North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

We were walking the old trackbed from Whitby today and distinctly heard a loco hooter about 11.00. Nothing timetabled out if Whitby at that time? Any ideas.

 

Any Traction Engines still in the area after the rally at Hawsker last weekend?

 

I've enjoyed watching the Channel 5 series. I must admit that my favourite bit was the head-on clash between "Journey back to the Golden age of Steam" and "The Dukes of Hazzard". I can't help thinking that this was all pre-arranged as some kind of joke!

 

No departures, but there is an arrival due in at 11.09. It has to stop outside the station to allow the ground frame operator to get off and set the road for platform 2. That takes about five minutes and there is a whistle board just before this which I reckon should be passed at about 11.03 so it looks like it was on time!

 

I recorded Series 2 and watched it over the course of about a week at the end of the run.

I tried to like it, I really did, but it was just too forced for my taste.

 

You need to bear in mind the audience its aimed at. If it wasn't a bit forced it would probably be quite boring for a lot of people.

 

Spot on. My wife has little interest in railways but on the strength of Yorkshires Steam Railway - which she much enjoyed I have persuaded her to agree to a weekend in Whitby at the end of September and a visit to the NYMR Gala

 

I too enjoyed the second series & look forward to series 3.

Cheers

Ben

 

I'm fully aware of that. It was just too much like all the other reality TV shows with its 'meanwhile, back at's and manufactured drama, with the occasional bit of train thrown in for narrative value.

There's surely some middle ground beween 'boring for a lot of people' (and maybe me too) and daytime TV formulaic stuff.

If you like it fine, I'm not saying you or anyone else shouldn't. I was just expressing a personal opinion in reponse to someone else's personal opinion.

 

...and if it generates interest in other railways, that's all good too.

 

This, the Mrs isn't the biggest railway fan but she enjoyed watching the program, and made sure she watched it every week, we also will make a trip up before the year is out

Matt

 

The television programmes and films, non reality type, also do very good promotional work for the lines that are featured.
Fr. Brown, with the G&WSR, Poirot who cops up on the Dartmouth line with its Agatha Christie connections; he appears on other lines as well throughout the series. Heartbeat and many others have featured many preserved lines. These type of programmes do have a wider audience than the reality type as far as I can see, in so far that many overseas visitors like to be where their favourite sleuth, or who ever, once walked.
The Brief Encounter charisma is still very much to the fore, even after the passage of time. A neighbour told me,only yesterday, about the model shop at Carnforth - which he instantly associated with the film.
Many railway views and sounds, can be noticed in the recent black and white era films being transmitted presently. I doubt it has a great effect on tourism but maybe a small seed is planted in someones little grey cells.

 

Last year's Channel 4 carriage restoration series is known to have prompted visits from people who live overseas. I have met visitors from Eire and New Zealand (where the series was sold to) and I am sure that all places which took part will have had similar experiences.

 

2017 seemed to be the year that heritage railways featured most on TV and it was noticeable in my website stats 2017 that the visitor numbers jumped by up to 20% So all the publicity from various programs certainly had an effect. I hope this trend was reflected in actual visitors to the railways. Certainly many reported a good year.
The publicity continued throughout 2018 but my visitor numbers gradually dropped back to and are now just above 2016 levels. I guess most of the extra visitors only had a passing interest and have now moved on to other interests.

 

I've heard somewhere that the first Channel 5 series represented the equivalent of £20M-worth of advertising to the NYMR and the community in Pickering (I assume that is what an equivalent amount of advertising air-time would have cost). Clearly it brought some extra business in to both railway and community but £20M worth overall? Probably not, but free advertising is still to be welcomed.

Perhaps Channel 5 should do a documentary about WSR next - They wouldn't have to go to the bother of creating false tension, the programme would be more like Eastenders if the NatPres thread is anything to go by!

 

The NYMR programme debuted in 2018 I thought , as did the carriage restoration programme?

Jon

 

We are getting a little off topic here, but programs that I remember include:

• Liz McIvor 'Railways: The Making of a Nation' in autumn 2016
  
• Chris Tarrant 'The railways that built Britain' in spring 2017
  
• Coastal Railways with Julie Walters in winter 2017
• Peter Snow's 'Great Rail Restorations' in summer 2018
  
• Rob Bell 'Walking Britain's lost railways' in autumn 2018
  
• Michael Portilo's endless repeated 'Great British Railway Journeys' series

There were (and still are) also a lot of heritage railways featured in passing in programs like 'Antiques Roadshow' and 'Antiques Road Trip'. They've also appeared in various property search programs.

Overall I think our hobby does quite well for free publicity on TV.

 

They also appear, albeit un-identified, in other shows (e.g. 'Downton Abbey', which was the Bluebell, IIRC). Might give people ideas, plus extreme fans will want to see where the filming happened (which has been a boon to Downton's Highclere Castle, for instance).

Noel

 

Looks like some sort of filming has been taking place at Grosmont this afternoon. Noticed a film crew on the platform about 20 mins ago when I took a butchers at the station webcam. Presume this is to do with the 3rd series of the Yorkshire Steam Railway series? (Happy to be corrected if barking up the wrong tree)

Ben

 

They were filming for the new series last Friday at Pickering prior to the first departure of the day.

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