North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

I'd also like to echo what others have said about being grateful for the continued engagement of @Lineisclear on this forum, both on this thread and others.

As a non-NYMR member (but visitor from time to time) my interest really stems from the extent to which @Lineisclear's thinking permeates down throughout the sector. He has been a strong proponent of a governance model that puts a charity as the "apex" organisation in heritage railway structures. The advocacy of that structure has frequently been framed in terms of the financial benefits of allowing Gift Aid on fares. As company secretary for the HRA, he clearly is much closer and more influential to the formulation of HRA policy and guidance than the rest of us are. So to me, it is inevitable that when he talks about areas relating to structure, governance, compliance and so on, then the rest of us have a very keen interest in listening.

The worry though is clear: if the charity / Gift Aid model hasn't delivered the financial benefits claimed (and the fact that scheme is being changed after only one year suggests it has not been a great success as originally structured); and the creation of a governance model that is - being kind - causing tensions by being more arms length from the membership than previously, then clearly it is of great interest to the rest of the sector what the rationale for those changes is. Put bluntly - should the heritage railway sector be learning from the successes of the NYMR - or learning from its mistakes?

Tom

 

I agree. But I'll add - and this is maybe one for another thread - that the question then stretches in to what the successful railways have done to achieve that success, and how do they sustain themselves.

 

............. and this post brings us neatly back to the crux of what I've been trying to get at! Is acting as a Park & Ride for Whitby what we really want to be doing, other than as just a part of the overall business? Is it possibly just a passing fad that might evaporate like other passing fads, and should we not be developing other areas with possibly greater durability and longevity? As I see it there are plenty of such opportunities but they are not being developed and exploited.

 

For me the most fundamental question is how to get more bums on seats on whatever constitutes an “ordinary “ operating day. I have observed before that the perceived value of a day out on a heritage railway is not high enough to justify the cost in many people’s view. This is compounded by the tendency both from visitor and railway to see the interaction as being “a ride on a train”. The wider museum function is too often ignored (the NYMR is by no means the worst in this respect).

As a movement we have not invested in our core product, and as a result it can sometimes account for 60% of the costs and not actually generate any surplus at all.

 

Walkers specials, station markets and bazaars, vintage/retro weekends, tailored ticketing, evening pullman diners, cream tea trains, Goths express, celebrity chef menus, I could go on.

Just a few ideas, and by no means original ones, many from the past days of the NYMR.

Last year I spoke to people on trains and at stations and most said they were there because they'd heard the railway was broke and they wanted to support it.

There's lots of goodwill out there.

 

I've said this before but, for me the primary purpose of any railway I'm involved with as a volunteer is to enjoy my hobby. That essentially also goes back to the beginnings with the TRPS. Back in 1951 people went to Mid-Wales to do just that. it didn't simply have to be the Talyllyn so before long the F(f)estiniog came along, followed by the W & L, Middleton and Bluebell. Fairly obviously it had to be a railway that was no longer required and in pre-Beeching days they were fewer opportunities in this respect. People wanted to play trains or indulge in other activities that they enjoyed. In so doing, they realised that some unenjoyable jobs had to be done to enable them to enjoy what they wanted to do. There was also a cost to enjoying their hobby and rather than paying for it themselves, getting someone else to pay in the form of passengers was logical way to go. It was also obvious that running a railway of any size would need a core of full time staff and, usually but not always, those staff had to be paid. Even those paid staff were usually railway enthusiasts and were, in effect, continuing to enjoy their hobby. A few people (Bill McAlpine being a prime case) could afford to indulge in the hobby without the help of others but needed volunteers to make it work and there were many willing to do so. The twin challenges are to ensure that there remain sufficient people who want to indulge and enjoy and that others (principally passengers) continue to provide the funds to do so. In essence, I think that this is still the case today and, once this is no longer the case, heritage railways will wither and die.

 

Without getting into the arcana of charity law (a discussion that's already run in many circles), I suggest that the purpose of the railway is not to provide that opportunity, but that if it does not provide that opportunity for people, it cannot succeed.

It's a fine distinction, but one that matters - it's the difference between meeting your needs as a volunteer as the reason for doing something, rather than as part of trying to do something more generally.

 

Why did heritage railways become charities in the first place? Do they need to be? In the end, it's really about money, whether it's about avoiding paying taxes or improving the chance of getting grant funding.

 

Both are sources of funding that dramatically help organisations that can't fund themselves through sales and subscriptions...

I have struggled a lot (including in discussions on this thread) with the conclusion drawn by some that charitable purposes limiting the ability to be run for the benefit of its volunteers means that it cannot be run with reference to their interests; I struggle equally with the idea that a railway leaning on public money should be run as a private members club by those who operate it.

There's a balance, and it's a balance that would allow the best interests of both to be considered. By considering the interests of both, it will be possible to provide benefits to both. After all, the equation works both ways:
* - no railway = no voluteering
* - no volunteers = no railway

 

There are those (well, one on this forum at least!) who seem to think that the latter of these scenarios at the NYMR is a large part of the volunteer's and supporter's motivation, and seemingly that any consideration of the former one should be looked on with displeasure! I have to say that the second is most definitely not true, I believe that just about every volunteer I have known gives freely of their time and labour because they want the NYMR to succeed in being an advancing and ever better heritage railway and if they try to exert any influence it is to try to further that aim, but I emphatically do not see that as trying to make it a "private members club". I also believe that at times the volunteers are sometimes seen by the paid staff as a nuisance, rank amateurs "getting in their way" rather than as a valuable resource to be cherished, even though those rank amateurs may know a lot more than they do, and it easy to forget that, actually, those volunteers created the organisation that now funds their salaries.

 

To follow this up and @Steve's point "Why did heritage railways become charities in the first place?" - one answer is to point out that not all of them did

I believe there were changes in Gift Aid rules in the early 2000s that made charitable status much more more appealing for certain organisations, and I suspect in many cases, heritage railway charities (as opposed to organisations) really took off from that point.

But there does seem to be a structural shift. Originally, many such organisations were seen as "support charities". In other words, the railway was the thing, but it was helpful to have an arm's length charitable organisation that could raise money, benefit from Gift Aid where appropriate, and provided its charitable objectives were carefully written, give significant support to the railway. In financial terms, that has been a successful model, and many locomotive and carriage overhauls, building repairs, workshop and storage facilities and so on around the country derive from trustees of support charities being able to assist financially with those requirements of keeping a railway running.

The dynamic seems to change when you alter the relationship from "here's a railway, and here is its associated support charity" to "the railway is the charity". It seems to me that it is that latter change that is stress-testing the patience of many volunteers, since - as is frequently pointed out - the charity's actions are not easily moulded by the demands of a membership. (Of course, I think in some cases that point is put forward more from a sense of stubbornness - "you can't tell us what to do" than from a constructive sense of "how can the charity assist, within its own objects, what the members wish?". I'm a not talking exclusively about the NYMR in making that point).

The more I see, the more I think the "charity as apex organisation" model is flawed, and things would be more comfortable with "charity as support organisation". If, as seems to be the case on the NYMR, the Gift Aid portion on tickets turns out not to be as significant as hoped, then one of the key arguments for putting a charity as the apex organisation looks much weaker.

I think this is an important issue given there are at least two major railways currently looking at governance reviews, with one possible structure being to convert to charitable status.

Tom

 

I think the heart of this issue lies in debates held on other threads, where the willingness of trustees to take member views into account has been conflated with the legal duty of trustees to act in the interests of the charity. It is interesting that this argument has tended to arise where the trustees have been accused of high handed behaviour, and there has never been evidence given for the proposition that trustees were being called upon by members to make an illegal decision.

I still lean towards the "charity as apex" model, but see Gift Aid as the icing on the cake rather than a reason to do - not least because I would not make a structure based on a tax policy that could change at a few months' notice

 

I posit both extremes as caricatures.

 

Well is it really a park & ride.
It has been said that the Whitby trains are full or nearly full most days. So you were competing a £49.50 fare, that had the potential for repeat use, if people were in the area again, against a £4 return bus fare (this year £6) or a freedom pass.
The Wareham trial at Swanage showed that a £25 fare did not stand up well against a £2 bus fare or freedom pass, admittedly with more frequent buses, yet for over 10 times the money you have sold a product to a hell of a lot of people. That to me makes it somewhat more than a park and ride. People view the journey by train as something they were prepared to pay for, as you also get a pretty good view of the National Park from the bus.

I have no ideas what the railway has chosen Thursday and Friday as the two days not to operate, I would guess Friday may now be changeover day as it is down South. Interestingly when checking that the Coastliner was covered under the government support scheme I found this site which seems to imply Thursday is the day least coaches go to Whitby.
Now you could say that is an opportunity for the railway, or it may show that perhaps they have chosen it right.

I to would add my thanks for @Lineisclear for continuing to engage. I do not always agree with his views but it is interesting to get a perspective from someone in a leadership team. Never having met him I suspect what people regard as his negativity it just a bluntness in the way he responds that people do not like. Although to be honest other tan perhaps viewing every issue from a "corporate perspective" I see little difference to articles I have read in the press with leaders from other HR lines.

I do however see some worrying trends that remind me of my work life. Disregarding Covid, that hit every business, 9/11 was the biggest single day impacting event in the history of aviation, and yet despite briefings, press reports of transatlantic flights with only 40 passengers, many staff on unpaid leave there were still a small minority who felt nothing should change and it was all a ploy to keep wages down and to try to reduce staff numbers. I see some of the same, not so much on this forum, but on others where it should just be done the way it has always been, Covid has gone, coal is not about 3 times the price it was & folks are
not suffering and economic crisis.
Maybe the Gift Aid route was the wrong way to go, but until you try these things you do not know. Rather than rubbishing management for trying I think as long, as it appears they have, accepted it was not the best course and changed it, they should be applauded. No bunch of leaders, or companies are infallible. Even Coca Cola managed to nearly destroy their world leading product wit what they believed was "progress", but were honest enough to realise they had got it wrong.
Maybe we have just reached the point where Heritage Railways are having to change, based on those that used to be a lot of the clientele it is a dying (literally) market. Some lines have embraced this with success, but sometimes it appears the railway is now the add on to their events, and who says that is not the way to go.

 

I’m not sure there are too many arguing for no change. What I see here and hear at various railways, is a concern that is best described as:

- are we changing/ developing fast enough/in the right way, because on the ground it feels like leadership isn’t aligned with what we see

- why won’t the leadership listen to our concerns

I tend to concur with @Jamessquared that those with the biggest dose of the second seem often to be those with the Charity at the apex.

 

I dislike the term Heritage Railway.
Preservation is what they are about in most cases. Preservation of locomotives, rolling stock, technology, skills and expertise. A dialogue with the modern world and the past in a lively exploration.
Preservation is dynamic. It's reinvention, remaking, discovery and delight in the process.

Ì also dislike the phrase 'Not for profit'. It should be for profit, for reinvestment, for enrichment in the railway for the benefit of its future.

 

The American phrase " not for profit " - and indeed advantageous formal status - I have always liked.

Possible to paraphrase this as: "not for payout, no diversion"?

 

Profit implies benefit (to shareholders?) whereas "surplus for reinvestment" describes exactly what happens in the circumstances under discussion.