing lots of things and looking out of windows/puzzles/colouring in/picnic on train has been that it's a nice day out for all of us.......soft play on the other hand overwhelms me, and also our youngest.

I also think it's an important step for them to understand everywhere isn't a play area, but that also doesn't mean it isn't going to be a nice day out.

Our 2 like museums where they can interact with exhibits, and not necessarily in a digital way.

The 2 of them spent nearly an hour on the footplate of 'Lord Mayor' at Ingrow, and love visiting a historic forge where they can watch water wheels, manipulate things with tongs and watch all the various machinery on site- the youngest is particularly fascinated with line-shaft driven stuff for some reason.

Chris

 

Dover sole! Michelin star restaurant! Now there's posh for you.

 

Is that meant to be a slight on the typical chippy and its customers? So you come into my chippy and I have a sign telling you that my cod comes from the FT Amundsen and my haddock comes from the FT Karel Doorman, what "value" does that add? Do you Google the trawler involved and given the vast expanse of sea they fish in, how would that info tell you in which bit of the ocean the fish were caught?

 

What about the Brexit British fish?

<DARFC>

 

Ha, ha! I'm in deepest Bedfordshire so unless cod has taken to swimming up the rivers Great Ouse and Ivel, there's scant chance of my fish being locally sourced. The majority of fish sold in the UK is imported as demand is far greater than our ability to source from home waters. Cod typically comes from Greenland, Iceland, the Faroes, Norway and Russia (in spite of a 20% tariff to "punish" Putin and Co.) As for Woolacombe, the south west is not a traditional cod fishery and much more is caught in and landed from northern waters so his reason is sound.

 

I've yet to find any of my cod flying the Union Flag when I unpack it.

 

A stand out visit that my wife really enjoyd was to the North Norfolk, 20 years ago. Why? Because it was tidy and wasn't a lineear scrapyard. She still remembers it now, despite us having visited countless other railways since.

Decent loos and a tidy, well mainteind car park, with enough space, plus a cafe that is able to take capacity of a train and has tables that are cleaned. Simple stuff, but things us enthusaists don't necesaarily look at . Clean coaches too

 

And having a vegan daughter, more on offer than simpy chips or cheese sandwich, beacuse "that's what you peopke eat" as I was once told. Guess that alos goes for various other intolearances or allergies too

 

Having been with the family before to visit HR's the main things that they seem to be most interested in are:

1. Parking. Can you arrive and be able to leave your car somewhere safe, not expensive and secure for the day. This is before you need to pay for accessing the station meaning you need a ticket for parking as well as the train.
2. Price. Do you get value for money on the journey your going to make? Prices have gone up, but then if thats the case so is the service your expected to get. Does the railway have a stupid ticket system whereby journey's are prescribed meaning you don't have the flexibility to enjoy the day out. NYMR lost out to this last year. This in turn leads to issue no. 2:
3. Reliability. Will the service run, to time and go where it says. We went to the NYMR last year and got exactly the opposite - yes these things happen but its now about providing a package and day out. Not sat at your starting point for 2.5 hours. Which brings you to:
4. Destination. Does the railway go somewhere. A look around a nice town at the end is always nice, but if the railway is the destination (much like the GCR is) what facilities does it have at end points or stations to break the journey?
5. Facilities - are they clean, amenable, accessible. Toilets, station tea rooms, onboard the train so that rubbish through the day is collected.

Add those together and those are your targets, or in modern management speak - key performance indicators. Families are less bothered about exact authenticity - they just want to enjoy the day out. A nice engine on the front, reliable service and quality that matches the price should help bring people in.

For the enthusiast / photographer - visiting a line at work is always nice and always different but you will get drawn into days when the action is there, such as galas and photo charters. Its a different market and the family / tourist / visitor market is what brings in the majority income lines really need.

There are a few creative ideas to combat the price issue. Perhaps one is to take the Beamish model of paying for a ticket on the day and then actually it lasts for 6 months or a year... so you can get some repeat custom, even if most people only visit the once, so you give the perception of value and thus people buy into it.

 

My family consists of me, my wife and our dog so first up the railway has to be dog friendly. Secondly, from the wife's point of view the line has to be long enough for the round trip to take up a reasonable chunk of the day and has also interesting destinations or places en route. She enjoys the NYMR and the WSR for the length of the journeys and the places they serve. She's fond of Pickering, Goathland, Whitby and Watchet. We've also had weekends away at the KWVR and DFR but she found the journeys too short although we did find some nice walking at both to fill up the day. Would have been a different matter had the weather been inclement. Comfortable stock, clean loos and decent catering - doesn't have to be Michelin star and contrary to a previous poster, we find a decent bacon sarnie to be quite adequate on occasions. Finally, little or no diesel action as the wife detests them.

 

What all these posts clearly illustrate is that there are basic essential features to an enjoyable visit (e.g. Parking, clean toilets, good catering etc.), and then there are the "bonuses" that add value to a trip - these can be the use of vintage carriages (Mk 1s are not "vintage" imho despite their age, because they are simply too commonplace but that's just my bias!), scenery, associated museums etc., even destinations. It seems clear to me that we are living in a time when visitors are increasingly looking for more to see on a visit "value for money" and that railways really, really need to invest in developing more in the way of "sideshows" if they are to remain competitive with other visitor attractions. I'm afraid that the days of "build it and they will come" might be over - it might work the first time, but may not lead to repeat visits.

 

Sorry but really I think they need the opposite. They need the core activities to be running fine. People wont need to go and see the destinations, museums etc as if the core service is not running they will simply by-pass the rail journey as not value for money and drive straight to the end destination instead. That's why railways are loosing the custom as they are not attracting the custom and offering the cost effective/value service needed.

 

Not intended that way at all - I merely meant that if you have been running a chippy for years, and there isn't the demand for that information, that tells me that this information would not be seen to be of benefit. That I might, were I to come your way, be interestd by no means justifies the effort on your part given that lack of demand.

 

I think you're aligned - the basics matter, but it's the extras that will drive repeat business.