Progress since restart
At its September meeting, the Board was told that during August, we carried 2,800 passengers on 9 operating days - using a single steam train doing two round trips on the first six days, and then two steam trains completing four round trips each day during the bank holiday weekend. This is a creditable achievement as the Railway successfully resumed operations after the covid-19 lockdown and we can be proud of this.
The sale of tickets and refreshments for August were such that we managed to cover almost all railway costs and overheads incurred during the month. However, it must be appreciated that we have had to scale back many activities to contain costs until such time as normal operations can be resumed and funding of those activities can be resumed.
By way of comparison, in the same two-week period last year, we carried nearly 9,000 passengers but we did operate on more days (13 rather than nine) and ran at least two steam-hauled services each day. Thus the impact of the coronavirus on passenger numbers and hence income can be clearly seen.
