North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

Short answer Matt as an heroic volunteer. Fortunately he's not alone. There are so many other examples of huge contributions by volunteers. This discussion originated in the claim that volunteers are free labour while paid staff are a seemingly undesirable cost. Inevitably, when critics suggest that heritage railway employees are a financial burden to be mimimised, it raises questions about the cost/benefit of volunteers versus employees. That takes the discussion down a dangerous path which assumes one is inherently positive and the other inherently negative. It encourage a distinction between economic "givers" and "takers". In reality the economic aspect is a distraction from the essential foundation of heritage railways which is shared altruistic commitment to a common cause...........as exemplified by your father. That's not confined to volunteers. On the NYMR quite a few paid staff also volunteer. The sector generally is not known for paying generous salaries. Quite a few employees could earn a lot more elsewhere but they stay because they are committed to the success of their railways and because its enjoyable ( although I wonder sometimes why they bother when witnessing the antipathy displayed by some towards paid staff ).
Just as the NYMR could not survive without volunteers nor can it ( or the SVR for that matter ) cope without its employees They are a fundamental part of their railway communities. The relative cost of paid staff and volunteers is not the issue. Acceptance that both are necessary and valued very much is.

 

@Lineisclear it is only really you who is framing the discussion as volunteers v paid staff. That’s not the question I see being raised which is in essence, has the Moors employed more people than it can financially support and could it manage with fewer? A perfectly reasonable question for an organisation with a very large wage bill and a massive annual loss.

 

I don’t think anyone who has posted on here or, indeed, elsewhere has said that paid staff are not essential for the NYMR to succeed. It is the approach of management that is the problem.

 

There's ample evidence in posts on here of suggestions that paid staff are viewed , at best, as an unfortunate but sadly unavoidable blot on the volunteer landscape.
Your question is indeed perfectly reasonable and led to the recent headcout reduction. Could it manage with even fewer? The answer is more nuanced than that. Could it survive after a further substantial reduction in employee numbers? Probably. Could it then continue to operate at its current scope and scale? Almost certainly not. The question is what would have to be cut back or abandoned and what the negative financial impact of that would be?

 

Could you perhaps quote the posts making that point? It's not something I've seen here, but perhaps you're interpreting comments differently…

Simon

 

I think this post might be nuanced towards me, but I don't think I've ever been so dogmatic in my comments. There have always been some paid staff who have not been overfriendly or welcoming towards volunteers but they are in the minority. In reality most get along well and do their best to help. I think it is rather the case here that the "protagonist" you are referring to has chosen to base his arguments on the minority sample and turned it into a sweeping generalisation.....

My view is that the NYMR does of course need paid staff to function, what I really question, though, is how many it needs, and whether some of those it does have do a reasonable job - it has a IT and publicity managers, for example, but seems to struggle with producing much in the way of up to date communications, or any with railway related comments that are barely beyond those familiar with TTE stories.

I think I can answer one of the questions raised in the preceding post (5786 as I write this!). I believe that the 15 members of staff lost have gone through "natural wastage" - retirement, resignation etc. - because it then costs nothing to achieve. I don't believe there have been any redundancies as such, and the railway does seem to have advertised quite a few seasonal posts over the winter, perhaps there would have been scope for some creative employment terms there to encourage people who would not want to work full time? In other words, I'm sure there is scope for more savings, but I'm not sure I believe they are being pursued all that vigorously. However, this is my speculation, and I don't see m'learned friend ever giving a straightforward answer to a straightforward reasonable question!

 

Thanks for the supportive clarification. There were in fact some redundancies.
Just to be clear the claim that paid staff numbers have increased is presumably based on the year end accounts for the 2023/4 rather than the current situation over twelve months later?

 

I do not know enough about Employment and H &S needs these days to accurately comment. But in this modern totally risk adverse world that would not surprise me if some insurance company wanted that.
Over my working life we went from fine if you wanted to be in the office working at the weekend to you must not be the on your own (H & S requirement).
Although I am sure the person who spent most of a weekend trapped in a lift with a non working phone, having left late on a Friday evening felt that maybe it should have included no individual should be in a lift on their own.

 

And that it is documented. In our case we have seven day cover of a "Loco Works Supervisor" which rotates between three members of the paid staff (to allow for leave, length of working week etc), but the daily notices always state who is the responsible person that day.

A propos @Steve comment about paid staff not working weekends when volunteers might prefer to work: Amongst our Loco Ops staff (volunteer), we have rostered "X" (workshop) turns at weekends. You do the work the day's Loco Works Supervisor has for you.

One regular task is to do the washouts. Now, we don't do the whole thing: the "unboxing" (draining the boiler and removing all the plugs and mud hole doors) is normally done mid-week by the paid staff, as is the subsequent "boxing up" (i.e. putting it all back together). But as a volunteer X turn, you turn up on a Saturday and do the actual washout - squirting hoses and cleaning up all the plugs and doors. That's a day's job for three people: two to operate the hose, and one to clean all the plugs etc.

If volunteers couldn't do that work, you are looking at three man days of paid labour. Given we do perhaps 25 washouts in a year, you are looking at around 75 man-days saved, roughly 1/3 of an FTE (based on a 225 day working year). You can see the cost saving by arranging the job so it can be partly covered by volunteers. Including on-costs, it could easily be a saving of £10,000 per year just on that one task. Of course, whether you choose to take that saving in cash (by employing fewer staff) or use the staff you have on other duties where their skills are better used is another question, but the value of enabling volunteers to do that sort of task is undeniable. It seems strange for a railway in need of savings that you would allow the working arrangements of paid staff to actively hinder the ability to use volunteers.

This is not an argument that is "pro-volunteer, anti-paid staff". But is absolutely an argument for, where you have paid staff, a key part of their role must be to act as an enabler of volunteers, essentially a kind of "force multiplier".

Tom

 

I've discussed this with the ORR in the past. With few exceptions there is nothing in law preventing lone working. An awful lot of people do this every day. As ever, a risk assessment should be carried out but in most cases if it is safe to do then it is safe to do alone.

 

Working within live electrical equipment? Absolutely verboten where I used to work, even back in the 1980s.

 

Signal problem at Grosmont this morning, coach replacement on Grosmont-Whitby section. Not sure whether Middlesbrough-Whitby affected?

 

Actually it's been fixed. When I got to Pickering station (8.55 ish), they were announcing it as no NYMR Whitby service and either coach or using Northern to get to Whitby. However about 5 mins before departure the news came that it had been fixed.

 

I am sure many diesel fans will love these two, and probably an equal number will hate them as "the wrong sort of diesel"

 

They both have a similar EE power unit in them, what’s not to like?

 

Agreed! Been enjoying the 31s and 37 very much on Railcam this week while wishing Grosmont wasn't six hours away.

My first ever NYMR ride was 31128 out of Pickering on a gloomy October Monday morning in October 2012, sat in the front bay of the front coach with the window open as wide as it would go, amazed at both the epic scenery and the noise from the loco as it slogged its way up through Newtondale. It immediately made the Moors one of my absolute favourite heritage railways. Kicking myself for not getting a visit in last year when I could've taken advantage of the annual pass to cover a return trip or two in 2025 as well.