The 10A Allocation

Nice, Harry, very nice.
Perhaps you could clarify precisely what you think is **** ? Or is it just stuff you disagree with?

 

Bearing mind the length of time the forum seems to take to load at the moment please can I ask that you use less asterisks, if only to save bandwidth.

 

Yet a quick look on companies house reveals the company to be in far better shape financially than any of its rivals! Perhaps running charters is not as profitable as some on here might believe?

 

Well the basis of my question is that I know charters are not massively profitable! But as others have said, they do hvae other income streams.

 

Don't WCRC now have the WCML Thunderbird contract? At least it was mentioned during the 70000 issue the other day.

 

Yes.

 

I think we established a long time ago that 'profit' and 'business sense' have not been at the forefront of recent decision making. If it were they would have prioritised fitment of CDL for the Jacobite several years ago, rather than putting it at risk.
If 2026 is though the year that a rake of CDL fitted Mk1s appears out of 10A I will happily drink to that. If an unassisted run behind one of the 10A collection appears as a result, I will also happily dust off my chequebook for RTC.

 

All over the Yorks papers that the Scarborough Spa express featuring 'Harry Potter train' coaches is running in the summer.
Suspect its just sloppy reporting.

 

There has been a push on Social Media the last couple of days from WCR re the Scarborough's this year, but I have to admit I haven't bothered reading beyond the headline..

 

More likely cut and paste from an article of a year or two ago....

Cheers, Neil

 

Obviously it's just marketing, tying it to a massive cultural phenomenon but it feels sometimes like we're supposed to forget steam trains existed before Harry bleeding Potter.

 

Thing is, and it would be interesting to hear from those who steward on these various trains, what is the demographic on tours these days, is it families (if so the HP link may ensnare the kids to encourage mum and dad to take them, or is it the middle aged couples or is it the wealthy?

 

Well its certainly not 'the Poor'...

 

Have to correct you with the 'kids bringing mum & dad comment'! Most Harry Potter fans are in their 30's now, or even my age - the films were 20 years ago.. Daniel Radcliffe is 37 this year, my mate's wife is a massive fan and she's 42!
But that means (some) HP fans have a bit of disposable income.

There will be a new generation though with the forthcoming TV series - still plenty of useful marketing with the link.

 

It is the official religion of the millennial!

 

And the next generation feel it passé, while often also disapproving of the author’s views.

 

The adult equivalent of Thomas the Tank perchance ?

 

Not really. And very unlikely to be of much benefit to railways - the railway involvement in HP is no more than scene setting.

 

I dunno, I took my eldest on the ELR's As-Near-As-We-Can-Get-To-Harry-Potter-Before-The-Lawyers-Get-Involved day (I think it's actually called The Wizarding Express) and ten years later they're still running that. I'm sure they're not the only heritage railway doing something like that.

 

Does that really matter? We've been to a dinosaur event at the Epping and Ongar and they've done a Bluey event.

All it needs to do is draw people there.

It's key to remember that a lot of people really don't care about railways, so it's just another day out. But there are a lot of them, and they have cash to spend. If they enjoy it, they may come back on a non-event day.
(I suspect a fair number of visitors on event days are a hybrid with some of the party wanting to visit a railway and some only coming for the event