Mid Hants - "Watercress Lodges" at Ropley

I also wondered that...

I also worry that he thinks that most holiday makers would be content to watch the trains... I mean all the preserved railways in the UK survive on holiday makers just watching the trains go by...

 

If you want to have a go at me then do so, don't disguise it in the faux politeness of a regency fop attending a dance at Jane Austen's house. The fact is "Sir", that this forum is not the only place where members converse, so if you will (removes hat and powdered wig), you cast an unfair aspersion uponst my integrity, and therefore I remove my kid glove thus and deliver a ceremonial flick to your jowls.
Actually mate there is a lot of interest and even a little concern, matched by very little hard information either from the MHR itself or from Dean Farm, which is at pains to hide its total lack of connection to the railway. Many enthusiasts will book into these lodges in the mistaken impression their money is benefitting the railway, when it isn't
This thread is helping to correct this misapprehension, so if you want to discuss the new bridge at Alton, be my guest, but not here, eh?

 

Re: Mid Hants - "Watercress Lodges" at Ropley

Maybe the MHR are benefiting financially, it,s just that we do not know about it.

Regards
Chris:

 

Continuing on the Jane Austen theme... very clever Mr D'Arsey, sorry I mean D'Arcy. As you have said yourself "this forum is not the only place where members converse" - by which I take it you mean MHR members? (There's a gag there, I know, but I can't be D'Arced...)

However, all entertaining puns aside, the fact remains that this forum is the one place that all these MHR members are evidently not discussing it. You do still seem to be very much the lone voice of outrage - so perhaps nobody else is as worried about it as you are? Unless there's a raging debate going on on some MHR forum somewhere, in which case that's probably a better place to get hot under the collar about it

As Talyllyn07 has intimated, I would be very surprised if any steam railway which has holiday shacks, camping coaches or caravans within sight of it doesn't make at least some business out of those who stay there. 'The kids' see a steam train at the bottom of the 'garden' and of course they want to go in it. Perhaps not multiple times - but how many of the average family visitors that 'want to ride on a steam train' at a preserved line do travel on the trains multiple times in, say, a one or two week period? Probably almost... none.

On the other hand, if they're rented by enthusiasts, then I venture they're far more likely to travel on the trains multiple times. That's the sort of thing that enthusiasts do.

Surely anything which brings potential new customers within the evocative sight, sound and smell of a preserved line is a good thing? Look at it another way - without them there, there is no chance of any extra business for the MHR. With them there, there is some chance.

Glass half full and all that.