sprinterguy
Veteran Member
As the title of this thread suggests, I have been musing lately over what would be required for a new entrant in the railtour business, purely from an armchair perspective.
Not meaning to descend into commonly ill-fated Top Gear style How hard can it be? territory, but it seems that with the smattering of new entrants to have entered the fray over the last couple of years, many of which seem to be very much cottage industries or independently run concerns, that the barriers to entry into the market are not insurmountable, even if developing sufficient staying power to avoid potential bankruptcy and many disgruntled and disappointed customers could be.
I have a few questions of my own to get this discussion going:
Firstly, something that I have been curious about for some time is how much does it actually cost to hire a locomotive and rolling stock? To try and keep this question defined, let us consider as our benchmarks a comparison against hiring either a couple of locos from DRS and a rake of Riviera coaching stock, or hiring the whole lot through West Coast Railway Company.
Following on from this, do the rolling stock hire companies such as Riviera and WCRC offer a range of different package deals for tour operators, that could, say stretch from the very basic level of providing the locos and coaches only, right the way through to the provision of locos, carriages, drivers, fitters and on-board train crew?
What sort of certification and insurance is required to allow a tour operator to operate on the main line? What sort of safety and operational criteria need to be met, and conversely how much rides on the back of the safety case of the rolling stock provider?
What sort of rates do Network Rail demand in return for them arranging paths for a railtour?
Finally, and the question that all of the above boils down to (and I apologise if this turns out to be a closely-guarded subject) is this: While we can all make some educated calculations of how much total revenue a railtour will generate based on the selling price of the tickets multiplied by the capacity of a full or nearly full tour, once all of the costs are taken into account, what sort of margins of profit are railtour operators operating at? Ive never thought that it would be very much, but I am prepared to be surprised!
Thanks for taking the time to read this post, any and all useful input will be appreciated!
Not meaning to descend into commonly ill-fated Top Gear style How hard can it be? territory, but it seems that with the smattering of new entrants to have entered the fray over the last couple of years, many of which seem to be very much cottage industries or independently run concerns, that the barriers to entry into the market are not insurmountable, even if developing sufficient staying power to avoid potential bankruptcy and many disgruntled and disappointed customers could be.
I have a few questions of my own to get this discussion going:
Firstly, something that I have been curious about for some time is how much does it actually cost to hire a locomotive and rolling stock? To try and keep this question defined, let us consider as our benchmarks a comparison against hiring either a couple of locos from DRS and a rake of Riviera coaching stock, or hiring the whole lot through West Coast Railway Company.
Following on from this, do the rolling stock hire companies such as Riviera and WCRC offer a range of different package deals for tour operators, that could, say stretch from the very basic level of providing the locos and coaches only, right the way through to the provision of locos, carriages, drivers, fitters and on-board train crew?
What sort of certification and insurance is required to allow a tour operator to operate on the main line? What sort of safety and operational criteria need to be met, and conversely how much rides on the back of the safety case of the rolling stock provider?
What sort of rates do Network Rail demand in return for them arranging paths for a railtour?
Finally, and the question that all of the above boils down to (and I apologise if this turns out to be a closely-guarded subject) is this: While we can all make some educated calculations of how much total revenue a railtour will generate based on the selling price of the tickets multiplied by the capacity of a full or nearly full tour, once all of the costs are taken into account, what sort of margins of profit are railtour operators operating at? Ive never thought that it would be very much, but I am prepared to be surprised!
Thanks for taking the time to read this post, any and all useful input will be appreciated!
