December Editorial
When I wrote the editorial for the last edition of the News, I did not (in any way) expect to get the level of response I did. Thank you all for writing to or emailing me to let me know your views on the future of the News. I have included some of your correspondence in a special letters section in this edition of the News and will write an article in March laying out my proposal for a way forward. It is clear that retaining a printed version of the News is something that is important to a significant number of you. This will be taken into account.
2016 manages to keep delivering surprises in the wider world. Be it the Brexit vote, Leicester City winning the Premier League or the election of Donald Trump, it seems that we are all living in times that are becoming increasingly difficult to predict. As you will read in our General Manager’s report the Railway has delivered its own surprise in the form of a complete turn-around in our passenger figures over the late summer and autumn periods. We went into the peak season significantly down on our equivalent year-on-year passenger journey position but have emerged from it with a modest increase. You have to ask if some of this is due to the political and economic events of the summer but we should all hope that it’s a reflection of the significant effort that is being put into the promotion of the Talyllyn.
The working parties associated with the closed season are now well underway and I was fortunate enough to be able to get to Tywyn for a small part of Autumn Outdoor week. It’s been a number of years since I’ve been able to do this and it was refreshing to see how little has changed – the dedication and enthusiasm of those who attend is as infectious now as it was years ago. To those of you who have managed to make it to the recent working parties: Please keep coming! For those of you who haven’t yet ventured to Tywyn in the winter: You don’t know what you’re missing!
I wish you all the best for the Christmas and New Year period and hope that you will all be able to get down to Tywyn at some point during 2017. From a major-events point of view 2017 will not have the series of galas that we’ve seen over the past two years – but we are not that far away from the return of Loco No. 3 Sir Haydn and the 100th birthday of Loco No. 6 Douglas: Watch this space. That said, after the excitement of 2016 I, for one, will welcome a slightly more settled year in 2017.
Matt Dawson
