A sale of surplus books and journals from the Tramway Museum Society archives over the recent Crich enthusiast’s weekend on 15th & 16th September has been hailed a tremendous success, raising over £1,500 for the museum. Although similar book sales have been held before, this was the first ever two-day sale, which co-incided with the extremley succesful ‘Glasgow 50’ commemorative event.
2012 has been a difficult year at Crich with declining visitor numbers; however other signs have been much more encouraging. The average amount of money spent per visitor is actually better than many comparable attractions, such as Beamish Museum, and clearly this shows that efforts being made to improve the profitability of retail and catering outlets has been well worthwhile. Other one-offs such as the book sale have also helped to boost revenue.
It should be noted that all items sold are duplicates of items already in the TMS archive collection, which have been donated to the Society – meaning that all funds raised are profit. This once again highlights the value of staging high quality events aimed at tram enthusiasts, as clearly these are the people who will be persuaded to part with cash for old books, magazines etc. Having held some of its best enthusiast-orientated events for many years, if not ever, during 2012 hopefully there will be more events of this calibre at Crich next year along with further book sales.