North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

I remain to be convinced that there is much competency left in the echelons of the NYMR's "professional" management so I'll be amazed if this doesn't prove to be yet another financial disaster. The great saviour "gift aid" seems to have been a failure, so what's one more to add to the list?

 

That seems a somewhat ungracious comment to me. Leaders should be looking at all possible avenues to increase profitability or to reduce losses. They should however come in for criticism if they continue with things that have been proven not work.
If companies did not try new things airlines would not launch new routes, many that do not work, we would not have things like Hull Trains or Lumo, even if W & S did not work.

 

Bit of feedback (which I will also try and give when we visit to staff at the NYMR).

We were trying to book on one of the post Yule and New year services, and it requires a seat reservation.

The website when viewed on a mobile device (both an apple device and an android device) are not very intuitive to follow- to the point where we struggled to find the method to book.

I found the services advertised through the timetable, but the only way I could then find the way to book was then to search, via a search engine for the name of the service and "pre booking".

In this sort of market, it could quite easily get filed in the "too hard" category and find something else to do- my wife commented that had we not got the years pass, we would probably have just found something else to do.......so whilst we won't be buying tickets, we fully expect to use the refreshment rooms etc which could have easily been lost.


Chris

 

Anyone on a Mon-Fri break previously pretty much had to travel Tues/Weds/Thurs. Can't help thinking Tuesdays and Wednesdays are going to be very busy in the shoulder seasons now....

Jon

 

it is ungracious, deliberately so. The present management seem to be very good at cancelling events that were successful in the past but seem completely devoid of new ideas to attract custom. They seem to be cutting back on services and maintenance, the only thing that seems to be sacrosanct are staff numbers. It's heartbreaking to watch for someone like me who joined the Society (as it was then) ca. 19772 and became an occasional volunteer in 1974.

 

Yes it is an ungracious comment! It is so easy to criticise, but rather than moan from afar why not come back and volunteer on the railway.

 

Unfortunately it’s too near to the reality. I’m another of the many volunteers who are disgruntled at the direction the charity is being taken. I say ‘charity’ because that is what we are being constantly told by those in high command. It is no longer a railway.

 

Put rather simply, a 280 mile journey each way is a bit too much to be a regular volunteer each way, but I am spending my xmas/new year spare time writing 100K grant application for the LNERCA, which I hope will be of eventual use to the NYMR, as I hope that around 400K of earlier applications I have written were supposed to be. But it is hard to be positive when I see much of that work now unwanted by the current management in its rush to flee from heritage values.

 

I'd very much agree that valuable volunteer contribution isn't confined to those that turn up to get their hands dirty.

 

That's a strange comment. It implies that charitable status can be some sort of magic token that unlocks fundraising opportunities, tax benefits, and rates exemption leaving the railway free to operate regardless. That's paying lip service to being a charity. The NYMR is still first and foremost a heritage railway. Unlike some others that have distinct support charities the membership company that owns the railway has been a charity since 1973. It's now open and honest about its charitable purposes and, as a result, has secured significant inward investment. That does involve a commitment to purposes like lineside conservation which has proved to be a major attraction for new volunteers. Purists may want to be just an operating railway but the question then would be how do you replace the financial support that a clear focus on broader charitable purposes has achieved?

 

I seem to recall one of the aims of the Arts Council funding was to return visitor numbers to pre-covid levels. I see the need to reduce costs by cutting operating days, but could that then make future external funding less likely?

Jon

 

I suspect the greatest impediment to fuerher external funding would be leadership that fails to respond prudently to major financial challenges. The NYMR will be far from unique if its reduces its operating days to five per week outide the peak season. Experience elswhere indicates that a high proportion of visitors simply switch to operating days. Although much is sometimes made of employment costs the main driver of change is rampant cost inflation in materials and consumables. Concentrating services and visitors into fewer days has a considerable impact on those whilst creating efficiencies in operating functions like MPD, Carriage and Wagon. S&T. P -Way etc.

 

I think it is surprising that you seem to think it is the critics who feel that it is the Trust who are in the wrong, accusing it of paying lip service to being a charity. IMHO, it is the other way round! The Trust runs what has essentially become a tourist orientated people mover to deliver visitors to Whitby from Pickering. and its objective as a charity seems to be to preserve the jobs of its paid staff. What is that if not lip service to being a charity? Volunteers are literally being got rid of (e.g. the entire Levisham Station group!) or being discouraged (e.g. sleeping car at Pickering withdrawn and replaced by a facility miles away, in the middle of nowhere) or their years of hard work summarily dismissed from service because the railway did not keep their side of the hire agreement (teak carriages). I could go on with more examples, but surely these are enough to demonstrate the rot at the heart of the management now, and what has their response been? To cut and continue to cut services, and they haven't reached a nadir yet, yet the one thing they haven't reduced yet is staff levels. What they don't seem to have increased, though, is marketing - to encourage people to visit and use in its right, rather than as a a means of avoiding parking issues in Whitby.

I agree that lineside conservation is a worthy cause, but it is a peripheral activity, not a core one. All those extra volunteers do little or nothing to help trains run, and nor does the grant money associated with it. The railway could end up with the best maintained lineside in the country, crawling with wildlife and with flourishing wildflowers that no-one will ever get to see because there is no money to r run trains!

I for one do not believe that the public have lost their interest in steam railways, what the NYMR needs is a refocusing of efforts to make it an attractive place to visit. Comparisons have been made with Beamish, and I am one of those who have advocated trying to instil a more Beamish-like ethos, but my views have developed and been modified a little. I now think that a visit should be paid to the Tramway Museum at Crich, and that the NYMR should go down a similar route of developing ancillary attractions that show life in the industry and communities that it was built to serve, and the types of goods and services it provided. It would be a medium term project and could not be done in isolation but, fortunately there is , almost adjacent to Pickering Station, the Beck Isle Museum of Rural Life, who I feel sure would be opening to join in a collaborative scheme to showcase some of the exhibits. That would short-circuit the need to hunt for exhibits and I feel certain that it would prove to be a very interesting and funding-worthy cause for grant awarding bodies, and could be trumpeted as fulfilling the CORE aspiration of the NYMHRT as a historical educational charity!

I

 

I find charities more convincing when they just crack on with their core activities rather than talking about their charitable purposes. However, I digress.

More seriously, I’m struggling to grasp how the current business model is making the railway (emphasis deliberate) more sustainable. Plausible back calculations of passenger numbers suggest imploding demand, while the Gift Aid earned is purely an artefact of a pxq formula.

Paring back services is an option - NYMR will be far from alone in doing so - but the overall impression is of a railway that is struggling, and opting for a classic “cut till its profitable” commercial approach, relying on grants to fill some of the gaps. As a consumer, that is an unattractive proposition, which limits my desire to pay to visit - and if that happens as much as appears to be the case, then the whole structure may collapse as the supports cease to be able to support the superstructure.

That may be (have been?) tactically effective, but doesn’t feel to me like a winning strategy to get NYMR on a stable long term footing. After all, the conservation objectives could be met by leasing the trackbed for use as a cycle path.

 

I don't have any objection to reducing operations by a couple of days aa week in the low season, indeed I have long advocated it, but whatever the main driver of cost increases may be, one only has to look at the NYMR's annual accounts to notice that by far and away the largest factor is staff costs, and unlike materials costs it is the one area where there is scope to reduce them - you'd have to save an awful lot of coal, for example, to pay just one member of staff! and where others have gone down to a 5 day/week service, isn't one of the advantaes quoted as lightening the load on paid staff, enabling savings in their numbers?

 

But therer

But there have been recent reductions in the number of paid staff...at least fourteen have left. There have also been cases of two leavers being replaced by one new appointee but critics highlight the new appointment not the net reduction as the latter doesn't fit their narrative. The fact is that the NYMR can't function without its paid staff. There are still those who cling to the idea that they're an unfortunate necessity tolerable as long as they do what they're told by superior volunteers. The railway and the charity depends on both. Relentless criticism of employees corrodes their morale. If they gave up and left in numbers the volunteers would quickly be left without a viable railway.

 

I wasn't aware of the staff reductions - it certainly doesn't seem to be shared with the membership - and there seems to be a steady stream of new vacancies being advertised. As for morale, there doesn't seem to be much going on in the way of positive developments, and that surely is more of a morale-sapping state of affairs. It is also a situation not likely to induce volunteer support. When volunteers are defecting to the other local lines such as the YWR, Derwent Valley, Wensleydale, surely that suggests that all is not well at the NYMR? That cannot be a satisfactory state of affairs. The NYMR could not survive for long purely on its paid staff, but I don't think anyone is suggesting that they should be doing what they are told by "superior volunteers", any more than the volunteers should be told what to do by "superior paid staff". We should be seeing a partnership where both sides recognise the need for the other side and work together. If that isn't happening then it should be a priority to sort out.

 

Economic pressure has a tendency to ebb and flow. We’ve difficult times before. Even the huge rise in coal price isn’t a death blow.

The thing that isn’t cyclical though is people. There is a crisis of volunteering. Fewer hours being volunteered and fewer people of the age range required for the long term. The changed skill set from an economy that used to employ 25% in manufacturing and engineering (now 10% or less) and the changes within those sectors….we don’t as a country do that much heavy engineering, but we do do a lot of aerospace and high tech…..neither much relevant to a steam loco.

The railways that survive will be those that focus on PEOPLE first. Write the charitable objects to reflect that and you’re probably onto something.

I also think that organisations should (to be attractive to work for) have a very clear purpose and be true to that core. Yes you can add peripheral activities if you must, but lose sight of what the core purpose is, and it will not be capable of being that great place to be that it has to be to survive.

I don’t think any heritage railway has yet fully nailed the “formula for success” in the new world. Some closer than others perhaps.

 

My experience working in a high tech aerospace environment is there are a significant number of people who actually enjoy some relaxation in some hands on practical engineering whether at small scale modelling or full scale restoration work of some sort.

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