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 was a sharp rise in this number to 25 in 2017 maintained in 2018.
However, in 2018, the overall number conceals a shortage of locomotives at the start of the year and an excess towards the end.
The requirement for all locos to be vacuum fitted could cause early season problems in 2019.
The Deltic is not vacuum fitted and could be missed as a passenger loco.
There was again a significant number of locos stored at the railway that did no work at all.
Graph of number of locos running once per month
In 2018 there was an extra day running for revenue on the May Bank Holiday (417 passenger journeys), but on Anniversary Saturday journey tickets were not sold and no passenger data was recorded. Thus 2018 had a similar number of revenue days as previous years.
Service trains
Slightly more service trains were run in 2018 made up of a significant fall in Sunday trains and a significant rise in Wednesday Trains.
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.
The higher passenger numbers in the early years may not be accurate.
In 2018 Sunday passengers were the same as the average for other years in June, September and October; in other months they were below the average for other years and the total number of passengers was slightly down on previous years. The total number of Sunday passengers was significantly down.
All Wednesdays had fine weather and passengers numbers were significantly up.
The average number of passengers carried on each train (all days) was lower in 2018.
The growth in Halloween passenger numbers faltered but still 580 passengers were carried.
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.
There appears to be a trend of a growing percentage of double ride customers
Graph of Customer Characteristics by Year
Children's Parties
Steady numbers, between 15 and 20 each yrar.
Graph of Children's Parties by Year