I have just found out about the sale of Aysgarth station and as someone who likes preserved railways I found their problems disheartening, but not surprising. I kind of wanted to give a visitors perspective and ask the question about whether we have reached saturation for preserved railways.
We vistited Bedale station a few years back, because we wanted to have a look at a new line and steam services were advertised. It turned out the steam service wasn't running, so we bought a few things at the station shop and had a chat with the friendly volunteer there about the line.
This was a bank holiday at the end of the summer and it should have been a peak day for the line. It was virtually deserted. Eventually a heath-robinson of train, an old carriage hooked upto a worn out DMU turned up, with a few passengers on.
So I thought the line had problems back then, the fares were about the same as the NYMR and that is roughly the same distance from us, as it will be for allot of people. So a railway running multiple steam locomotives on a line with lots of attractions near the line vs a line with one old DMU. For most people that is a no brainer.
Which brings me to my other wider point about the difficulty of starting a new line in a saturated market. A successful heritage line needs steam to draw in the visitors and there are no relatively cheap locomotives to be had anymore.
That seems to be the cache 22 the Wensleydale line finds itself in. It needs large investment to draw the visitors to fund the line, but can't get the visitors with more mature lines competing for them.
We vistited Bedale station a few years back, because we wanted to have a look at a new line and steam services were advertised. It turned out the steam service wasn't running, so we bought a few things at the station shop and had a chat with the friendly volunteer there about the line.
This was a bank holiday at the end of the summer and it should have been a peak day for the line. It was virtually deserted. Eventually a heath-robinson of train, an old carriage hooked upto a worn out DMU turned up, with a few passengers on.
So I thought the line had problems back then, the fares were about the same as the NYMR and that is roughly the same distance from us, as it will be for allot of people. So a railway running multiple steam locomotives on a line with lots of attractions near the line vs a line with one old DMU. For most people that is a no brainer.
Which brings me to my other wider point about the difficulty of starting a new line in a saturated market. A successful heritage line needs steam to draw in the visitors and there are no relatively cheap locomotives to be had anymore.
That seems to be the cache 22 the Wensleydale line finds itself in. It needs large investment to draw the visitors to fund the line, but can't get the visitors with more mature lines competing for them.
