Talyllyn Finances

Absolutely. A one off stay in self catering in Pickering with a 3 month old 8 years ago has led to repeated stays since, with the NYMR doing especially well out of the deal!

 

100% in agreement with Tom on this. For the last 30+ years we have holidayed at the same place. The kids loved it (and still do if you count 30-38 year olds as kids,) Because it is so familiar, it is so relaxing. There's no worries about what you can do because you already know and, yes, we will visit the same places every year (beaches, walks and pubs, nowadays!) We go to different places several times a year but the most looked forward to is the return to the same cottage each year. If it didn't work for others, as well, there would be far fewer second homes and static caravans.

 

But you said many holidaymakers were regulars. They must like the area for something - beaches, walks, who knows. It's the railway's job to make them add a trip on the line to their holiday each time they come.

Perhaps these regulars are creatures of habit and need some personal approach to make them change. Get people on the beach, in the car parks handing out vouchers.

 

It's not like that in the real world. Only a tiny proportion of people ride steam railways and many wouldn't if you paid them to, and many more wouldn't do it twice.

I do agree with you that promotion of the line is essential, but I can't really comment because I don't know what the line does currently locally.

I would certainly respond to a buy two get one free offer or similar (kids go free perhaps), particularly on a rainy day.

 

You wrote that the scenery could better be seen on foot. That was the bit I was disagreeing with.
Actually you may be right in the sense that there are pleasant walks etc. from Nant Gwernol but if you are anything like me you'd take the lazy option and stay on the train. And I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have bothered to walk that section if there wasn't a train to ride on there. So in that sense you will see the scenery better from the train.
Sorry if that wasn't very clear!

 

The point is though that a caravan that was let to a different family every week from Easter to October would probably deliver about 25 family visits to the railway. One that is owned and used by a single family will probably only deliver one visit a year - and not necessarily every year at that.

 

I don't think that's true at all. It's not "would probably" it's "could as a maximum with a lot of marketing activity". I'd wager a lot less than 10% of holidaymakers visit the line or would be likely to

 

Ah but you (and the rest of us on here) are untypical of the general population when it comes to steam railways.

 

I move in Classic Cars circles quite a bit and get looked at with pity if I mention steam trains. You'd think there would be more interest in those circles than in the general population wouldn't you!

 

Were you there in the late 1960's and 1970's to see what was happening? - I was and marketing was fraction of what happens today. 10% may well be true today - it certainly was not 40+ years ago.

 

not clear if you are saying more or les than 10% today,

 

You're in the wrong classic car circles then! The classic car club I'm a member of has a railway enthusiast for a chairman and most of the major events seem to mysteriously involve either an official or an unofficial railway visit...

 

It sounds to me as if the "sensible" option for getting to the lake would be a cable car.

 

rebuild the incline to passenger standard and have donkey carts to the lake.....

 

I used to work with someone who owned a caravan at Tywyn. How similar they are to many of the other owners I can't say, but they are probably not unique. They didn't rent/lend it out, went to stay there for long weekends maybe once a month, and did very little there apart from sit in the sun, shelter from the rain, and take the occasional walk down the beach. They didn't want to do anything "touristy". When you are a regular visitor (and are not looking to entertain kids) you become a bit like the local residents - and how many of them are queuing up to travel on the TR several times a year? This is not just a TR issue - how many residents of Bridgnorth go on the SVR on a regular basis?

Steve B

 

Millons of people ride on steam railways every year in the uk. There is a huge market for nostalgic entertainment here and steam railways are definitely part of that. If people don't want to do it twice then you're doing something wrong and you need to look into why that is.

Completely agree with your point on promotion though. There is too much competition just to leave leaflets about and hope for the best. "If we build it they will come" just doesn't cut it these days.

The bigger narrow gauge neighbour up the coast works very hard to attract people from all over the country not just to the line but the area in general. So it is no fluke that it enjoys good passenger numbers.



Tim

 

I'm not sure millions is correct...implying at least two million.
I suggest everyone does a straw poll of ten of their workmates asking how many have visited a steam railway in the last year. I think the resultant number will be quite small.(it would be higher if you polled OAPs of course)

 

The All Party Parliamentary Group report on heritage railways gave visitor numbers in 2011 as 10.3 million visitors, 7.1 million passengers across all UK Heritage Railways (108 in total; presumably the HRA members). Obviously some people will have made multiple visits to one or more railways during year, but it still suggests that a substantial fraction of the population visits heritage railways.

Tom

 

Each HRA member has to make a return early each year of the previous year's visitor numbers and other statistics.

The 2014 Report is here: http://www.hra.uk.com/annual_report_doc.php. Not sure if the 2015 figures have been published yet but this report quotes 11.7 million visitors and 8.4 million passengers across HRA members, so quite a growth from the figures Tom quotes for 2011.

I absolutely believe that public engagement by strong visitor and passenger figures is vital for the success and sustainability of any preserved railway, but I know there are others who almost see reduced numbers but increased revenue as the 'grow up' and praise-worthy way of doing things. I see such an approach as dangerous and risking a spiral to the bottom of falling numbers, service cuts and destroying what it is aimed to preserve. Jacking fares up by a large amount might not produce an immediate negative reaction but a reputation for being expensive and poor value for money is easily obtained but much harder to lose!

Some of the ticket prices quoted on here for the Talyllyn and similar, comparatively nearby lines do make me wonder if there is an element of over pricing adding to the woes. It can seem the easy answer to a negative bottom line - divide the deficit by the number of passengers and add the answer to the fares, but such an approach completely ignores elasticity of demand and the reality, ably demonstrated by some of the detailed graphs on the 'Visit Britain' report linked by @Herald earlier, that the vast majority of 'pay for' attractions cost less than £5 to get in and the average 'entrance fee' (really train fare in this case for the benefit of HMRC) for those preserved railways that provided data (which does exclude many of the loner ones but also some key shorter ones) is under £10. 'Value for money' is hard for potential passengers to assess if they haven't 'sampled the product' - £5 for a 'soup museum' (which is actually in Germany, BTW!) that takes 30 minutes to do round (I haven't a clue how long it really takes!) may be poorer value than £15 for a 2 hour train journey, but the difference in product may not be immediately obvious and that comes back to how you 'sell' your railway and actually having a desire to attract more people and take more fares.

Steven

 

Fairbourne traffic seems to be gradually picking up, year on year, of late. in part I think that's down to more widespread advertising, but it is probably also down to being a bit cheaper to take kids for a train ride, and there is also the opportunity to take a ferry boat ride at the harbour end of the line. Fairbourne and the corris are the two closest alternatives to the Talyllyn of course, somake for interesting comparisons.