North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

As I pointed out the mandatory cooling off period for membership applications is a new obligation. I have yet to review the legislation but it seems that it is likely to require some changes in traditional membership sign up arrangements.

 

But why assume the worst - and why only at NYMR?

The issue here is not so much about money, as about making people feel valued.

It reminds me of working with another company once, who told us how grateful we should be to have them work for us. We couldn't wait to move on, because we simply couldn't get on with them

 

What worries me is that Lineisclear is advising other heritage railways on governance, seemingly under the wings of the HRA.

 

There may well be a huge number of life members who joined in earlier years and that would skew the figures but I somehow doubt that this is the case. Again, it is a lack of available information that prevents any true analysis of the situation.

 

It’s not just the NYMR although it happens to have been mentioned on this thread. Nor is it just heritage railways. The effect of the new legislation is ringing alarm bells across a wide range of membership organisations .

 

As usual, you are making the glaring mistake of treating volunteers as equivalent to paid employees. In my experience, the volunteers of any organisation are far more committed and will put up with a great deal more s**t than most paid staff, and should be valued more so for that very reason. Once again, I feel that your lack of any significant empathy for the true, real, worth of volunteers is laid bare and readers of this thread from all railways should take note of it, and treat it with the contempt it really deserves. It will take longer to disinfect the NYMR now that this poison is so well entrenched, but anyone who has any concern for its future needs to join in to work to that end.

 

It requires some really distorted thinking to translate concern about legislation imposing disproportionate cost on the use of volunteers into a lack of support for volunteers and volunteeering. As 60044 well knows I am still a working volunteer on two heritage railways so I do understand the volunteer ethos and the importance of volunteering. Perhaps that's why I've been expending a lot of time and effort ( and bearing the travelling costs involved) as a VOLUNTEER lobbying to get the legislation amended to protect VOLUNTEERING against the new law's adverse effects. Perhaps contempt should be directed in another direction?

 

Can I suggest that you step back and re-read your posts on the topic, in this and other threads, over a long time to consider how they come across.

My abiding impression is that the costs of members and volunteers are being emphasised, with the costs of employees being discounted. Some important points are being made about productivity, and the number of volunteers required to provide the equivalent output of a full time employee, but the overall impression left is that volunteers are a second best.

In parallel, discussions about tensions between members and boards of railways show a consistent tendency towards setting the balance in favour of the board, focusing on a narrowly legal perspective in preference to the wider questions of how these key stakeholders are kept engaged and supportive.

I find this disconcerting from someone who clearly shares the passion of others here and elsewhere for heritage railways, and has come to this place as a member and volunteer who has gone through a very similar path of joining, induction and commitment as so many others.

 

Just to be devils advocate for a moment...

Having volunteers isn't the panacea you necessarily make it out to me. They tend to be self-selecting (rather than recruited) and can tend to stick to their own pet projects which may not meet the priorities of the railway.

There motivations can be very different to paid staff, making it more difficult to settle any disagreements or differences of approach - as we see regularly on this forum. Paid staff may simply move on to something different if they don't like how things are done. But volunteers can feel more tied to the railway, as they may not have similar opportunities available to them close to home - or with their preferred type of trains or work.

 

I think we'd all like to see some independent research to back up that claim, otherwise it's just your opinion.

 

There are some notable exceptions as I've always emphasized. Co-incidentally a board member of a heritage railway that prides itself on its volunteer dependent operation suggested to me recently, and entirely unprompted, exactly the same conclusion. Each railway will have the own experience to draw on but it must surely be obvious (with those few exceptions) that volunteers are usually part time. That has an unavoidable effect on the numbers required.

 

I think the problem is that everything you write, here and on other threads, gives the impression that you perceive people are the problem.

Your view on volunteers always stresses the costs and unreliability of having a large volunteer force, and never emphasises the benefits of passion and commitment. Your view on members seems to see them simply as a cost in terms of what they can get out of the railway, and never considers what it is that they put in. I wouldn't be surprised if deep down your view of donors was to prefer large organisational grant-giving bodies rather than donation by individuals, because in your eyes it is easier to control.

You've said on several occasions that you are yourself a volunteer (signalman I believe) on a couple of railways. So why when you put your Trustee or HRA adviser hat on, do all your posts seem to perceive that volunteers and members are just a cost we would be better off without, rather than an invaluable and committed resource that are the lifeblood of organisations such as ours?

Why don't you start considering how you empower the volunteers, members and donors on railways to act in ways that transform the fortunes of the sector, rather than invariably painting them as the problem to be minimised and ideally dispensed with altogether?

Tom

 

It does, and I don't think anyone disputes that some costs (financial and practical) will scale by number of heads rather than number of hours, nor that managing availability of part time volunteers can be a challenge.

The question is whether those volunteers, who are providing their services for love rather than money, then feel encouraged or discouraged.

 

I think the 7 : 1 is manifestly untrue. The NYMR's volunteer civil engineer for many years was replaced by one paid member of staff ratio The NYMR's volunteer civil engineer for many years was replaced by one paid member of staff for example - and that paid member of staff didn't last very long! Another point is that volunteers may be working for the railway's benefit even when they are not on duty - we don't see what they are up to at home, but a lot of work goes on there - for example I used to bring a trailerful of teak carriage doors home to restore in my garage (I live 250 miles or so from Pickering) and bring them back ready to fit after many hours of work on each one- most of them are fitted to carriages now and in use (or would be if the NYMR kept their side of the maintenance agreement). That was work that never got recorded but happened anyway. All the spares-collecting trips I went all over the country with my fellow volunteers wouldn't show up either but the benefit is still being felt. Do paid staff show evidence of the same out of hours commitment? Some do, I know, but I don't think that's true of most of them.

 

So there is no actual peer reviewed evidence to back up the claim then?
Tom has put it much better than me, but your posts increasing come across as regarding volunteers as a nuisance to be put up with, but the railway would run much better without them.
You might not mean it to, but could I suggest that you reread your posts before hitting the send button and think about their effect on someone who has just come home filthy and exhausted from working a long volunteer shift, and how demoralised your post will make them feel when they read that they are viewed by management as a burden to the railway.

 

On Tom’s point about money from donors to preserved railways. I’ve heard preserved railway directors over the years decry the ability of donor s to make donations and legacies to a particular project, rather than to “The Railway” for the board to decide what to spend the donated money on.

 

Isn't it right that they should do that, if they wish, though? In the NYMR's case, for example, the scale of financial disaster since Covid suggests that any money coming in from donations and bequests is likely to be spent on maintaining the paid staff wages. That may be admirable from their point of view, but I suspect that it is not what the donors wish to achieve.

 

So your logic would be that if a heritage railway mounts an appeal like the SVR's survival appeal you would prefer to watch it go bust rather than to help it cover its labour costs? Of course donors prefer to see their money spent on something that appeals to them but the financial situation may not always make that choice realistic.

 

It's a balance. My experience from a church perspective is that restrictive donations can be a double-edged sword, and that gifts to (say) the fabric fund are of very limited use when the priority is keeping the place open.

The answer to that is to engage with potential donors, and help them understand how they can best support what is dear to their hearts. But if it's a choice between something going to a Restricted Fund or an Appeal on the one hand, and nothing at all if it goes to the General Fund, then I know how I'd respond as a trustee.

Even in the case of a survival appeal, there remains a place for "what happens next" - though an honest conversation with the donor is the minimum that I'd expect to help them understand the implications of their choice.