I think the problem is many of us have dipped generously into our wallets and purses over the past few months - in my case spending money which was earmarked for cancelled holidays in other parts of the country to visit other railways away from my home area.
I think people just want to see railway making an effort to show recognition of their members efforts and the comments made about the Bluebell suggest that they are not making an effort whilst FR and TR obviously trying to continue concessions.
However, rather than making a big fuss about the railways I do believe anyone who wants to see things get back to normal need to direct their main effort at the politicians. I wrote several letters last week.
At least some of the politicians are starting to wake up now. I see Iain Duncan Smith made an interesting critique of the mishandling of the Covid affair yesterday.
John
At the Kent & East Sussex Railway all the members were invited to take part in the pre-public trains which were run on July 12th. We are now up and running on the public trains.
Any availability that has not been sold prior to the day can be bought at the Tenterden Ticket Office up till departure of the train.
Non working members will be able to book compartments and bays of seats from August. As will holders of HRA Interail Cards.
We are currently only running 2 trains per day on Saturday and Sundays but they are running in the normal timetable and we can quite quickly increase those as demand increases.
We are only currently running out and back trips this is to avoid overcrowding of the return trips from Bodiam. It would only require one trip advisor review or facebook photo of a packed train for this limited operation to be shut down (other social media is available). The National Trust is currently only running limited tours of the castle grounds in 10 minute time slots and are unable to accomodate a train full of passengers.
Our booking system is able to deal with our current and future planned operations but is not a railway based full booking system that would be able to deal with reservations on single tickets from intermediate stations say Rolvenden to Northiam, ticket sales from intermediate stations are less than 10% of our income so we have had to concentrate our efforts on where our income is based.
This is a quick summary of where we find ourselves other railways will have very differing circumstances and solutions but i guess everybody is working their hardest to survive.