North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

There was a case not long ago, in a railway that followed the model of governance set up by the NYMR where anyone who applied who had any existing connection to the railway was rejected. Did wonders for morale.(not)

Regardless of all the legal requirements, and noting the need for trustees to have particular skills, one essential element for success is surely that some of the the trustees are regarded by volunteers as representative of their viewpoint, or at least able to understand it fully? That’s not hard to ensure, but more than one board is making a fist of it.

 

I hope so. He seems to have done wonders for morale at the SVR. This thread in recent weeks is becomng horribly like those relating to a couple of lines in a different part of the country and given that the NYMR has so much going for it, I'm sure I'm speaking for many others too - volunteers and general enthusiasts alike - in saying that my wish is that it will be spared such acrimony.

 

That is emphatically NOT the governance model adopted by the NYMR. Volunteering on the railway is rightly given considerable weight when candidates put their names forward for election. As confirmed previously a majority of the current Trustees are active working volunteers with other roles on the railway. That's been the case for some time and there's every intention that it should remain so for the reasons suggested.

 

I've been meaning to comment on this since it was posted but other things got in the way. I'm afraid that your recollections must be coloured with rose tinted spectacles because there is no way that 76079 could do what you are remembering. Eight coaches, yes but line speed, never. A Black 5 wouldn't even do that. It's getting well into class 6 territory. The T/T requires a steady speed of 14 mph to do the 3.5miles in the scheduled 15 minutes but there's acceleration and deceleration plus the 10 mph limit for the first quarter of a mile. I find that a steady 17 mph once off the 10 will do the job to time. If you work out the theoretical IHP required for 76079 at that speed I make it to be 980 hp so at 25 mph that would be 1441 hp (and a Black 5 would be 1525 hp). With a normal 7 coach load I'd have the regulator wide open and the reverser at about 50% to maintain 17 mph with both of them because at that speed there's little difference in any of the Cl.4s and the Black 5's. The loco is designed to run in full gear with the regulator wide open so they are not being 'thrashed'. Why people get the idea you can thrash a loco, I don't know. The dictionary definition relates to hitting things. That terms seems to be used by enthusiasts to describe when a loco is making a lot of noise at the chimney, which they all do with these loads on 1 in 49.
If you look at the BR test performance charts for 44764 and 75006 (there isn't one for a 76XXX) you will see that they agree with what I'm saying.

 

de,

I was away from home for the day yesterday, and came back to be slightly surprised by the volume of posts that had appeared in this thread, most of them making very reasonable points in contrast, though, there was this latter one, which demonstrates a point of view so far from reality, and a head stuck so far in the sand, that it defies belief! The Trust Board selection committee seems to be there to discourage long standing volunteers from standing, and as has been said the PLc board seems to be there to favour paid staff over volunteers. This is Linesisclear's legacy - a shift from the NYMR from being a volunteer run organisation to one that is there to benefit the paid staff (I deliberately haven't used the term "professional" because most of them aren't - increasingly more of them have been brought through an apprenticeship system that isolates them from the wider experience of other similar organisations, and narrows them into an "NYMR" way of thinking. Those are very good reasons for re-navigating back to a path where the volunteers and supports have a much more widely appreciated and valued role and there have been some crass mistakes made by the paid management - the sudden departures of two senior managers (at least one of whom had become a director of the PLC with no doubt a commensurate salary) following the realisation of shortcomings in their abilities/performance.

Lastly, I commend this latter post to anyone who doesn't think that the "truth" or "reality" of what was written is actually the viewpoint of the person who wrote it, and can be distorted or twisted to suit their beliefs. The same can be said of me, of course, but I do seem to have some support on here from others; from what I can see, Lineisclear does not.

 

Perhaps 60044 should heed the implied warning in John Petley's recent post? Instead we see his typical response when faced with the inconvenient fact that a majority of the Trustees are volunteers with other roles on the railway and, most importantly, that all of them are volunteers. He claims , without knowledge or justification, that the Nominations Committee is there to discourage volunteers despite evidence that it actually favours them. Its role is to help create a balanced leadership that doesn't only justify the trust and confidence of members and volunteers but that of those other stakeholders the survival of the railway depends on. Those include its bank, grant funders, and particularly regulatory bodies. It means being able to reassure them that the leadership has the skills, experience and, in some cases essential qualifications, to run a safe, viable railway and charity. If that competence can come from within the cadre of working volunteers that should be, and is, encouraged. One wonders what rock 60044 has been hiding under when the ORR have expressed serious concern about the quality of heritage railways' traditional corporate governance and when other heritage railways have sought advice from the NYMR about making their own structures and governance fit for purpose.

 

I was referring to the way in which Trust and Company were governed and the establishment of a selection committee appointed by the current board. That is how the NYMR is set up is it not?

The very point I was making was that it was about how that governance structure was operating and whether its design tends to give outcomes that might not provide for the smoothest relationships with volunteers.

An appointments committee is not a bad thing in itself. The Trust governing Company model is not a bad thing either. The problems I see are where the implementation of that structure doesn’t specifically and visibly encourage and support volunteering and deal with the concerns of existing volunteers.

@Lineisclear is right that the ORR and others have been concerned about governance. Actually I think that either their concern is slightly off target, or much more likely, the way it has been interpreted in many cases does not address the actual concern.

What I believe the ORR need to see is that safety is taken seriously and is measured, monitored and targeted effectively from the board down and from the “ship floor” up. It is about engendering the right culture and attitude to safety by effectively managing, training and verifying.

Grant bodies want to see stable board/management relationships that provide a decent chance of the grant being spent on the purpose for which it was given and the outcomes agreed being achieved.

I have met in 35years of volunteering perhaps half a dozen volunteers who if something was properly explained would still get in the way of the achievement of either of those goals. I have met very few employees who would, but I have met a sizeable proportion who would need a lot of coaching and support to achieve them.

There are two massive issues within heritage railways. First, the quality of trustees in some cases (which is what a selection committee is supposed to sort, but won’t if drawn only from existing trustees). Second, and this is much more important, the depth and capacity (sometimes perhaps the capabilities) of the management staff both paid and volunteer. Most heritage railways are very under resourced in management.

All of the above is only helped by ensuring volunteers feel valued and accepted, and that everyone has a common goal. To achieve that I think the single most important thing is great internal communication. Good isn’t good enough. Great, is the only thing that will keep our railways going.

 

As I understand the NYMR structure, there PLC is the executive body on the railway, with the responsibility to operate the railway in a safe and legally compliant way. The Trust board is essentially a non-executive: it doesn't directly run the railway, but is there to ensure that the PLC are operating it in a way that accords with the charity's overlying purpose. [I'll come back to that point].

As such, it seems to me that it is important that the PLC directors are chosen with specific technical skills, whether that is in engineering, operations, finance, catering, marketing and so on. By contrast, the Trust board members need to have a diverse range of soft skills: if you could sum up one quality they collectively need, it is wisdom.

To me, the Nominations Committee is therefore in the wrong place. You absolutely need to ensure that your PLC directors have appropriate skills, but by artificially limiting the range of candidates who can even be voted on by the membership, you run the risk that you will increasingly select candidates who display a collective groupthink and are therefore collectively incapable of properly exercising their oversight role. It seems that by setting such great store in that selection method, you run the very real risk of actively working against the very things you claim you wish to demonstrate: confidence from your stakeholders in your ability to run the railway safely and use resources wisely.

Coming back to the earlier point: "to ensure that the PLC are operating it in a way that accords with the charity's overlying purpose." I'd go further, but didn't want to derail the argument in the first paragraph. My view is that the role of a Trustee in a member organisation is "to ensure that the PLC are operating it in a way that matches member aspirations of how the charitable purpose is demonstrated." The point being that a lawyer's answer is that a charity is beholden to the Charity Commission, but any membership organisation that ignores its members aspirations is doomed - which of course means the charity is doomed. In other words, to me it is axiomatic that unless the charity is listening very carefully to its members' aspirations and involving them in strategic decision making, it cannot reasonably be said to be properly discharging its charitable objectives, since it is putting the charity at an existential risk of collapse.

I'd pose two questions to @Lineisclear

1. In the model you have articulated, would you consider the charity to be succeeding if the members en masse resigned? If not, how do you demonstrate that you value them, because a lot of your statements seem to border very close on saying that members are an undesirable burden on the ability of the charity to function?
2. Again in the model you prefer (with a nominations committee) how could the members remove you from office? When your time for re-election came up, what would prevent the nominations committee ensuring that yours was the only name on the ballot? You may claim that won't happen and that you personally would always ensure that multi-candidate elections took place, but the real value of a governance model is not how it functions when the "good guys" are in charge, but how it protects the organisation from a malign take over.

Many heritage railways have suffered when an over-mighty executive has tried to ride rough shod over the wishes of the membership. One hopes that the NYMR is not about to become the latest line where the executive are preparing to learn that lesson the hard way.

Tom

 

As you say an appointments committee is not a bad thing in itself although clearly not everyone accepts that. Even the term selection committee is not entirely fair . The important features of the NYMR nominations committee are that:

1) it has an independent chair and
2) it aims to endorse more candidates than there are vacancies leaving the final choice to the membership.
3) it assesses candidates against a skills matrix of those competencies that the leadership may be short of at the time.

It's more of a quality/comptence assurance committtee.

It could be set up to just recommend from a list of an unlimited number of candidates although with the one member /one vote postal and electronic voting system used by the NYMR the effect of not recommending a candidate would probably make little or no difference to the outcome.

I also agree that heritage railways tend to be under resourced in management which is why some mechanism of assesssing quality and comptenece can be helpful. It's also why I can't agree with limiting the size of the talent pool to volunteers and those with experience of railway volunteering however desirable those qualities are.

 

It's not going to be bars. As I understand it, it is going to be something that restricts the opening of the window to about 4 inches; sufficient to allow a bit of ventilation but prevent both heads putting out and hands reaching the door handles and opening them. It was hoped that this would be acceptable to the ORR as a substitute for CDL on the Esk Valley line but I get the impression that the ORR are lukewarm with regards to a substitute for CDL. I actually preferred an earlier plan to use the budget lock and lock doors, along with a 'break glass' T key for emergency use but this would have required station staff to unlock doors at stations.

 

According to the Articles the maximum number of directors is set at 12. There are presently 10 directors on the Trust board. The articles state that "No person may be appointed or re-appointed as a director by the voting members unless that person is recommended by the nominations committee in accordance with any procedures and terms of reference that are agreed by the directors from time to time." The articles appear to be silent on the make up of the nominations committee and its procedures unless I've missed them. My interpretation of this is that the nominations committee is totally under the control of the board. I understand (but am open to correction as I have not seen it in writing) that, at the last AGM, there were willing and suitable people who could have filled the two vacant posts but were barred by the nominations committee from standing with the result that there was no ballot at which the members could have expressed their preference. I also note that the directors can appoint whoever they like without reference to the nominations committee. The Trust board is very much a closed shop.

 

They are fair questions Tom. I'm not sure when you use the term members whether you mean members or volunteers? Let's assume you have volunteers in mind. but please correct me if I'm wrong.

Of couse the charity would not be succeeding not least because one of its registered purposes is the promotion of the health, social and welfare benefits of volunteering. It's rightly said that the NYMR could not survive without its volunteers. If they all walked out the charity would fold. Equally it can't survive without its paid staff. Indeed if they all resigned it would probably fold even quicker. I'm a working volunteer for goodness sake! I understand the value of the volunteers' contribution but it's niave to assume they don't come at a cost. Managing volunteers isn't cheap. The need to motivate and retain them, in short keep them happy, can cost. To give an example one major railway recently cut back its operations to fewer days a week. Doing so reduces volunteering opportunities. If the timetable is also cut back on remaining days there may be less enjoyable activity to be involved with. That may lead to pressure to operate in a financially sub-optimal way. In other words the charity running at a cost level that's designed to retain its volunteers. That's the right decision but it still represents a cost. How do you value them? Well perhaps being ready to incur that avoidable cost for a start. Being available to listen to volunteers views and concerns would be another and, as suggested by others, communicating as best you can. Although I'm expressing personal opinions on here I see that as an attempt to communicate. However, when you see the vitriolic personal abuse that follows is it any wonder that others are deterred?

The issue of removing Trustees from office has arisen as a "cause celebre" elsewhere. To answer your question I can't avoid mentioning the law however much some prefer to believe it's irrelevant. Company Law includes the right for members to propose a resolution to remove a director/trustee. It needs to have the initial support of not less than 5% of the membership and, unless it's tabled in time to be included on the agenda of the AGM, the substantial cost of sending its details to the membership and of holding the meeting has to be paid to the company before its obliged to proceed. If mine were the only name on the ballot I assure you I would be principled enough not to stand. It's virtually impossible anyway as one third of the board (or the number nearest to one third) must retire each year so a single candidate would almost certainly result in the board being inquorate.

I see concerns about "malign takeovers", dominant cliques and "over mighty executives" etc expressed both in respect of the NYMR and other heritage railways. The fact is that their Articles invariably provide that companies and incorporated charities shall be run by their directors. They're not designed to be societies or co-operatives where decisions are made by their members whether volunteers or not. That has been the case since the NYMR was incorprated in 1973. That's why my personal preference is for the Community Benefit Society model where more democratic rules replace company law, Shock. horror,! .....the much derided lawyer arguing for greater heritage railway democracy!

 

In writing "members" I did actually mean the members of the support organisation - of whom typically the volunteers would be a (well-informed) subset. So the question is not just about the value that the volunteers bring (and I would suggest in cash terms alone, it dwarfs anything you might hope to achieve chasing grants from grant-awarding bodies) but also the value of the members. One important value I'd suggest is acting as the conscience of the organisation.

On the other point - I accept that, with Trustees retiring by rotation, a "one candidate" election is unlikely. So let's rephrase it slightly: if, say, four candidates stood down in rotation and four names were put forward by the nominations committee, how could the membership prevent one or more of those candidates being automatically elected by default. You may feel the warm glow that your election came as one of four candidates in a ballot, but if there are four names and four vacancies, it still isn't an election. [In other words - my question isn't so much about "how could the members remove a given Trustee out of course?" but rather, how they would prevent the re-election of that Trustee when their time came up in the normal course of things? A wide field of candidates is one way to achieve that, so having a nominations committee that artificially reduces the field inevitably works in an anti-democratic way.

I also think you are missing the point about the ability of a group of members to call an EGM by having support of 5% of the electorate. To me, that seems like (an entirely necessary) provision within Company Law to enable the members to force a change outside the normal course of an AGM. But suppose a well-respected candidate were to be blocked from standing at an AGM by the nominations committee. Is it right that they have to therefore go through the EGM route to force their name onto a ballot before all the membership? Why should they be prevented from standing in the normal course of things at the AGM? It seems to me you are trying to use a provision that is there to be used in extremis as instead an artificially high barrier that some - but not all - candidates have to jump in order even to be considered as a candidate for election. Why not trust the membership to be able to differentiate which candidates show the necessary balance of skills to be a Trust board member, and which don't? My experience is that, collectively, members are sober enough to treat such things seriously, and they don't simply turn into popularity contests.

In terms of respect, I absolutely support the proposition that Directors and Trustees of heritage railway organisations should be treated respectfully on a personal level, regardless of how much one might disagree with their views.

Tom

 

I think your last comment is the essence of the matter. It depends to a large extent of experience of what has happened in practice. Sadly there is ample evidence on the NYMR that popularity was a huge factor making it harder for new talent to refresh the board (as was position on the ballot paper). Having counted them in the past I was amazed how many voting slips just started at the top and ticked down the list till the number of vacancies was reached. We've also had to contend with the wasted election of someone who was totally unsuited to office and only lasted for part of one confontational meeting before triggering a unanimous vote for removal. I'm certainly not trying to discourage new talent from standing. Quite the opposite. Popularity, or at least being "well respected" can create a preference based on familiarity that works against aspiring new trustees.
Incidentally in answer to Steve the privilege of appointing Trustees lies solely with the charity's membership. The only well established exception is co-option to fill a vacancy but all co opted individuals must submit themselves for election at the next AGM.

 

I didn’t intend to imply that the trustee talent pool should be limited to railway volunteers. But there must be what are seen to be people who understand volunteers very well in the make up of the board. Strongly so.

My limit was on managerial staff (paid) who in my view must come from a volunteer background and for preference a railway one (for some jobs I think railway experience is essential).

 

One problem you quickly come across is that the Companies Act does not work very well in the absence of a financial incentive for directors. Do you try to put in place some sort of service agreement?

 

Very much so which is why the NYMR uses a democratic postal/electronic system giving ALL the members the straightforward and equal ability to vote without having to attend the AGM or lodge a proxy.

 

Which is why it is so important that the formal processes are transparent and permit challenge to incumbents. If it is correct that the NYMR nominations committee blocked two suitably qualified and experienced candidates from standing, that is a clear sign that the process may be acting to protect incumbents and therefore undermines the confidence of the membership at large that they can exercise their influence within the organisation.

A nominations committee should advise and recommend, not veto.

Elsewhere, an attempt last year to stack the deck in favour of the incumbents was overwhelmingly defeated by ordinary members, because it so palpably failed to address the needs of the organisation or the challenges it was then facing. When the subsequent AGM was held, the sky did not fall in and the result helped nudge the organisation in the direction of necessary changes.

If members can’t be trusted to engage their brains or vote beyond their mates, then the answer is to address the behaviours at source, not take their rights away.

Discussions of EGMs or special motions are a sign that the safety valves have been tied down too hard, not that they need tying down further.

 

In a democratic system, though, anyone is entitled to offer themselves as a candidate for election. In the NYMR elections, only those who have been selected by the nomination committee can stand, so there is at least the potential for an in-built degree of bias, regardless of whether the committee chairman or its members have their own degree of bias or are given them as their terms of reference - and you have already stated that they have been! They are instructed to choose only candidates whose perceived skills are deemed by the "establishment" to make them worthy of election!