Cotswold Festival of steam

I'm sure all volunteers will want to join me in congratulating everyone involved with this year's gala. Not just the extremely hard working steam department but also all the other departments who came together to make this such a successful weekend. It was enjoyable and highly professional. Lots of good comments from visitors and what's more, a record number of people attended. Have a look at Tripadvisor to see some of the comments.
Colin Fewell

Another record broken

We all expected this past weekend to be disappointing from a  visitor numbers point of view. After all, the weather was poor and the roundabout at the racecourse was to be closed. However, this real ale weekend turned out to be a record with 1254 people travelling on our trains - an increase of 4% on last year's record. Interestingly, if you want a quiet(!!) drink, then Sunday is your best bet - every year, numbers on a Sunday are about 40% of the total. Thanks to Andy for his organisation

Colin Fewell

Broadway - the last mile share issue reaches £500,000

Dear Supporters of the GWSR,

I am pleased to tell you that the Railway's share issue has, as of yesterday 20th May, reached the £500,000 mark!

Although receipt from applications for shares has, as we expected, slowed down, £500,000 represents a terrific achievement in the 6 weeks since the share issue launch event with Pete Waterman on 6th April!

Next stop the half way point, £625,000.

The £500,000 thus far received should be enough to keep our main work teams, that's the Broadway Station team, Permanent Way and Civil Engineering, working for the rest of 2016 but, as I have to remind everyone, we still need £750,000 to finish the job!

If you have the share issue document at home and have yet to apply for shares, may I suggest now might be the time to apply so that we can keep the momentum going?

Everything else seems to be going well at the Railway this season, and we have the Steam Gala to look forward to next weekend - fingers crossed for good weather!

Best wishes,

Chris

Chris Bristow
GWSR PLC Finance Director

BBC Midlands Today feature and Broadway Share issue update

Dear GWSR Supporters,

The BBC Midlands Today news team heard how well the share issue is going and wanted to do another news item on the railway specifically about the share issue. Filming was done all morning on Wednesday 4th May and the feature was right at the end of the 6.30pm Midlands Today News that evening.

They did a superb job of editing hours of material into a really well focussed 2 or 3 minute program - if you missed it you can catch up with it on BBC iplayer - it's worth the effort!

As of today's post, I'm pleased to tell you that the share issue has, including one or two small donations to the GWRT, reached £453,000.

Yes that's £453,000 in 4 and a bit weeks! However, the rate is beginning to slow down as we knew it would, so if you've got the share issue document and haven't got round yet to applying for some shares now might be the time.

Remember - it's gone fantastically well so far but we still need £800,000!

That's all for today. Have a nice weekend,

Chris

Chris Bristow
GWSR PLC Finance Director

Broadway, the last mile - a terrific response after the first month!

Dear GWSR Supporters

I am delighted, and a bit humbled, to be able to tell you that, three weeks from when Pete Waterman was here for our share appeal launch day and four weeks since the first share issue documents arrived at the railway, we have received £410,000 in share applications - that's almost a third of the total!

This is an unprecedentedly good start!

To put this into context, the Bridges to Broadway share issue raised about £250,000 in the first three months which, at the time, we thought was very good.

Based on that, for this share issue, I budgeted that it would take us until the end of August, five months, to reach the value we have achieved in only three weeks!

I also need to update you on how things are going financially with the 2016 season - in a word 'excellent'!

The Cheltenham Festival Race trains were a record, the Wartime in the Cotswolds weekend just completed was a record and passenger numbers on service trains are up on last year, itself a record year.

On Saturday night we will run a Fish and Chip train free to our volunteers (served by the directors) as a big thank you for all their hard work.

I will keep you updated on a regular basis on how the share issue is going but, do please remember, there is still more than £800,000 to go!

Thanks for your support,

Chris

Chris Bristow

GWSR PLC Finance Director

Wartime in the Cotswolds - update

Just to let you know final numbers for the weekend were 20% up on 2015 - a new record. Interestingly numbers of visitors on the Saturday were almost exactly the same as for the Sunday - the only difference that a larger percentage joined us at Toddington  rather than Cheltenham. I mention this because there were so many other Sunday activities in Cheltenham and Winchcombe this past weekend, so we really did very well
Colin Fewell

Wartime in the Cotswolds

An excellent weekend - we had a record number of visitors on Saturday and once I have the figure for Sunday I will send out the total. Many thanks to the organising group for all their tremendous hard work and also to all the volunteers who worked so hard to make it such a success. A great friendly atmosphere commented on very favourably by our visitors.
This year we were honoured by a visit from King George V1 who gave a rousing speech at Toddington and again in Winchcombe town centre much to the bemusement of a lot of tourists, and causing a traffic jam.

Also this year for the first time we had a vintage Bedford bus running between the station and Winchcombe town centre. This followed on from a number of shops and businesses in Winchcombe coming together to support us with banners, bunting and special 1940's shop windows. I hope we can

develop our relationship with the town further in the future.
Colin Fewell