SUCCESSFUL 2019 MARKS ‘TIME OF STABILISATION’ FOR KESR

2020 will be a year of consolidation for the Kent & East Sussex Railway, following a successful 2019, in which its fortunes turned around.

Having sustained a £30,000 loss in 2018 (SR491), the former Colonel Stephens light railway finished the financial year ending on October 31 2019 with a trading surplus of slightly over £91,000.

Its passenger count for the year, at 85,274, was slightly up on 2018’s figure of 82,460, helped by a Santa season that generated almost £400,000 of ticket income, an improvement of £17,000 on 2018.

Chairman Simon Marsh said: “We wanted 2019 to be a time of stabilisation, and I am pleased that we have achieved that. With the wholehearted support of the management team, costs were kept under control and every effort was made to increase our income.”

As reported in SR494, the railway is reducing its services this year in order to cut costs; 163 operating dates are planned, compared to 189 last year, and on some days, only four return trips will run instead of the previous five.

Said Mr Marsh: “We’ve done quite a lot of work on this – it’s not as simple as saying ‘some trains look empty so we won’t run them’.

“It’s been quite a complex exercise to make sure we don’t shoot ourselves in the foot, for instance by losing group bookings from cruise lines – we get a lot of those from Dover.”

However, he added: “If we think it’s beneficial to run more trains in 2021, then we will.

“We prefer to call it ‘making sure our services match the demand’ – ‘reducing services’ makes it sound like we’re on the run, and we’re not!”