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.

Midsummer at Midsomer

We're planning a Midsummer event at Midsomer Norton for the weekend of 23 and 24 June 2007. The whole site will be open, there should be some activity on the track, and the catering coach will be featuring our first EVENING BARBECUE with music on the Saturday. The theme for the weekend will be VOLUNTEERING and will form part of our push to greatly increase the number of working volunteers ready for the big opening next year. This will be the second biggest event in Rail Preservation (the first being the reopening of the Talylln in 1951), regular steam hauled trains on the first standard gauge section of Britain's Favourite Railway! It can't be over-hyped, though I suspect we'll try!

In the meantime we're concentrating on getting the catering coach open both days every weekend. To this end we need more volunteers with an interest in catering. Some jobs don't even need a food hygiene certificate, but if you have one (or are willing to get one at the Trust's expense) you'll be able to do all the jobs connected with this fascinating side of the set up. You can work one day a month or more if you wish. We are a very friendly team absolutely dedicated to giving our visitors a great time. If interested please email.

One downside of this switch to working full weekends is that we'll only be able to offer a basic service on Mondays until new volunteers come forward. We'll only be offering hot and cold drinks and packaged snacks between 11 and 11.15 and 1 and 1.15 on Mondays, although we have already had one offer of somebody willing to do one full Monday a week, so this should only be a very temporary cutback!

So to reiterate the coach is now open every Sunday with the full menu, occasional Saturdays, again with the full menu and evening barbecues/music, and limited opening every Monday.