SVR General Discussion

Drive 8 miles and fire 8 miles I think is what we’ve offered? Premium engine comes at premium prices. The equivalent silver experience is £700 I believe

 

I believe it is a mix of Bronze and silver. Says 8 participants for Bronze and Bahamas, but only 4 for silver.

For £800 I would be expecting 16 miles driving while going forwards at a minimum.

 

£200! Even if a pint costs £8 that is 25 pints. I don't think so!

 

If you don't think it is good VFM, then you are of course at liberty not to book.

Flipping it round, and looking at it from the loco point of view. The loco does two complete round trips of the line (64 miles) which I suspect is the maximum that you can accommodate at the SVR within a single crew diagram with appropriate personal needs breaks. (Prep - two round trips - dispose). I think a good working figure for coal consumption of a large loco with typical daily mileage is probably somewhere like 75lbs of coal per mile, including lighting up - so that is about 2.5 tons of coal for the day, say £1,000 at current prices. Maintenance on the loco alone is also probably about £1,000, i.e. based on a big engine needing a ten-yearly that is likely in the region of £750k and expecting an average of 75 days per year for ten years out of the overhaul. (In other words, it is likely the daily hire fee for the loco is probably around £1,000 - and if it isn't, the Bahamas Loco Society are under pricing their asset...)

So there is a straight £2,000 of locomotive cost, and you haven't yet got to whatever daily contribution the SVR feels it needs for infrastructure, carriages etc; nor the marketing costs of the service; nor a reasonable profit margin for the SVR and hopefully the BLS; nor some contribution to the transport costs of getting the loco to / from the SVR.

Set against that - 8 participants, £800 each - so you have a gross income of £6,400 per day. You can see how that income pretty rapidly gets swallowed up.

For your aspiration 16 miles of driving for £800, you basically cut the number of particpants to 4 people. The gross income drops to £3,200 - the railway would be making a considerable loss on those figures. And if we include your stretch target of "16 miles going forwards" - well, now you gave to also turn the loco at both ends, which probably adds at least 30 minutes each turn round, at least 2 hours to the day, and probably pushes it beyond how much one crew can manage - so you have to find split crews ...

Up to you whether you think it is good value, but it is hard to see how it could cost much less and still make a profit.

Tom

 

I mean it’s £1300 for a gold exprience with 2 persons undertaking the exprience. Even on that you get 16 miles of driving, 16 miles firing. Of which 8 of each is tender first. Ie Candidate 1 drives KR-HY, and BH-HY, whilst firing HY-BH, and HY-KR. Candidate 2 does the opposite. You’ll never get 16 miles toward first, without chartering your own exprience. Because if somebody got 16 forward, somebody would get 16 backwards and that’s not fair.

Just to clarify the Bahamas exprience….

What’s included:

• Safety briefing before the session commences at Bewdley Station
• Detailed instruction on how to drive and fire a locomotive.
• Only 8 participants per experience, driving and firing in pairs.
• Travel on the footplate, driving and firing for over 16 miles
• Travelling a total journey of 64 miles; going through Bewdley Tunnel, over Victoria Bridge and up Eardington Bank.
• Bring along up to 10 guests who can travel in the carriages behind the locomotive free of charge.
• Opportunities for photographs.
• A presentation folder with a certificate and memento of your experience.

You’d drive 8 miles and fire 8 miles on this one.

 

That sounds reasonable to me, if it doesn't book up you will know it was overpriced but I can't see that happening. Just don't let anyone break our engine!!

 

Sort of going rate these days.

 

I think this thread also needs some context adding to bring home the costs exprienced nowadays to Heritage Railways.

- Coal - Currently coal is costing in the region of £400 a ton. To get an engine like Bahamas lit with a warming fire the day before, then brought round to steam on the day of the exprience, then used for a full day is around 3 tons, £1200.
- Water - Water varies, but with somewhere like the SVR where it goes through a Reverse Osmosis plant and is very well treated/clean water, it’s a higher cost. Bahamas will use probanly 3500-4000 gallons for the day. That won’t come cheaply.
- Oil - Like all things this has risen in price. Having never got close to a Jubilee I don’t know how much she will use, but it won’t be a cheap one again. Even a BR standard with minimal oiling points isn’t cheap to oil up!
- Steaming fee - I’m not privy to the contract and couldn’t tell you how much Bahamas’ fees are. I could take an educated guess based on other groups fees but that’s no very professional to put info like that on here. It won’t be cheap!

Generally it costs around £30-35 a mile to run a steam loco these days. Coal, water, oil, wear and tear, steaming fees, it all adds up. You don’t see much change from £2250 for a 70 mile day on the Valley, that’s before you add coaches in. The Bahamas set will be 6-8 vehicles, they vary in cost to run, but you probably aren’t likely to see much change from £1250-1500 for a set when alls said and done. So £3500 ish, before you’ve thought about paying the electric bill for the day on all the workshops, stations, signal boxes, toilets….all the water bills for the same locations….

8 people paying £800 is £6400….But how much of that is really profit? Not a cheap game nowadays.

 

Well just for context….We’ve sold 86% of our Footplate Experience tickets for this year. Which is very credible given the difficult times financially.

 

Mid-Hants is £720 for roughly the same, GCR is £595. NVR £575 for 6 miles of driving and 6 miles of firing. ELR, £645 for 8/8. NNR, £575 for 5.5/5.5.

So yes, it's the upper end of the range, but as @Jamessquared it's a mainline loco commanding a premium hiring fee, rather than a run-of-the-mill Austerity etc.

 

I'm pleased you put those figures up. There are some muttering about railways profiteering from photo charters with the average now in the bottom half of three figures. It may give them something to sit and think about.

 

I agree with Tom's figures.

10+ years ago the WSR needed to achieve an average £45 fare income per train mile to break-even on all operating costs and overheads. That figure comes from total annual fare income divided by train miles operated - simple. Any train which fell below this figure required subsidising by another train which raised more.

64 miles at £45 per mile equates to £2,880, however due to the rise in costs since then the £45 is probably nearer to £100 or more today, making £6,400.

On heritage railways which transport people from A to B the fare is vat exempt, however this does not apply to customers who purchase a footplate experience course (I believe this is still the case unless the situation has changed in the last decade). If the SVR is charging £800 per customer it equates to £667 after they have paid the vat element to the tax man.

8 customers at £667 each is only £5,336, or £83 per mile, I suspect that the SVR is cutting it a bit fine especially if they have the additional costs of catering, overalls etc.

Andy.

 

Well those pints will be shared around! A round of drinks for a group of 6 could be £40. You could expect to buy 3 or 4 rounds in an evening. Throw in a club or entertainment too..
Granted it's not something I've done recently, I'm the wrong side of forty now (!), but chatting to younger colleagues I am told that isn't an unreasonable budget for a decent Friday night in one of our cities.

 

That sounds like a big night or stingy friends. 6 people buying four rounds of drinks each is still 24 drinks per person…

 

Taxi/Uber there and back, £10-20 to get into a club, couple of rounds of drinks, another tenner on a kebab afterwards. I wouldn't expect to come home with change from £200 after a night out in London for example. But I'm also (just!) the wrong side of 40 as well and my clubbing days are way behind me!

 

Whenever I go out drinking in a big group I tend to pair up with somebody and take it in turns, would never spend £200 even including food, activities and any taxis if needed. Easy to spend £200 if people are silly buying drinks for 10 people etc, yes.

 

Your experience or preferences may not be universally shared by everybody who goes drinking. Plus, as far as I can tell, you don't live in London
In any case, this was brought up to make the point that stuff is expensive and, as others have calculated out, £800 is actually quite a reasonable price to pay for what is on offer given all the costs of actually running the diagrams for the driver experience