North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

I don't think I or anyone else has suggested has suggested persuasion forcible or otherwise. What can, and must do imho, is offer them a viable and perhaps more interesting alternative, perhaps as a second day out. If we don't we might as well forget about charitable objective and start marketing the railway as the "Whitby Park and Ride".

 

Which is fine if your line (or both of them) are self contained. Having to operate around Northern services severely constrains the NYMR's opportunities of running a decent service.

Porthmadog - Blaenau return is the same price as NYMR but only a three hour return trip. The ride itself is the attraction, not the destination.

 

Paul fell upon this method of operation during covid, though I recall him saying at the time that he wouldn’t have got away with the change without covid giving him the permission, so he must have been thinking about it for a while. Customer behaviours were slightly different then so they were able to put in more trains if demand required. (Very Durango and Silverton). Not quite how it now works.

I think the NYMR has long operated this way really. Just not taken it to the logical extreme. It appears to me that there might be an over reliance on one type of customer. Is that because the others are really not viable, or just that the others need more creativity and the “too hard light” has come on?

 

The other thing to bear in mind about American tourist railways is that they depend almost entirely on paid staff to operate them. The volunteer ethos is conspicously absent across the water. Do we really want to go down that path?

Peter

 

I don’t think the NYMR long operated this way. It certainly did in 2020 whee you booked out on one train and had no choice as to which you came back on. It may have done so in 2021 and 2022, I can’t remember. Certainly, prior to covid, it was a free for all and you just turned up and got on the train where and when you wished. Because of the tidal flow there were services with lots of empty seats and it was Paul’s view that these should be minimised that Chris Price took up. That policy only works if the destination isn’t your main attraction.

 

Your railway is Pickering to Grosmont and should be run as such. Whitby is just an add-on on Network Rail tracks.

 

As a customer, the railway is Pickering to Whitby, which is split between the NYMR's own track and running over Network Rail. Historically, severing the service at Grosmont as was the case between NYMR reopening in 1973 and the 2007 extension of services to Whitby is the exception rather than the rule.

There are then 5 destinations, of which one (Whitby) is predominant and one (Goathland) is of decreasing attractiveness as it's major calling card (Heartbeat) has ceased to be produced.

Whatever the merits or otherwise of the Whitby operation, it has been running for 15 years. To drop it would be a change, not just a reversion, and those who advocate retrenching to the Pickering - Grosmont section do their arguments no favours when they ignore that.

 

When you see hundreds of people filling Whitby station to get on NYMR trains it is clear that Whitby is the destination. It's not an add-on. Last year's reduction in Whitby services on Sundays probably lost the railway quite a bit in fares. This year there are two trains in, which makes sense.
Goathland is the secondary destination in both directions.

 

Who said anything about dropping Whitby services? You refer to Whitby as a destination. Why? A lot of people spend their holiday in Whitby and a railway trip to Pickering or the other stations would be a nice day out for them.

 

I don’t, but there may be a view that some railways are being “forced” down that path. Would the view be stronger at those with the higher proportion of/number of paid staff? Pournelles law again.

 

I see what you’re saying. I was just thinking of the posh park and ride bit really of take everyone to a destination. It hadn’t been ticketed in a way to be able to minimise fresh air, but the other elements were in place from soon after the running tonWhitby started.

 

Purely anecdotally, I felt that goathland was busier last year than it has been for a number of years (At least from where I was sat), indeed I was heartened to see it so.

 

A fair point, although my sense is that the pull to Whitby is greater.

However, my point remains - that the perception of the railway needs to be anchored in its being a single route, not the current NYMR/NR split.

 

It may well have been. was this an effect of the high fares and people opting for a shorter (and cheaper) journey?

 

A change of subject. The NYMR are now advertising for a new head of civil engineering following the sudden departure of Tim Bruce last year. For those interested a few of the requirements:

• Relevant Civil or Structural Engineering degree - essential.
• And or Experience within the Heritage Rail sector with a structure bias and or Civils industry - essential.
• Chartered Engineer and member of a relevant professional body, e.g. ICE, PWI - essential.
• 7 - 15 years' experience within rail industry - essential.
• Considerable project management experience across buildings, bridges and temporary works, with drive and a proven record to meeting targets - essential.
• Full driving licence and own transport - essential.
• Strong commercial awareness - essential.
• Strong technical knowledge within assessment and design including inspections, calculations and analysis of existing structures and new build design development - essential.
• Maximising the efficiency of paid staff, contract staff, contractors and the numbers of volunteers deployed - desirable.
• Experience leading and developing a team of Engineers - desirable.
• Experience in carrying out the role of CRE-D for the specific discipline (experience of CEM role is desirable but not essential) - desirable.
• Focused approach with effective interpersonal and communication skills - desirable.

Any takers?

 

With regard to the F&WHR way of working, Yes, they encourage pre-booking, and rather than simply present everyone with a timetable and let them make up their minds what to do present a number of options, starting at either Caernarfon, Porthmadoc, or Blaenau Ffestiniog. Some options do a return journey of the full length of either the WHR or FR, some are return journeys to Tan-y-Bwlch (from Porthmadog), Beddgelert (from either Caernarfon or Porthmadog), or Rhyd Ddu (from Caernarfon). Not all options are available on every running day. Marketing their services like this makes it easy to understand for the average punter (who may have little or no experience of using timetables, and lack the local knowledge of where to go). The shorter options appeal to those of limited pocket, time, or with children for whom a full length trip might be too much of an ask. It all seems to work.

For this enthusiast, at least, there are some positives as well. It provides opportunity to observe the necessary running around at the intermediate stations, and at Porthmadog the fun of seeing (during the high season) 4 different locos and trains in the station at once, with all the shunting that takes place. It provides an opportunity for the smaller locos to work, principally on the "Quarryman" service from Blaenau Ffestiniog (where the loco and coaches are shedded overnight), and the Cwellyn service of the WHR (Caernarfon to Rhyd Ddu - in recent tears the usual loco has been Lyd). On the FR the shorter service to Tan-y-Bwlch is sometimes run using the vintage stock on advertised days, so you can plan a visit in advance if that is what appeals to you.

They do allow single journeys, and part journeys - details of this, and fuller timetables are on the website - you have to scroll down the various pages to find them though, and if you are travelling any distance to do so a quick telephone enquiry to check that your plans are going to work on a particular day might be advisable. Last year I was staying in Bangor for a couple of weeks and set off to spend a day going up to Blaenau Ffestiniog on the train, and travelling back to Bangor using the Traws Cymru buses via Porthmadog and Caernarfon. At Blaenau I found "Linda" on the "Quarryman" service about to depart, so without any fuss at all bought a single ticket to Porthmadog. It can be done!

As an aside, on the NYMR, I wonder if there might not be value in running a shuttle service (on selected days) maybe using a smaller (?industrial) loco and brake vans from Grosmont to the sheds/workshops as an added attraction. This might give a bit more fun for some of the volunteers, something again that the F&WHR also seem to be aware of the need for - volunteering needs to be enjoyable (or at least sufficiently so to outweigh the downsides of getting cold, wet, dirty, etc).

Steve B

 

As I'm the one advocating dropping Whitby services, I think I should respond! I'm not totally against these services, but they have had a very detrimental effect on the NYMR they impose a lot of costs for NR compliance of locos and rolling stock, they impose severe operating restrictions on much of the locos and rolling stock fleet, they similarly impose restrictions on staff, greatly complicating operations, and they have heralded a lot of the additional regulatory scrutiny and compliance issues that Lineisclear bemoans and last - but by no means least - they have greatly undermined the attraction of the rest of the NYMR and its surroundings as a destination. I seriously question whether all these disadvantages are worth their cost! The situation is probably only going to get worse as time goes by, given the aspirations of the mainline operator to increase their services on the Esk Valley line leading to further squeezing of the NYMR.

It cannot be denied that Whitby is where a majority of passengers want to go but there seems to be a much smaller number of potential Whitby-based passengers wanting to travel towards Pickering, so the traffic flow is, has been previously noted, very tidal. In other words, Whitby services present (imho!) the NYMR with an all round loser scenario!

To counter the problems requires a resetting of targets and opinions. The NR conditions and their associated costs and operational difficulties will always be there as long as the NYMR runs to Whitby, but we can not do much about them but, as I keep stressing, we need to encourage more people to use the railway itself, in its own right. Many visitors will not baulk at, for example, a two day pass for a theme park, or will pay for two separate attractions over the course of a holiday - so why not have a two day pass for the railway to encourage that? But it will be necessary to invest in the railway and increase its attractiveness for the non-enthusiast.

 

I am making no observation on the value of Whitby to NYMR. My comments are based on two points - that Whitby is the primary destination for NYMR passengers, and that any decision to pull back needs to be considered as a change, not as a reversion.

I happen to agree that the marketing of the line south of Grosmont needs to improve, and look to build out demand for the other stations. The Whitby service will remain constrained, and the coastbound traffic is more or less saturated give the constraints that exist. That fits with my view that developing marginal demand, quite possibly using lessons learned from post-Covid operations at the Festiniog, is where the NYMR stands to gain in terms of both income and bums on seats.

 

Branded tickets may help. Can the market from Whitby be grown with a Moors Explorer ticket using the 1000 and 1235 departures? This would be to Goathland and return. A ramblers ticket for walkers using the rail trail could be marketed.
It seems to me, aside from the diesel and steam galas, there are no other big events to bring in the crowds.
Perhaps the BBC could commission a Scandi noir set in Goathland starring James Norton? Would Paddington bear adopt the moorsline, or perhaps Peppa Pig ?

Would James Martin endorse a dining train?

These may be a little facetious, but it does need vision and some sideways thinking to breathe new life into the programme of events.

Look who goes to, or stays, in Whitby and find the sort of thing that resonates with them.

 

One small gain on the Grosmont to Whitby section is the elimination of hand operated points at both these locations which should happen in the next year or two.

This has the potential to knock 5 to 10 minutes of the sectional time following the elimination of a considerable amount of walking with the token at both ends.

A small gain in capacity,but very welcome.