Services operate at regular intervals between April and September, taking 30 minutes for a one-way journey. There is no winter service: the overhead wires on the exposed upper part of the route are dismantled to avoid damage from icing. All passenger traffic is carried in six wooden-bodied electric
railcars, built in 1895 and numbered 1 to 6. Car 5 was burned out in an accident in 1970 and its body is a replacement built in 1971 to a similar design. The cars were re-equipped in the late 1970s with new
bogies to a design based on the original, using motors and traction equipment from withdrawn
Aachen trams. Because of the different gauge and the centre rail, vehicles cannot inter-run between the railway and the 3 ft gauge
MER. Railway vehicles are occasionally worked to the MER workshops at
Douglas by swapping their
bogies, and to aid this there is a
dual gauge siding in Laxey. The railway is owned and operated by
Isle of Man Heritage Railways, a department of the
Isle of Man Government