in the money

The Severn Valley Railway has achieved a record £6.25m turnover.

The figures relate to last year, when it carried 248,798 passengers, the second highest figure in its history.

The steam railway, which has a 16-mile (25km) line in Worcestershire and Shropshire, celebrates its 40th birthday this year.

It has secured a deal of about £100,000 to build a locomotive boiler from scratch for the first time, for Dolgoch on the Talyllyn Railway in mid-Wales.

Severn Valley opened a boiler shop in Bridgnorth in 1990 mainly to repair locomotives on its line, but it has since carried out work for other railways.

'Strong case'

The railway said any profits made on its turnover had been ploughed back into maintenance, repairs and improvements.

Marketing manager John Leach said: "It's true that many mainstream visitor attractions like coastal resorts and those on the UK's main tourism trail achieved results far better than expected last year.

"But we're not in a mainstream tourist area - we straddle two counties 'somewhere to the west of Birmingham'.

"The SVR has to make a strong case for itself in order to win a respectable share of the tourism market."

The line, between Kidderminster and Bridgnorth, fully re-opened in Easter 2008 after recovering from flood damage in 2007, when the track was washed away in 45 places.

The Talyllyn Railway runs from Tywyn to Abergynolwyn and Nant Gwernol.

Thanks to David Bailey for the information. Source.

And remember, the SVR doesn't even run passenger and freight trains for the people living along the route! So the potential income is a lot larger. I suspect the potential annual income for a new S&D including passenger, freight and heritage trains as well as associated retail premises could reach £50,000,000 quite easily. This underlines the scope and size of the project we're undertaking.

Interesting that the SVR offer a service that Shillingstone hope to do in the future, providing loco parts to other lines. Railways shouldn't be just about running trains, but also about identifying other potential and linked income streams.

By building infrastructure that can be used for both the host railway and other lines railways can make even more money and, more importantly, provide employment for local people.

heritage railways in the new golden age of railways

The heritage railway (formerly preserverved railway) is really a child of the 1950s-1980s. It was created in a very different world, one where it was seriously considered that road traffic would continue to expand, where railways were some quaint historical artefact, where steam power (despite its use in nuclear power generation) was finished. It carried tourists on trips through pretty scenery, just for the experience of travelling behind a steam locomotive. It was great! It was nostalgia and volunteers, crisps and coke, tea towels and fridge magnets.

The world has changed. We face two huge challenges, Climate Change and Peak Oil.

Both will impact enormously on the heritage railway movement, and are already beginning to do so. The Severn Valley suffered two disastrous bouts of Climate Change related rain damage recently. The price of coal and oil rocketed until a few months ago, then plunged precipitously. This volatility has long been forecast by Peak Oil economists. Both threats have serious economic impacts - the current economic downturn may well be the first symptom of Peak Oil.

But there is an upside. Both threats will increase the use and relevance of rail. Rail is four times as energy efficient as roads in moving passengers and freight. Rail is far more flexible in its energy inputs - it can use conventional electricity, oil (for a few more years), renewable energy delivered via wires, conductor rails, conduits or flywheels, it can use steam generated by coal, biomass or wood.

The real problem is that a railway will, wherever it is, be considered in the future as a locale's principle asset. Will there really be room for amateur-operated railways in this new world? Will a line even be allowed to purchase coal to run passengers on journeys they don't need to make? And without coal that will be the end of them, because oil would have vanished years before.

In a way privatization was an acknowledgement that railways would become of prime importance in the future and perhaps an admission that huge national government may not survive, as we all look to living simpler and more locally-based lives.

The process will be gradual, but the sharper-minded lines are already planning for their own survival. Where genuine passenger flows can be identified then services are being gradually introduced that are geared towards passengers, rather than tourists. The Norden to Swanage service is a classic example, removing cars from the roads and narrow streets of Swanage. Soon you'll be able to hop off a train from the network at Wareham and take the train the whole way down. Moves to reconnect Minehead to Taunton are also signs of this process. Even the Lynton and Barnstaple are serious enough to see that to survive they need to connect back down to Barnstaple - they cannot rest on their laurels up in the heights of Exmoor with only the soon-to-be extinct car and bus to link them to the rest of the world. Closer to home the Trust at Midsomer Norton consider reconnection to the network at Radstock to be a big priority. ALL heritage railways will have to justify their existence in the future by offering real passenger and freight services to communities no longer having any real alternatives.

This is the new world of rail development, full of both opportunities and threats. The New S&D will be in the vanguard of these developments and will ensure that our stretches of Somerset and Dorset, at least, will still be connected to civilization in the future!