North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

No it wasn't. Bought by Clifford Brown.

 

No, owned by Clifford Brown along with 3672.

 

What exactly are the terms of Repton's bequest? Does it state that the NYMR has to run it or just that they can't dispose of it? Therefore could the railway, in theory, loan Repton out on a long term deal to another railway, perhaps even hand over a degree of custodianship, or do a swap with a railway to bring in another locomotive more suitable for the Moors line, like a class 4 from, say, the Bluebell or Mid Hants? (Thrown out more to give an example than because I think it is likely or realistic, but if the Whitby operation is so key to the current plan of the NYMR Board, perhaps they need to start thinking outside the box to find ways to make good use of locos that aren't suitable for Whitby but they aren't in a position to dispose of)

 

I don't think "thinking outside the box" is ever going to happen with the present management. I think they are sealed so deeply into a "retreat into the box and hide" mentality that they don't even realise the box is there!

"Thinking outside the box" requires, IMHO, a serious evaluation of whether the Whitby operations really are worth the trouble, expense and operational issues that are associated with them. It should not be forgotten that the NYMR was very successful before they began, and the reason for starting them was to generate extra revenue for the infrastructure work between Grosmont and Goathland. In reality losses have been incurred just about every year since! "Lineisclear" and his ilk choose not to remember inconvenient details like that and his favourite fallback positions of "we can't do that because "it would be illegal" or "we'd lose face/support with the grant awarding bodies" seems to me a pressage a message of "we'd rather go bust first rather than admit we're wrong". Am I the only one who thinks this is madness?

 

Isn't it the case that starting services to Whitby was akin to pulling a cork from a bottle which now can't be replaced?

 

Have any part of the operation to Whitby been granted aided? If so how long might the NYMR be tied to continuing the operation by that grant?

 

No. But as a punter, I saw the extension of services to Whitby as a natural development, which was (and is) a necessary part of operating the railway. That includes, or should, acknowledging the historical significance of the route. Now that it is an embedded part of the service, constraints and all, I agree with @brennan that putting the cork back in the bottle will be difficult.

My concerns relate to a governance model that has become ever more circular and self-referential, and which does not appear to be delivering results. @Lineisclear has validly criticised me for drawing conclusions from historic results, which do not show the effect of changes made in the current year. It will be interesting, when the 2024 results emerge, to assess those impacts. Meanwhile, some key indicators for me would include the following, measured over the last few years (call it 10, to give a fair trend view either side of Covid):
* For grant funding, the expenditure per pound received (and, yes, I recognise that timing effects will be messy)
* The ratio of paid staff to volunteers (total nos. and as full time equivalents)
* The yield per seat mile
* Gross operating income
* Gross operating costs
* Average number of years' volunteering

Ideally, it would be possible to compare these with heritage railway averages over the same period. That might give us a better assessment of whether NYMR is running around average, or whether there are specific factors that mean that NYMR needs to look carefully at itself.

 

Whatever you think of it, and regardless of if it has or has not proved a success I believe that the gift aid project and getting HMRC approval for what is a railway not a museum, was way outside the box. And without knowing or having time to investigate in detail it would appear that other lines may be at least looking at that model.
I have no involvement in the line and have not even had the chance to visit for about 9 years, but I would also regard getting Whitby to work day in day out was outside the box as well. Even if that a previous leadership team (no idea) the fact it works and those trains from comments on here and webcam observations are the ones that appear full then it would seem to be what the paying public want.

 

Actually, the Fairbourne Railway got on the gift aid route well before the NYMR and, as a former Fairbourne GM, Chris Price would have known about that, but AIUI some special circumstances apply - it has to be demonstrated that the railway has to be providing a genuine transport service, rather than acting a a pleasure ride, and surprisingly few heritage railways can claim that.

The passenger numbers on Whitby trains do show that there is strong demand for them, but that doesn't mean that they cover the additional costs off providing them and anecdotal evidence people are increasingly baulking a the full return fare. Don't forget that new costs are also coming in all the time - controlled emission toilets (and the emptying facilities and waste disposal charges), CDL for any carriages venturing onto the Esk Valley line - and that's before even looking a what is required for the loco fleet.

It is undeniable that Whitby "completes the package" but it was launched to subsidise the NYMR, and it seems to me that actually what we are seeing is the opposite happening, and Whitby operations have become a parasite threatening to kill the NYMR. Should we be risking that in susidising what the public want, especially when we know that they were prepared to flock to the NYMR before it began operating to Whitby?

 

I’m pretty certain the Isle of Wight went down the “whole railway is a museum / gift aid on fares” model before the NYMR.
Tom

 

I thought it was the other way round - you can have gift aid if it's an attraction, but not if it's a transport provider. At @Jamessquared said, the IOWSR advertises itself as an attraction, rather than a means of getting from somewhere to somewhere. The NYMR going down the same route when it seems to operate simply as a park and ride service for Whitby surprised me. Advertising the railway as an attraction in itself seems to have taken a back seat.

 

I think that's probably true as well, but here again I think it's a case of special circumstances that don't necessarily apply generally.

 

That may also be true as well. I'd agree that advertising for the NYMR as an attraction in its own right has fallen away, or at least is so poor as to be not working.

 

Two separate issues, for two separate taxes.

Gift Aid is about where the railway is an attraction, and admission is classed in the same way as, say, to Castle Howard.

VAT is about the provision of a transport service, where the requirement appears to be that there is a station at each end of the line at which a passenger could alight.

The two regimes are independent of each other and, for as long as the government are willing to allow attractions to benefit from Gift Aid, I don't see much chance of that changing. In the absence of fundamental changes to VAT*, the VAT foregone on heritage railways is a trivial sum, and legislation to close such a perceived "loophole" would use a great deal of political capital for negligible gain (see "pasty tax" for an example of how that worked for a Chancellor).

With hindsight, I am less surprised at NYMR having been able to go down this path. Gift Aid for admission relies on the attraction being charitable, and some reasonably well-established rules about what the attraction must do to qualify. While I'm sure HM Inspector of Taxes reviewed the claim closely, and that other heritage railways do heritage better than NYMR, I don't think that the museological aspects will have been uppermost in the assessment. In just the same way, for parents of primary aged children, Belton House (NT) near me is just a darn good playground and hang the historical aspects.

* - as an aside, I suspect such changes would need a manifesto commitment to drive through, while they would open all sorts of Brexit issues about divergence from the EU. I'd suggest Liz Truss is more likely to be the PM that introduces such change than Keir Starmer.

 

In your previous post you asked if you were the only one who thinks continuing to go to Whitby is madness. Well, I remain in favour of doing so. The only real drawback to it is the constraints imposed by the Northern timetable. The need for certified locos was addressed at the very beginning of operations and, provided things don't change there should be enough to cope. My one proviso here is that the Railway MUST keep up with loco (and coach) overhauls and it does seem to really struggle with this aspect. It is 6 miles of railway for which it has no maintenance liability so the costs of running are minimal. It needs a Control to be manned at all times but that is something that many other railways do and is a sensible thing, in any case. Other than that, the additional costs are relatively minimal. The senior management should be in place in any case to run the Railway or, at least those necessary to do so.
60044 says that the Railway was successful before Whitby but I'm not sure that was really true. It carried a lot of passengers but the income was never sufficient to meet all the costs and there was a 'run till worn out and then discard' approach even then. It relied on the likes of benefactors such as Jos de Crau, Clifford Brown and Peter Best to fund a lot of the expensive overhauls. Back the nit had the 'Heartbeat' effect, as well with people wanting to visit Goathland/Aidensfield which they did in huge numbers. That attraction is very much on the wane these days. Whitby has given another reason for people to use the railway.

 

I accept what you are saying, but the conclusion to be drawn from Whitby operations sounds to me to be along the lines of "we're having to run harder to stand still" and the situation of relying on donors to fund loco overhauls hasn't improved at all - who funded 44806? And how many loco overhauls have been carried out in recent years by the paid staff? 80136 and 92134 arrived as kits of parts that they basically had to bolt back together, 825 was done by its owners, the S160 was also funded by Peter Best. 75029 and 34101 have been advancing at a glacial pace and 80135's boiler has had to be contracted out. They are even now appealing for funds to complete 75029! It is not a rosy picture! I understand that there was a bonus by way of free publicity in the "Heartbeat" years, the the North Yorkshire countryside is still within a National Park and should be attracting plenty of visitors. What the NYMR is not doing (or is doing very successfully) is encouraging people to view some of its most spectacular (and otherwise inaccessible) parts from the trains There just seems to be no vision of selling the NYMR now, other than as a feeder route to Whitby.

 

There are many bits of information that ought to be available but are not. The management seem to keep all such information a closely guarded secret, probably because they know that, if they were available, many of their claims could be shot down in flames. I can't remember when I last saw the Railways traffic figures published. We can only guess at what they are. A few posts back, Tom & I attempted to work them out based on the little bit of information available regarding Gift Aid and it didn't make good reading in terms of that and the claims made to justify it. Back in the Philip Benham era there as a spreadsheet produced that showed the costs attributable to the operation of trains and went into a great deal of detail. It may still exist and be updated regularly but, if it is, it is top secret.
Perhaps you should challenge @Lineisclear to answer your questions? They must exist. Or should do.

 

The plan for Gift Aid did indeed come from Chris Price. It was brought in on the Talyllyn Railway when he was GM there and Gary Mumford was the Finance Director. When Chris came to the NYMR one of his changes was to bring in Gary as finance director of the NYMR, position that he still undertakes.

 

That challenge was evident, and has not been taken up. That suggests to me that the analysis was broadly right, and that it is fundamentally unanswerable.

 

.... Like what a lot of what Lineisclear tends to suggest are "harsh but unpalatable truths". I'm afraid I don't believe very much (or very little) of what he writes. I think that if the requested figures were to appear there would be more widespread calls for heads to roll, and that's probably why they haven't. I'm sure the perennial excuse of "difficult financial conditions" will be rolled out, but other railways have had successful years, I think, so there's clearly more to it and its hard to avoid the conclusion of inept management - for me at least, but also, I suspect, an increasing amount of others.