Swanage Railway

[YYYPRRS]

Swanage Railway no longer accepts cash,I've just read in Today's Railways. Thats one less customer they've got. And they're in financial diffiiculties?
So they can afford to pick and choose? And they have a "Chief Executive"? What a load of bunkum.Cash has been with us for hundreds of years.Swanage Railway? You were beautiful once.I now have to consign you to memory only.Goodbye.

 

[CarltonA]

Presumably that's the ticket offices and not the shops or catering. Otherwise it will be card for a two pound fifty ice cream or bag of fudge and they will have to pay a charge for accepting the card.

 

[James H]

Accepting and handling cash is not cost-free for a business either.

One of the issues is that all the banks in Swanage have closed, so cash handling is now massively more work for SR staff / volunteers who would have to travel a long way to bank money, with all the attendant risks etc.

Personally - as a Swanage Railway member - while I think it's a bit of a shame a child can't buy a small souvenir or ice cream etc with cash at the railway, I think the decision is quite understandable, and I'd rather SR staff and volunteers used their time on more productive activities than counting and banking cash.

 

[Meerkat]

Presumably that's the ticket offices and not the shops or catering. Otherwise it will be card for a two pound fifty ice cream or bag of fudge and they will have to pay a charge for accepting the card.

Something which shops routinely do! Even Ice cream vans take Amex now........

 

[Cymroglan]

Presumably that's the ticket offices and not the shops or catering. Otherwise it will be card for a two pound fifty ice cream or bag of fudge and they will have to pay a charge for accepting the card.

I’m open to correction on this, but I’m certain that it’s card only in the shops. I suspect this is also true of catering, but I haven’t used SR catering for some considerable time.
I totally understand why the railway made the switch. It is time consuming and expensive to manage cash and I’m told there’s no bank in Swanage, so I imagine the switch is permanent.
It doesn’t bother me as I prefer using cards but I sympathise with those who are unable to use cards or who prefer to use cash.
On one visit earlier in the year I did help a gentleman who wanted to make a small purchase from the shop by using my card to buy the book and accepting his cash in return. I’ve seen others do this too. Not an ideal solution though?

 

[Oxfordblues]

I haven't spent any cash for a least a couple of weeks. I carry a small "float" just-in-case, but I'm afraid cash is gradually becoming an anachronism.

 

[CD]

It`s now 1984 in 2004 but without any decent trains. By using card or phone to purchase everything you are giving up any form of privacy you once had.

 

[JGurney]

It`s now 1984 in 2004 but without any decent trains. By using card or phone to purchase everything you are giving up any form of privacy you once had.

Well, in that if any bank staff who made the effort to trace your transactions among the millions that day could see you bought something from Swanage Railway - if that would mean anything to them or anyone else.

Compare with my mother as a teenager. The regular staff on the bus routes through her village knew all the regulars by sight and often knew family relationships. She would often have the conductor telling her that her aunt had been on the earlier bus, etc, and of course telling her aunt, etc, where and when she had been. That was real absence of privacy.

 

[hexagon789]

Presumably that's the ticket offices and not the shops or catering. Otherwise it will be card for a two pound fifty ice cream or bag of fudge and they will have to pay a charge for accepting the card.

Everything...

Swanage Railway has joined a long list of businesses by only accepting card payments. This means we no longer accept cash payments at our ticket offices, gift shop, our refreshment kiosks, or for on-train purchases.

We accept all major credit and debit cards except American Express.

 

[JGurney]

One of the issues is that all the banks in Swanage have closed, so cash handling is now massively more work for SR staff / volunteers who would have to travel a long way to bank money, with all the attendant risks etc.

Ow. Is that Wareham, or a 40-mile round trip to Poole? I wonder if the Railway's insurance covers volunteers doing that with substantial sums of cash.

Personally - as a Swanage Railway member - while I think it's a bit of a shame a child can't buy a small souvenir or ice cream etc with cash at the railway,

Yes, very much so. I fear that loss of opportunity to use cash will affect both the independence development and the maths skills of children too young to wield their own cards.

 

[James H]

Ow. Is that Wareham, or a 40-mile round trip to Poole? I wonder if the Railway's insurance covers volunteers doing that with substantial sums of cash.

I seem to remember talk of taking cash to Dorchester for banking.

 

[BrianW]

Ow. Is that Wareham, or a 40-mile round trip to Poole? I wonder if the Railway's insurance covers volunteers doing that with substantial sums of cash.

Yes, very much so. I fear that loss of opportunity to use cash will affect both the independence development and the maths skills of children too young to wield their own cards.

What happened to that 'last bank in town promise'? and the government 'promise' to keep cash available as an option?? Maybe my memory is shot.

 

[Tom]

What happened to that 'last bank in town promise'?

A lot of the banks in Swanage went with the view that you can do most normal everyday banking activities at the Post Office and closed on that basis. Businesses don't have that option.

Of course, cash is still available - just many businesses choose not to accept it due to the overriding costs of it. It is much cheaper to take the hit on card transaction fees (which are quite small for high volume transaction places) vs handling cash.

 

[Titfield]

A few points:

1. Swanage still has a Post Office and a Nationwide Building Society Branch and an agent for the Yorkshire Building Society.
2. One of the prime reasons for going cashless was the time taken by staff preparing floats*, counting cash takings and making up the banking. The cash was then collected by g4S (IIRC) at quite a considerable cost. *A float for each ticket office till, for each TTI, for each shop till and for the catering till.
3. Catering is now run by an independent contractor.
4. Swanage Railway is appointing a Chief Executive as it feels the need for one to manage what some see as a complex business.

EDIT Some of the volunteers operating for example the shop would only do a half day so the float and takings would have to be done twice: once for the morning volunteer and once for the afternoon volunteer.

 

[jupiter]

I don't know what that's supposed to mean but complex or not, decisions on priority and direction have to be taken. Like most organisations, you'll have 5 people round a table and six different opinions on what gets the cash and what comes first. It needs a General Manager.

 

[Titfield]

I don't know what that's supposed to mean but complex or not, decisions on priority and direction have to be taken. Like most organisations, you'll have 5 people round a table and six different opinions on what gets the cash and what comes first. It needs a General Manager.

Let us just say that rather than it being 5 people around the table it would be a far greater number: for example steam (west country / battle of Britain class supporters) steam (U and No Class supporters) steam (T3 and T9 supporters) diesel (Class 33 supporters) diesel (4TC supporters) diesel (DMU supporters) carriages ( BR Mk 1 supporters) carriages (Maunsell and Bulleid supporters) then you have / had the pro warehamites and the anti warehamites, the carriage shed supporters and the water tower supporters........

Swanage Railways track record (pun intended) has been poor over the past decade at least with very little progress on developing coherent and rational plans and executing them. There have been some very questionable decisions indeed.

 

[BazingaTribe]

I don't know what that's supposed to mean but complex or not, decisions on priority and direction have to be taken. Like most organisations, you'll have 5 people round a table and six different opinions on what gets the cash and what comes first. It needs a General Manager.

Agreed. I'm totally not surprised at this. (Speaking as a regular punter as my parents have a cottage down there that they used to use solely as a second home but now rent out.)

My parents also run a very large and successful horticultural show (not in Swanage but in a similarly rural area of Berkshire). Now we have stable WiFi available at the showground we use, the stated aim -- communicated at safety briefings etc -- is to move towards card transactions as much as possible. Large amounts of cash on the site open people up to not only loss but people being attacked for the cash, and most traders now have their card readers anyway.

Sweden went virtually cashless before the pandemic. It's still useful, but honestly as someone whose phone might just as well be implanted into my right palm, I'm not altogether surprised. The only drawback I find from not using cash is not having the nice surprise in November when I put my parka on for the first time since March and find a couple of pound coins that got left there over the summer. Rightly or wrongly it's how things are going.

I will say at the church Christmas fayre there was way more cash than card usage but that's a more personal affair. Again, some of the traders didn't take cash though.