Locomotives
The locomotive health of the railway may be gauged by the number of locomotives showing sufficient commitment to run at least once a month - six times in a season.
There are ups and downs, minimum 14 locos in 2006 and a sharp rise to an all-time high of 25 this year.
However, we have 40 plus engines cluttering the railway and many are not regularly active.
Graph of number of locos running once per month
Service trains
The total number of service trains we ran in 2017 is much the same as last.
There was actually a slight rise in Sunday trains but a significant fall in Wednesday trains due to the poor weather in August.
One Wednesday was lost altogether and the others were mostly damp and cool.
Before 2012 the definition of a 'service' train was loose, probably exaggerating the number of service trains shown in the graph for these earlier years.
Graph of Total Service Trains by Year
Passenger Journeys
Nigel began recording passenger journeys in 2009 using the numbers on the tickets.
Since 2013 the record has been maintained by the computer in the ticket office.
I begin to wonder if the higher passenger numbers in the early years are accurate; it would be interesting to know if there was a corresponding reduction in revenue after 2011.
This year, Wednesday numbers were significantly down because of poor weather so there may be on a fundamental rising trend in passenger numbers.
Halloween passenger nunbers have recently been growing consistently by 100 each year.
Graph of Passenger Journeys by Year
Graph of Passengers per Train by Year
Graph of Halloween Passengers
Customers
We typically have about 230 customers each day we open.
About 65% take a double ride making 380 passenger journeys.
Some 45% are children. Only a few take a Gladesman ride but in 2017 there was an increased take up of the Gladesman ride.
Graph of Customer Characteristics by Year
Children's Parties
Not so many of these this year, partly because of cancellations, possibly another victim of the wet late summer.
Graph of Children's Parties by Year