North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

It's been suffering since it came into traffic. There was a video online on its first day in traffic a couple of years ago of it priming. A year later, nothing has changed.



You can hear the water pick up at 52s, but the regulator is kept wide open. No wonder all of Didcot's locos leak so much! Yes, it's a short line with two coaches to play with, but that's no excuse to thrash a loco like that.

 

Yikes!

Tom

 

Accounts have been filed;

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/01036704/filing-history

This link takes you to the year ending Feb 23 and 2023 AGM info however.

https://www.nymr.co.uk/agm2024

 

Well, it is pulling quite a heavy train! Not the best display of driving. But, it goes to show that there are Enginemen and Drivers. It must have been the Engineman's day off.

 

I’ve seen a similar video from the footplate of 6023 on the demo line.

My third scale Foden steam wagon isn’t fitted with drain cocks (the prototype’s aren’t either) so when it primes I either have to shut off or just drive through it. On a loco with drain cocks fitted there’s no excuse though.

 

Now extended until 16th September.

 

Not sure if this is permitted here but does anyone know if the ‘Unofficial NYMR Forum’ on nymr.org.uk is still active? I’m having some issues getting in.

 

Yes, still active, I had no problem a minute ago.

 

Thanks. Apparently I need to validate my email address (haven’t used it for some years), so have requested the email to do so but it hasn’t arrived. I’ll wait a little longer!

 

Don't hold your breath.
I requested a new password a year ago and still waiting.
And yes I have tried more than twice to get a response.
Now given up and spending a few minutes more a day doing more worthwhile tasks.

 

This was on the gala thread, but am replying here because it is more about general ticketing than the gala per se, and I didn't want to derail that thread:

Am I understanding this correctly? So if you set up to Gift Aid your fares, people paying the Gift Aided amount get an annual pass for free travel on other days, but a condition of that scheme is that you can only have five operating days in the year in which the annual pass can't be used? So operating a gala in which the annual pass isn't available eats into those five days allocation?

How do Santas and the like work?

Just curious - if so, feels like a factor in the discussion about whether or not to Gift Aid fares that I don't think has been widely discussed before. (Generally the conversations have been around the balance betweenGift Aid and VAT).

Tom

 

It's worth stepping back to first principles. Gift Aid is supposed to apply to donations, but for a good many charities (e.g. stately homes), the primary income is public admission charges, and the Gift Aid rules created gaps. In about 2004, for example, I visited Chatsworth and entered into some convoluted scheme to allow Gift Aid to apply to my admission. This caused HMRC palpitations, and rules were introduced to regularise how such places could claim Gift Aid.

Though the presentation to visitors often obscures this, the concessions work in one of two ways. One (used, for example by the National Trust) is that the donor must pay a higher amount to constitute a donation. The other, which is I think used at the NYMR, is that the charity charges the "normal" price, but has to grant free re-entry for a year.

For the majority of attractions, there is a clear line between "admission" and "events". When I paid Gift Aid admission at the Eden Project, I was paying for access to the site. If I had gone (say) to an evening concert, that was an event outside normal opening times and I would need to pay for that.

For a railway, the boundaries fall in different places. As a visitor, there is no fundamental difference between a gala and any other day - the difference is about service frequency and traction. We know that to introduce these fares, NYMR had to agree a deal with HMRC; my hunch is that (as with most business/HMRC agreements on tax) it followed some standard principles but was specific to NYMR and 5 days was an outcome of that negotiation.

In contrast, a special working (Santa, say) doesn't involve site admission. It's corralled, involves special services, and is as close to a normal visitor experience as a concert at Eden Project is to that normal visitor experience there.

 

The ‘12 month pass’ only applies to tickets issued over the full length of the line twixt Pickering and Whitby so any ticket for a shorter journey does not qualify. This includes Santa trains but would also include a Pickering-Goathland ticket bought by someone who didn’t wish to spend £49 on a full length journey.
The scheme does give an extra 25% income over the price paid but is only from those who can claim gift aid, so not everyone. I understand it is about 70% of adult tickets sold. What I don’t know (and I’m not sure the railway does) is how much revenue is lost with people who would have visited a second or third time now being able to do it for nothing. I’m told that one person well known to the railway travelled over 100 times last year. There is also the downside that, when trains are full you may be turning away first time travellers.
Personally, I don’t like the scheme although if I was Joe Public I would almost certainly view it differently.

 

This former NYMR member is amused by this scheme, having seen the membership benefits pared back because they were seen as excessively generous despite imposing no direct cost on the railway. The argument, as I understood it at the time (about 10 years ago) was about revenue loss, but seemed to discount revenue gained through repeat visits.

Ultimately, the test will be yield per seat mile. I personally haven't been to North Yorkshire since this was introduced, find £49 for a day out a bit rich, but regard the offer as fair value. I also think it's very easy to focus on the few who will reuse tickets extensively, and let their undoubted win obscure the reality that most people don't make multiple repeat trips.

 

The EPOS would be able to generate a report on repeat visitors I would assume that they are either a different ticket class or a different payment type within the system.

 

4953@platform 3 Grosmont.

 

Im not sure if this is correct or not but this is what a lady told me on Sunday i was talking to on the Swanage Railway.She and 4 friends travelled recently on the NYMR and all had the £49 all line return and afterwards found out that it is valid for a year.The railway said yes but only one of the party would be able to travel again,the reason being is that person paid for all 5 of the tickets.Right or wrong i have no idea but if you travel with others i guess its best to pay indidividually.

 

I guess that makes sense, but it is the kind thing if you were in a group of adults you'd really wish you'd known up front!

(The logic I think is that it is only the person doing the actual payment who is, in formal terms, making a declaration that they pay at least sufficient tax to cover the amount that will subsequently be claimed in Gift Aid. So if a couple bought a £49 ticket each, both of them would be individually declaring that they had paid at least £12.25 in tax that year. But if one member of a couple paid £98 for two tickets, they are declaring that they individually had paid at least £24.50 in tax, but nothing at all about the tax status of their partner).

While I am sure the NYMR have done their homework, it feels to me a bit a of a minefield for the unwary, and full of hidden pitfalls some of which might have rather high stakes.

Tom

 

I have no idea whether that is correct, but if it is it seems perverse. The usual underlying principle for distinguishing a donation is that the person making the payment gets only a limited benefit in exchange. For example not too much of a society membership fee goes towards benefits for the member. Free re-entry for a year increases the benefit, so would seem to make the payment less appropriate for Gift Aid.

 

I agree - but note that the concession relates to charities that are also visitor attractions. This way, Gift Aid is only claimed once, not on each return visit - which protects the taxpayer.

Personally, I'd be most concerned about the possibility of the Chancellor dramatically limiting the value of Gift Aid to charities.

If she has accurately reported what she was told, then the NYMR is the only place I've come across that stipulation, and it is at minimum contrary to the provisions for Gift Aid that allow donations by one spouse/partner to be attached to the other.

That rather reinforces my view that the associated complexity may come at a cost.