Creative Thinking for Future Heritage Railway Schedules

Basically, pasteboard tickets are a de minimis part of railway preservation whose place is in museums along with things such as silver plated refreshment room ware and carriage gas lamp keys.

 

*In your opinion*! There are lots of de minimis things that make a heritage railway. When we analysed what you thought the major differences were between a well restored example of your hated Mk1s and the very similar but praiseworthy late pre-nat stock (Stanier eg) you got stuck after leather straps for droplights, and luggage racks made of string, which some Mk1s also have anyway. Getting railway clocks right is de minimus. So less hypocrisy please.

 

A trifle unworthy of you I think. Go back a further generation to the vehicles found in S.E.C.R. Trio C sets and you will get an even stronger sense of how things fell off after 1948. Newly restored composite 6375 is a real stunner and it is an enormous pity there are not more like her.

 

Now you're changing the goalposts (again). I'm not going to go digging it out, but last time you were slagging off all Mk1s (as opposed to tatty carriages) I posited that there wasn't much difference between Mk1s and the last designs of pre-nationalisation stock. You contended that there was a world of difference even between those and Mk1s, and when I eventually pinned you down, all you could come up with as a difference between a well restored, wooden panelled, nicely upholstered Mk1 was leather straps for the droplights. Carriages a generation before those last pre-nat designs have more differences, I happily grant you, and the IoW's fleet is to be envied, but that's just a distraction here.

You may not care about Edmondson tickets but plenty do. I've been a TTI for 5 years, and to be blunt, I'm pulling rank on you, you're wrong Paul. Perhaps we can leave it there as clearly your mind will never be changed, and you have zero chance of convincing anyone else.

 

This is getting exceedingly silly and this is the last I propose to say on the matter unless you persist. For your information, for at least twenty years I volunteered as a guard,, booking clerk and stationmaster,, all of which involved handling traditional pattern tickets. This was well before the era of online booking on tourist lines but even then suppliers of tickets were going out of business one after another and it was obvious that,, sooner or later, there would be a "day of reckoning"

 

But it hasn't arrived yet, at least not on the GWSR, Bluebell, SVR, and many others. Now, back on topic (whatever that was).

 

That day of reckoning has been and gone for the big railway.
Heritage railways should offer the ease of booking online as so many on this little round rock do nowadays with the added timewarp of a an Edmonson ticket to go along with the "as it was" image every heritage railway is trying to recreate.

 

Isn't this actually the core of what is being discussed here? Is the pursuit of "as it was" feasible in the next decade.

I would add that there are many heritage railways that do not in reality create 'as it was' whether it be single track where there was two, large cafes and pubs and shops at wayside stations, large modern sheds at stations, long trains with intense timetables as opposed to short trains with a very sparse service etc etc.

 

I was discussing this only today, and I think "as it was" misses the point somewhat, because of course, in many places that's not possible. But it doesn't follow that you can then throw out all regard to trying to stay in period. In some places and circumstances, you can create an "as it was", and that's great. But where and when it's not feasible because of modern requirements, e.g. cafe etc. surely the aim should be to imagine how such a requirement would have been met in the 1950s, had it arisen then, and try to emulate how it would have looked. For example, there was never a refreshment room at Broadway station. Some people seem to think that its presence means any attempt to make Broadway an "authentic station" is thus a waste of time, but they totally miss the point. If the GWR had decided that Broadway required a refreshment room, this is how we think it might have looked, so it doesn't compromise the feel of the station.

 

I cant imagine that properly recreated 50's food and toilets would attract the punters, quite the reverse in fact

 

Indeed, we compromise all the time where necessary, but for some people the fact that we do that renders all attempts at a period feel pointless, which irritates me, as someone who likes to add all those little details.

 

I’m reminded of the old aphorism about wrestling in mud with a pig ...

Tom

 

Perhaps I should have explained more in my previous post. "As it was" means very different things to our paying passengers and those of us who work/ strive to to make up and clean, sanitised, modern interpretation of what train travel was like.
Average joe and his 2.4 kids probably wont care so much that they are riding in the last remaining GWR Collett Bow end composite. What they will notice however is the cleanliness and general up keep of the coach. It coupd be made from completely new materials rather than the timber frame but as long as it clean, comfortable and suitable warm in the winter.

One of the bigger problems that Ive noticed, and its not limited to the railway I work for. There is this horrible saying "well we've always done it this way, so why does it need to change"
It can stifle any attempt at change.
This year has provided the perfect opportunity for many people across all railways to sit down and re evaluate just exactly what their railway is doing. Alot of railways wont have changed their method & ethos from the early 90s an whilst that may have provided alot of success. You cannot rest on your laurels.

Covid has forced an awful lot of change on our beloved railways and forced the creative thinking.
On the SVR, it has shown that the compartment style, fixed day out works and has been incredibly well received. We now know that works. It what can be added on to and on top of those services.

 

Absolutely so! However, "Normals" can be surprisingly acute in recognising the genuinely antique from the merely reasonably old

 

I refer to Steve's post about the Whitbys on the NYMR and he says, "That's a 10¼ hour day for 48 miles. NYMR footplate crews have largely accepted this but don't enjoy it."
Yesterday, we did a 6 3/4 hour day for 26 miles. Having found myself on the Covid roster, I believe driving trains as one of the small pool of crews is my best way of helping my railway.
However, mainly because of a lack of the social side, despite being a very light drinker, it feels more like a part-time job. Turn up, drive train, go home.
It also means despite digital communication it is harder to get a feel for what is going on because of a shortage of banter and gossip. I find the vanilla passenger turns somewhat uninteresting TBH.
I think railways will need to think about how they keep volunteers motivated especially since many of us will have other worries owing to the wider problems the country faces as well as planning a viable service/timetable.

Edit-Missing words and punctuation.

 

I did have someone once tell me 'we've done it like this for the last 35 years', to which I rolled my eyes. The flipside is overly muscular management that treats any concern as 'change resistance', so it is a fine line to balance in managing change effectively and this is somewhere where I think management often falls down. Covid has forced a lot of re-thinking about what can be done and how it can be done, and also what people are willing to do - either as volunteers or as passengers.

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I want to go back to a point I made earlier about higher pricing points and customer expectation. It is interesting to note this time of year all the 'horror stories' in the press about 'Christmas Experiences' that have been less than stellar.

Unfortunately, with things like trip advisor, mumsnet, or even newspaper comment sections, criticism is often shrill and over the top (people who think the WSR thread is bad have clearly never spent time reading mumsnet or the Daily Mail comment section).

Bad publicity at a national level from a disappointing experience can be devastating for the event concerned, especially if there is a media pile on and things get out of control. ie https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-55386392

It seems to me that four things come together for these kind of stories to develop:

• Over promising
• Under delivering
• High price point
• Unrealistic expectations by customer over value for money.

That is to say that whatever lines are doing they need to:

• Do what they say they will do.
• The experience needs to match the photos on the brochure. Don't promise a luxury meal and give them a soggy ham sandwich
• Value for money. Don't charge £100 for a soggy sandwich
• Be prepared for negative feedback/criticism which may not be valid or fair, but needs to be dealt with in a non-defensive or passive aggressive manner. If this means someone patrolling trip advisor reviews then so be it.

Put simply, lines cannot afford to be the object of a 'bad news story' in the current climate but they need to be prepared for potentially unfair criticism, especially over value for money.

 

OK, so lets try some ideas then, keep it simple, and reasonably priced.

Pre bookable Compartments anyone, price per Compartment?

 

If you have compartment stock you know that people don't really want to share, so pre book and be guaranteed your own space would be a sensible idea

 

I think that could work. A potential problem that springs to mind though is a scenario where your train is filling up, with several compartments reserved but with only, say 2 people in each. A couple turn up looking for seats, and complain that there aren't any available. Normally you could point them to a half-full compartment and neither party would be delighted, but they wouldn't really have any grounds for complaint. It gets a bit more awkward when there are empty seats that they aren't allowed to sit in.

 

Keep booking forms simple and clear if people may have to share, say so, I would also if covid is going to be with us for a lot longer, where there is a lay over to view the station, visit the museum etc, make it clear that this is only for a set time, and for the train you are booked on only, that mixing between trains will be prevented, and to remind users that they can not change compartments, trains etc. i.e. your ticket/ reservation is only valid on this train.