Great Western Coffee Shop

The ORR (Office of Road and Rail) annual figures give us a pretty good indication (for the most part) of relative busyness of stations (and services where a station has a single service).   Are there any such general stats - or specific ones for individual heritage lines - anywhere?  I am looking to learn / get a comparison.

Newquay - 108,000. Minehead ???. Looe 118,000. Kingswear ???.  Whitby 138.000.  Redmire ???.   Pwllheli 76,000.  Devil's Bridge ???   Lymington Town 296,000 and Pier 135,000. Swanage ???.

A quick google gives this link which quotes numbers for the West Somerset and Swanage Railway - both around 200,000. Though this will be total passengers, so slightly different from the number at any particular station (though I expect it's very close for the Swanage railway).


https://www.heritagerailway.co.uk/3646/passenger-numbers-soar-on-heritage-lines/

Ah - thank you.  You must have used a better Google term than I did!   I'm noting the article in some places refers to passenger and in others to passenger journeys - which I would expect to be about twice the number of passengers. I'm not 100% clear whether we're looking at 400,000 passenger journeys to Swanage, or 100,000 people making a round trip each.    Interesting to see one of the smaller lines there too - 60,000 passenger journeys on the Chinnor line, and clearly stated as journeys so that's 30,000 passengers; with main line connection now at Princes Risborough, there's a figure that could and should rise rapidly!

Yes, it has been quite a concerted effort both on the provision of service and marketting. There is a steady increase of visitors joining us from Chiltern Railways at Princes Risborough and I have seen a couple of instances where a Chinnor local has used us to join the main Network. No though ticketting yet but hopefully that may come soon.

It would probably be very hard to even estimate usage figures as the majority of tickets sold on heritage railways are all line rover tickets.

Except on gala days, the vast majority of our passengers make one return journey per ticket purchased. There was a pair of single journeys last Sunday: a couple of joggers caught the train back to Chinnor after their run.