therick311 said:My guess is that by only running one train, you could save your maintenance crew the time of checking the 2nd train at the end of the day. If your maintenance crew is paid by the hour, that would save some money.
Yeah, this is the problem with this "hobby" - we just don't have particularly good facts on working practices and costs.
I agree with you, it's possible, but aren't the trains checked before they're "put to bed" as a matter of course? Is paying £12 per hour for two engineers over two hours really crippling? Considering the positive effect it may have, it could be worth it.
The answer of course is that we just honestly don't know why. We don't know the exact costs. It may be that on quiet days they know will be quiet in advance, they simply don't employ enough staff to make it viable to add the extra train.
If you have a park on the edge, then you need to look at every penny spent on maintenance and staffing as that's where (on a quiet day where you're possible looking at a loss) the savings can be made. The problem is, paper figures don't cover all the variables you can't quantify. Guest satisfaction and chance of return, amount spent in outlets, etc. You have no way of knowing how bad queues adversely affect that - particularly if it's a quiet day anyway where spend would be minimal. FOur extra cups of coffee compared to 2x2hoursxengineers for instance.
I'd love to see some real figures and get a clue, but I suspect so would the parks :lol: