Grahame, good to bump into you today! Sorry I couldn't hang around any longer, but the 12:03 onwards to Soton from Weymouth awaited my presence!
Phil - a delight to meet you and chat, but once in Weymouth I was in "work mode" at the head of the platform, wishing people a good day, helping people know that - yes - the train would be the same one back and from the same place, and directing them towards the seafront / beach is asked.
How did the onboard survey go? Whilst fairly sparsely populated, there looked to be a good mix of families on a day out at the seaside, older couples off for a few days break as well as a couple of groups of lads on a booze cruise.
Countwise, there were around 15 to 20 who remained on board at Swindon when the train reversed, and we left there with 142 passengers on board (count) . There were around 190 after Chippenham (estimate) and 247 after Yeovil (count). On the return train there were 235 (count) after Dorchester West. That's on a train capacity of around 500 (7 + 2 formation, mini buffet in Standard, 1.5 coaches of 1st). I'm told there's a very real issue with the Wizard because in "normal times" it runs behind a unit train on the same route, with the unit rammed and people not waiting but wanting to get to the seaside - and indeed I can confirm that from personal experience.
Survey wise, the reason was talking to people was from a marketing standpoint - looking to learn how they had heard about the service. The headline data, people spoken to after Chippenham (got round just before Frome)
* 70 passengers - National Rail and other timetable web sites
* 40 passengers - Posters and other information at Stations
* 40 passengers - Facebook and other social media
* 25 passengers - Rail staff and their families from staff sources
* 10 passengers - Railway magazines and the enthusiast network
It's very hard to tie these down sometimes - people hear of things in multiple ways, hear from a friend and they don't know how the friend was triggered, and so on, but something of a picture is formed.
The 70 National Rail and the 10 from Rail magazines were only partly Weymouth day trippers - there's intrinsic traffic in the area, with all sorts of origin and destination stations, rather than day trip specific journeys to Dorchester / Weymouth which probably accounted for around 30 of the 80.
Indications are that passengers enjoyed the day out, felt it was great, will be coming again later this month; there are those who were trying it out before bringing a bigger groups and (overall) the message I have is that the social media stuff I was doing accounted for about 20% of the traffic and that may well continue through the month / grow with a little re-informcement.
There was a concern (on my part) that either the "Wizard" would be embarrassingly empty yesterday, or stuffed (one can dream wildly) ... with "buy on the day" tickets, and new metrics, I could only guess. As it was, I think I'm fairly happy with the results. I also had a great chance to do a lot of walking around Weymouth and take some great pictures which I will enjoy looking back at, and selectively publicise over coming weeks.
As Phil says too - yes - an excellent mix. I might have expected more families, but family and friends take time to organise, and there was a feeling that publicity was late in the day for 1st August.
