October, Halloween and PESTS

I can hardly believe that I have not posted on this blog for 4 weeks. So much has happened.

Our carriage shed extension has made superb progress. The steel seemed to go up in no time, and the roof is now on. The bricklayers were struggling today in the rain, but it is great to see British workers on time and on budget. It can be done.

We have had a good October. Our Fright Night Trains were both full and this finished the month in fine style. One of the members of our Saturday Gang, who are primarily Engineers, came out on the Friday night and confessed to enjoying himself, just after we had turned the lights, having pitched the entire train into darkness. He was surprised to learn from some customers that they had never been on a train before. This happens quite regularly. When my children were growing up I took them to London by train each year to visit an attraction ride on different modes of transport etc. They had a great time. It is so easy to travel by road and plane but in the SE it is quite easy to travel by train. More should try it – especially the High Speed types.
You can easily tell those people that travel by train now, they wait for the doors to open. Our staff are now looking for them to help them on board by opening the doors of our vintage carriages manually.

At the beginning of October Tenterden takes on a different look for the town’s folk festival. It is great for the pubs as they are all full, but unfortunately some of the festival organisers don’t look at the impact on other businesses. This year our car park was filled by festival users and our customers were unable to use it. Potential customers have told us they drove away. That will not happen again. I fully understand why visitors park in our car park – it is free as opposed to the outrageous and uninviting car park charges levied by the cash strapped Borough Council. Next year we will not be free and we will direct non-customers to the town’s pay and display car parks thus contributing to their financial well being. All in the spirit of promoting the community!!

As I write the Cavell van nears completion thanks to the work of our volunteers at Bodiam Station. We will look forward to next weeks’ commemoration ceremony and look forward to welcoming back the Lord Warden and many other V.I.P.s to K&ESR.
This railway vehicle is a national treasure. I hope lots of people will come and see it. It will be shown on BBC1 – we hope it makes the national news.

We visited the Mill at Northiam last week to see the new Toy Museum under construction. When this is finished in March it will help make a visit to K&ESR a really great day out, with attractions at 3 stations.

In front of me I have an article titled “The Power of the PEST”. A PEST by the way is a Political, Economic, Sociological, Technological analysis. To do this one must start, apparently, by analysing the PEST factors that effect one’s business. As I started to think about this I was interrupted for the sixth time today by the same individual and my mind has gone off on another tangent.

Santa bookings are looking good. K&ESR’s Santa Specials are well established in this area. We regularly change the offer, but last year’s experience was so successful we are repeating it this year. I just hope this December it comes without the snow.

Finally I had the chance to visit the Isle of Wight Steam Railway to join in the celebrations as “Calbourne” returned to traffic. The Isle of Wight Railway is similar to K&ESR in many ways and they have a similar number of visitors to us. I had a great journey back across the Solent by Catamaran but the journey out was horrendous on a very bumpy substitute. I like the rail link from Ryde to the steam railway. It is such a shame that in the populous SE of England you can’t get a bus from the nearest main line train station to the local major tourist attraction on a Sunday!