Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Holiday railway review part 1

This is the first in a series of posts on full scale (12 inches to the foot) narrow gauge railways visited during my holidays. My wife and I have devised a clever marking system which works as follows:


Marks out of 5 for the following:

  • Loco variety
  • Parking
  • Cafe
  • Shop
  • Carriage comfort
  • Staff friendliness/helpfulness
  • Days open in the year
  • Publicity
  • Walks
  • Revisit potential
  • On board service
  • Attractions along the line
  • Facilities for kids
  • Photography opportunities
  • Engines in use at peak
  • and up to 5 extra for special things such as being offered a footplate ride etc

plus marks out of 10 for the following:

  • Views
  • Interest along the length of the railway

All of that adds up to 100 and each railway has been marked and a league table produced.




First up is the Corris Railway which unfortunately came bottom of our set of 11 railways visited this holiday with just 42%.



Both staff and cafe scored very highly - very friendly people, a relaxed atmosphere and the best cup of tea we had all holiday. But of course the line suffers from its short length, single steam loco, only one accessible station, only open for a few days a year etc. Extend to Tan y Coed, sort out Corris station site and build a replica of No.3 and it would be a different story, but given the slow progress since their inception as a society in the 1966, it might take a while.

There is of course a super Corris layout (that I've featured previously on this blog) in the museum/shop/cafe at Corris too!



Colin

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great idea! What about a category for accesibility by public transport?

Colin Lea said...

fair point I guess the FR, WHR(P), TR would do well there, possibly elevating the WHR(P) position, but otherwise not a lot of change.

and the V of R would also benefit when I get around to visiting it/scoring it.

Colin

J Evans said...

As we all now know!, the Corris Railway is soon hopefully extending there line south!, so don't get put off with what there is there to see now! Basically they started with absolutely nothing! they achieved what a lot of other Railways could not achieve, for example A brand new steam loco, a signal box and an excellent carriage shed!