WSR 2020 Spring Steam Gala - Thurs-Sun 23-26 April 2020

If costs are so much an issue, why on earth are the WSR hiring in locos from Yorkshire & Norfolk?! It seems biazzare to me.

 

A donation is a voluntary extra that somebody decides to give, like giving a tip in a restaurant.

To buy a return and only use a portion, would be like leaving the cinema half way through a film.

 

Especially when some enthusiasts have questionable hygiene at the best of times.

 

No I haven't made my views clear, but I think the plc are not seeing the wood for the trees, and they haven't got the best record of late have they now?

Surely the idea is to fill out the 12 coach train, surely as many bums on seats as possible. The way to do that is cheap seats.

The QB is attached to the rear. That is paying for the service to run - assuming it is sold out - so the rest of the train is profit.

They'd certainly sell more tickets at a cheaper price and with the option of a single.

To charge everybody else £25 - for one round trip with only BL as the starting point (with no public transport cause its the evening), or £10 even though they've spent at least £32.20 already, if an adult, just doesn't compute with me.

Talk about biting the hand that feeds! I appreicate they probably need to put off people who would otherwise only buy the cheap evening ticket for guaranteed* trip behind the 9F, but now some people who may have popped along in the evening won't bother at all. A way to combat this would be slashing the price of an add on to a gala rover to £5 max if anything and bringing the price of the sole trip down to no more than £20 (maybe £18 - 9 each way for a 9 - marketing).

Yes £28 is a standard day rover but you can go on more than one service, if you chose to do the last round trip of that day that is a voluntary decision by that passenger. A £3 discount is not a lot.

* - subject to availability of course, and I bet if it fails the WSR will run a shorter train with no refunds!

Anyway, this coronavirus may put all this to a stop...

 

Could be another issue for dispute if there is a late cancellation of the moves, how tight are rental and haulage contracts.

 

modern galas attract more revenue with 'new' locomotives that earn their keep as journeyman engines. I'm not sure a WSR home fleet gala would constitute as much excitement and therefore, income.

 

There are locos closer than Yorkshire and Norfolk that haven't visited the WSR before, indeed I mentioned one in the suggestions Seb asked for early on in this thread - 46447! 5541, the other I suggested, not been for 21 years either.

 

Maybe they weren't available at the time required? Suggesting locos is the easy part; getting them is rather harder.

Off the top of my head, I can think that if you want to hire a loco, then it has to meet a lot of criteria:

• Will the donor railway allow it to be hired at the time it is required?
• How much do they want?
• Do they want anything in return as a quid pro quo? Can the host railway offer what they want at the time they want it?
• How much does it cost to transport? Are there any potential back loads to mitigate the cost?
• Will it attract sufficient extra visitors?

A lot of factors to go into the business case, some of which are known and some are at best guesses. In any case, the financial equation isn't just about transport costs: the total cost would be a combination of daily rate and transport on one side, but offset against a measure of increased ticket sales for a popular loco and any discount for a return visit going the other way. To take an example, my hunch is that the Didcot Saint will be very popular at the SVR given the opportunity to run with appropriate period carriages; and that popularity will more than outweigh the extra logistical cost associated with locos from Didcot. Whereas I suspect a hire of 7903 or 7820 from the GWSR would have a lot less wow factor, even though the transport would likely be much cheaper. It's not just about transport cost, even though they are significant.

Tom

 

My concern is for the railway is the financial risk of the gala with a railway already running close to the wind of serious debt issues.
A gala is a higher than normal risk event due ro the expenditure needed to bring guests that will attract visitors. The 9f was a great coup, but I fear the rapidly escalating corona issues of self isolation requirements for most of its target audience and just the fear factor of the general public will mean the risks become far too high.
I and a friend have already booked accomodation for the event, but realistically I cannot see how the risk of spending £20k plus in transport costs can be justified if far fewer people are going to be willing or able to come.
I am sure the organisers are having daily discussions about this but I would say it would be better for your potential customers to postpone sooner rather than later.

 

I agree that it's a gamble but that old cliche, speculate to accumulate is also relevant. The NYMR gala last autumn took some risks given the number of large locomotives running and the costs involved but I would have said that I've not been to a gala so well attended given the weather so assume the gamble paid off? Given the creeping situation with Corvid-19 and the decisions that are likely to be made given what we can learn from other countries affected before ourselves, I would say that this poses a much higher risk to meeting the numbers to make a gala profitable, assuming it runs at all.

 

I too have accommodation booked (non-refundable) and was looking forward to a very good gala. But with all the uncertainty at the moment it's starting to look like too big a financial risk for the WSR to continue with it. Maybe better to start planning for the Autumn gala.

 

As someone in the over 60's category I'm seriously having second thoughts about visiting the ESR gala next weekend and the Bluebell gala in April.
As I've been to every WSR SSG from 2002 onwards (and a few before 2002) I'd very much like to go to this year's SSG, but I've made no firm decision on that just yet, I'll see what the situation is nearer the time.

 

That's very sensible. Play it by ear. I'm sure that this is the case with many others. <BJ>

 

Event has been cancelled, as per the Special Event Planning Team's facebook page.

 

As has the Beer Festival element of the Diesel Gala event, sadly.