North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

How very unfortunate. Perhaps a key learning to take away.

 

I presume this refers to the Northern Steam side of the equation, not NYMR shed staff. If so, that raises a number of questions for both NYMR (as hirer) and NRM (over the possibility of personal benefit from a public asset).

And if we are talking about intra-NYMR matters, then I do hope full consideration was given to any conflicts of interest in full accordance with Charity Commission guidance as decisions were being made.

 

A problem at Pickering wouldn't have been as bad as at Grosmont, because there wouldn't have been a conflict with diner customers and parking is less scarce in Pickering. Also some of those occupied spaces may have been FS customers using the inconvenient connecting trains.

Please try to remember many of the posters on here have far more experience of the NYMR than yourself. With my LNERCA involvement I am fully conversant with what goes on in the car park. (Some of which is unrepeatable).

Sawdust.

 

I've said as much myself but that doesn't mean that all opportunities shouldn't be evaluated

I trust you did seek clarification on all the inequitable points you mentioned?

Also I wonder was this a fixed window of opportunity that was offered or was a request made to hire FS over these weeks?

Sawdust.

 

Just wanted to comment on the row of trip hazards along the platform edge... I understand what the steps are for, but surely they shouldn't be there when there's no train in the platform?

And while I'm on... parking... was any consideration given to hiring a park & ride bus and encouraging people to park a little further away? I don't know where that would be (don't know the area) but it doesn't seem an unreasonable idea. Fairly standard practice for events attracting large crowds, actually.

 

Just thinking over lunch - hasn't FS visited NYMR previously since the NRM funded overhaul? If so, weren't the plans from that visit used as the basis for operational planning this time?

 

You can NEVER study a contract too closely.
You can make informed decisions (= risk) on what you want to ignore or interpret in a way the contractor obviously did not intend. But the reason a lawyer, or if a big company your own inhouse legal department will tell you "this is our advice" is because they will never say "that clause is BS just ignore it!
It will have been put in for a reason, however poor, if you want to ignore it with out risk then you need to get the wording agreed and changed to what you want to do.
Otherwise when it blows up in your face there is rather obviously nowhere to hide.

 

Many of us who frequently drive to Pickering have NEVER used a NYMR car park …there are plenty of other parking options either cheaper or closer …worrying that two members of the board neither saw the parking issue in advance nor any potential solutions to prevent a repeat …

 

See post #8379. That was not an accusation of lying but it was a suggestion of lying.

 

Sorry, I need to disagree - a contract is no more or less than a model of an agreement between two organisations. Especially where it is declared "non negotiable", questions of intent and interpretation become critical. If the letter of the contract is studied too closely, it can obscure the wider meaning - quite literally leaving it impossible to see the wood for the trees.

Two examples have been raised here - mileage and shed storage. The mileage clause will be in black and white, and NYMR have my sympathy in trying to work with the implications of that. But the requirement to keep FS under cover when out of use immediately makes me ask how "out of use" is defined. If not specifically defined, but open to interpretation, that then leads into questions of how the overall week of operations is handled. Based on the experience of other railways that stabling outdoors is permitted overnight between adjacent steaming days, one wonders whether and how that was looked at to mitigate other issues - and if not, why not.

Ultimately, choices were made and the overall outcome of these has been sub-optimal. Given the previous experience of operating FS, presumably under similar contractual constraints, it would be very interesting to know how much the plans from the previous visit were used, given that the parking issues at Grosmont are unchanged from 2016(?) and that the Pickering situation is if anything slightly easier.

 

Which raises the question what is the attude of the mods on here towards posters who feel free to make such suggestions without any evidence and those that endorse them? I'm robust enought to shrug off such nonsense but others may be more sensitive. What do the rules of the Forum say about such behaviour?

 

I will have to disagree with some of your disagree
A decent contract will have a list of definition of terms. Now as this will have been produced by a Government Department I doubt it is a "decent contract" (and I say this as someone not in the camp of they are paying too much for asylum hotels).
Having said that to me "Out of Use" in the absence of a clarifying definition is not hauling trains, being prepared or disposed or available for footplate visits or display. If it for example it means not being used for 3 days then the definition should make that clear.
Should the NYMR have clarified the meaning of this, yes if it was silent in the contract draft. Even if it was not added as a definition or amended in the contract then a written communication from an authorised person would at least say what the NRM/Science Museum meant.
Did they ask, do not know, maybe they did and got told it means what I said above.
A Google of out of use gives nothing that aligns with this situation, but many many options of what out of use may be. So yes it can be open to interpretation, but what that figurative old bloke or woman in a wig would say for this situation, who knows. I doubt the NRM do either.

 

Going completely off topic to the NYMR but related to contracts, when I was working we had a lease on a building in Kent and there was a problem with the drains we kept pressing the landlord to sort it out to no avail. Eventually during a routine meeting between both parties the subject was raised with our MD quoting from the contract that the responsibility was with the landlord. There were quizzical looks from the landlords party and they went off to get their copy of the lease which they then quoted from. This clearly stated that the drains were our responsibility. Both copies were original signed copies with the same date and references on each page. The lease was about 50 pages long and when it was gone through in detail, several differences were found. That was left with the solicitors to sort and I’ve no idea of the outcome as I left shortly afterwards. I often wonder whether people check every word of both copies of a contract, though.
Back to NYMR matters, now.

 

I agree in practical terms, and would hope that it was discussed (though the silence on this point leads me to other conclusions). As for the quality of contract, all I will observe is that my experience of services contracts is that the quality often comes out of proper negotiation, and that a "non negotiable" contract is liable to be flawed because it hasn't been properly picked over by both the legal/commercial people and those who understand what it is that's being provided.

As you say, the meaning of "out of use" covers a wide range from stabled between trains to stone cold on shed - and the lawyer's abstraction of "out of use" is unlikely to fit all. Finally, quite bluntly, given the role of an owner's rep, I would also regard acceptance of an operating plan as tantamount to the agreement you describe.

That is the great advantage of computerisation and tools like DocuSign - the auditability is a lot better than when they were written or typed.

 

This post is a good example of getting tangled up in a pointless knot by trying interpret contract terms of which the poster has no knowledege. For example "out of use" does not appear in the contract in that context so there's no need to question how it's defined or interpreted. The relevant provision is a fairly "black and white" one. It obliges the Borrower (that's the term used rather than the more traditional "Hirer" ) to keep the Locomotive stored in accordance with arrangements approved in advance by the Arts Council England Manager Security Protection and Advice in an secure area which is under cover. I would agree that there is scope for interpretation of "stored" but suggest a reasonable interpretation is that a Locomotive is "stored" somewhere overnight . As you would expect one of the suggested amendments was to remove the requirement for prior approval from someone who was not party to the contract, but to no avail.

 

Anyway....back to the NYMR - today I saw an ad in The Sun (yes, I know - but I had nothing else to read over a supermarket coffee, and it was there!) for an NYMR-based holiday, under their Sun Travel promotion. It was titled "Wonderful Whitby and the North Yorkshire Moors Railway." All well and good - but the illustration was certainly not of the NYMR. Thought about complaining to the ASA - but doubt there'd be much point....

 

The clarification is welcome, though the substantive point remains whether the contract language is "out of use" (a phrase used loosely earlier which I picked up on) or "stored". I also share your pain at having to be subordinate to a 3rd party in this way - something that government contracts do too often, and in ways that are deeply unhelpful to effective risk management.

On the drafting of "stored", I stand by the principle that follows - there is a material term which is undefined, and which lends itself to a range of interpretations (that our two instinctive readings, neither of which is unreasonable, differ just reinforces the point). The resultant knot is far from pointless - one interpretation leads to an onerous an unhelpful requirement, the other provides significantly more flexibility and is by informed account consistent with what has happened at other major railways.

This then feeds into the wider issue that has been discussed, which is of how NYMR manage the flow of visitors in a way that works effectively to both raise funds, and to give them a good day out. That brings us back round to the choices made by the railway leadership over the marketing and operation of FS. On which last, my earlier question appears to have been missed - were the 2016 plans used to inform the 2025 operation?

 

At which point, the word "stored" becomes the significant one. (In other words, regardless of whether the contract specified "out of use" or "stored", there is a word that needs clarity in meaning).

As an example: let's suppose the loco is contracted for a week of operations at Railway A, and three weeks later it has a week at Railway B, with no contracted duties in between. There is a clearly a two week period in between with no operations. The owner may decide that rather than arrange transport from A back to its home base, and then from home base to B, it is logistically simpler to leave the loco at A until it is time to move to B.

In that scenario, I think you could justifiably say that for the two week period, the loco is "stored" at A for two weeks (it is cold, non operational and railway A is not actively promoting any commercial use of the loco). But that is entirely different from what it is doing overnight during its week of operations at A, where when it is not running, it is still hot with the embers of a fire. Indeed, the owner may well wish for the loco to spend nights over a pit to aid disposal at night and preparation the following day, particularly if - as is common with hired locos - preparation and disposal are carried out by the owner's representative.

The point is, your reasonable interpretation of stored ("a Locomotive is "stored" somewhere overnight") and my reasonable interpretation of stored ("a locomotive is stored for the period when it is between contracted periods of operations") have entirely different consequences for what you do overnight within your week of operations, but are both reasonable interpretations of the wording of the contract. But by choosing your interpretation, the NYMR has made life operationally more difficult to itself - which raises the question, did they get clarity on interpretation to see if a different interpretation could have led to a more operationally flexible service? Which is my point about the difference between reading the words, and understanding their meaning. As you say yourself "I would agree that there is scope for interpretation of "stored" " - but at which point you have then chosen an interpretation which is most restrictive for the NYMR, rather than the most flexible.

Tom

 

There seems to be a lot of comments on this mysterious contract. To me, it would seem sensible to have the FS under cover and behind closed doors at Grosmont. It surprises es me that, after all these years, something like a carport hasn't been built over the compound at Pickering. (Or even over a couple of Grosmont sidings)
Running FS light engine adds 36 miles but greatly extends crew time.

It's ironic that some of the publicity for fS on the NYMR website shows it hauling teak carriages.
At the moment there's a beautiful plum NER open third outside C+W, but will it ever run on this former NER line?