How many passengers?

The WSR have reported "...at the end of the year we had reached 200,477 passengers as the total number carried compared with 203, 297 in the record year of 2006." At the same time, I am hearing of some very good news from Dorset with the Swanage Railway carrying 200,100 passengers last year. Well done, Swanage. I have a place in my heart for the Dorset railway - my railway volunteering efforts began with the Swanage Railway back in 1975 at a time when there was a Society and a Campaign but nothing else. But the two strands of news about passenger figures raises, yet again, the risk of comparing one with another, since there is no standard method of calculating passenger loadings. For example, is a visitor with a return ticket making a trip out and a trip back one passenger or two? I'm not suggesting the Swanage is making a big deal of their breaking the 200,000 mark, but other railways make a lot of their own figures in marketing and publicity perhaps to the disadvantage of others who may, in fact, be carrying more. It really is about time a body such as the Heritage Railways Association took this particular bull by the horns and laid out a consistent process.