West Somerset Railway General Discussion

Headline in the West Somerset free Press. <BJ>

'Flat ticket sales despite Flying Scotsman visit sees West Somerset Railway losses soar'

'West Somerset's much-loved steam railway has seen its losses soar to nearly £4.4k a week despite a revenue boost from hosting the Flying Scotsman, and the company has warned ticket sales in the early part of this year are below what they were in 2025'.

Flat ticket sales despite Flying Scotsman visit sees West Somerset Railway losses soar | West Somerset Free Press

£4.4k a week (£229k per annum)

 

Across the heritage line world, there are problems, it seems. Is this caused by specific circumstances at each line (e.g. not keeping a close-enough eye on spending); or are the old ways not working anymore - or both?

Noel

 

These losses are unsustainable. How much longer is it going to be until the Railway's management finally wake up and look at moving the PLC to some sort of charitable model? The latest loss will wipe out the money generated by the "Fundraising Appeal 2026" unless my some miracle it gets close to or exceeds its £250k target (which I seriously doubt - there has been no news on how the appeal has gone), and the railway cannot expect its supporters to donate money simply to cover running costs. Something has to be done.

 

The problem is that the fare income does not cover the running costs.

The railway has already given up running on Mondays and Fridays- what next - only running at weekends ?

 

I had a spare hour, so I thought I would look at the Companies House filed annual accounts for the WSR plc and see what story they tell. Apologies for being an old dinosaur with a fountain pen.

It should be remembered that 2021 was a Covid year. I’ll leave the interpretation to others.

Other analyses are, of course, possible with the same accounts.

 

I'd agree with the cash at bank line, but I've dropped some of these numbers into a spreadsheet. Making some assumptions about income (revenue + legacies) and costs (income - profit), I've done a quick summary. It's skewed by Covid, but the overall picture is of tolerable revenue growth, cost management holding line, but a fundamentally loss-making railway which is highly sensitive to legacy and donation income.


My concern with the graphs above is that the scales are different, so the impact of wage growth appears greater than it really is.

What would be interesting would be the corresponding supporting charity data to understand the in the round picture - I strongly suspect that the statutory accounts conceal as much as they reveal

 

Some of your letters are a bit skewiff aren't they? Total income (A+B) is C, Total costs (F) are D+E, Profit / Loss (G) is C-F. The numbers look right, but the labels not so much…

Simon

 

Robin

That is brilliant. A set of old fashioned graphs showing trends so clearly that almost everyone will understand.

 

Kind of you to say. All the figures are in the public domain.

But I take ‘35B’s point that the scale differences can exaggerate. It is correct, for example, that the ‘Revenue’ graph is ca. 3 times the size of the ‘Wages’ graph in absolute numbers.

Robin

 

Terrible news coming out of the WSR community this evening. Thoughts go out to all.

 

What?

 

The Chairman JJP has died today

 

This is undoubtedly going to be overshadowed by the latest news But..........

Chris Austin gave a talk in bath recently

I asked him about restructuring to bring the WSR into line with most other heritage railways and he was decidedly non comittal

 

That's not quite how I'd characterize 'Total Costs', which apparently went from £2,955K (2022) to £4,230 (2026); a 43% (roughly) increase, of £1,275K. (Of that, 'Wages' went from £735K (2022) to £1,210 (2026), an increase of £475K. That's a 39% increase; but only 37% of the total increase, though.) I have left out the COVID year (2021).

Without a more detailed breakdown of costs, it's impossible to say what's going on - perhaps an increase in coal prices was behind much of the rest? But that is a significant increase.

Noel

PS: Just saw the JJP news after I posted that.

 

In my haste, I mis-read that as Chris A gave a talk in a bath Might have been marginally more interesting.....

 

I had to do some back calculations from @Robin Moira White’s figures, hence the slightly odd rubric

 

I was comparing cost to revenue year on year where the two tracked relatively closely.

 

May he rest in peace, I wish his family well in their loss, and hope the impact on the WSR is not too dramatic

 

Are you able to expand on this a little?