North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

I'm wary of the language of "inevitability" - my whole concern in this discussion is the assumption that the direction of travel can be determined from the current starting point, rather than a desired end point. The risks you mention are genuine and real; what matters is whether the returns from doing these things really justify the fixed costs associated with them.

That takes us to organisational culture. Whether intended or not, I do not get the message that use of volunteers is the first priority when trying to fill gaps in rosters. At any individual point in time, I completely understand why a specific recruitment decision may prioritise paid over volunteer. But, aggregated over time, and combined with other decisions, the impression given is of a paid organisation that happens to use volunteers, not a volunteer organisation that uses paid staff in key roles (I have tried to word this as neutrally as possible).

While I agree with @jnc about reality taking precedence over public relations, it is also true that in those human endeavours that aren't constrained by the limits of nature, image is frequently reality.

 

I don't think it's about filling gaps in rosters which are typically for those operational roles that apperal to volunteers. Certainly it used to be the case that rosters were filled with volunteers first and that still makes sense. The suggestion that the ratio of paid staff to volunteers should be adjusted is fine if you can find the volunteers to do the less glamorous administrative and support roles which is the area where increased regulation has had the greatest impact. If sufficiemt volunteers can't be found to sustain the necessary level of resource and competence in those areas, and the ratio of paid staff to volunteers has to be lower, something has to give! Some reduction in the scope and scale of the railway would probably be inevitable.
Different heritage railways are at different points in a progression from 100% volunteer preservation societies to at one extreme to 100% paid staff at the other. There's no single right answer. It's fair to suggest that the NYMR is still led by volunteers (all the trust board members and a majority of the PLC subsidiary board members are volunteers) but operationaly it has developed from a railway primarily dependent on volunteers supported by paid staff to one that is managed primarily by paid staff supported by volunteers. What is crystal clear is that volunteers and paid staff depend on each other.

 

And I am with those who consider that "managed primarily by paid staff" is a dangerous weakness, demonstrated by examples from @Steve and others of how the reflexes of paid staff differ from volunteers. Bluntly, the evidence of the statutory accounts is that too much is being spent to earn too little - and that has to focus attention on the fixed costs.

 

More good news
https://www.nymr.co.uk/Event/tornado
Tornado arrives next Tuesday, meanwhile its support coach has already arrived for C&W to undertake a wheel set swap.

 

A fairly sizeable line, too; that anchors that end of the [volunteer/employee] spectrum. Different lines will wish to operate at different points on the spectrum. Whatever works for them - as long as it works.

 

A lot of this analysis provides simplistic reasons and responses (some seemingly untrue - e.g. the latest Moors Line lists 5 PLC Board members only one of whom is from the Trust Board), but the real reasons and answers are rather more complex. Put simply, albeit from a different standpoint, the recruitment of new volunteers has always been a weakness at the NYMR. Some departments, like PWay and S&T have had leaderships that were inclusive towards volunteers, others like the loco and C & W depts have not (NELPG and LNERCA are separate entities who are tolerated rather than encouraged, and who have more or less had to fight against the NYMR for all they have achieved) and although there are small groups evolving there they are by no means as large as they could and should be. There isn't much of an infrastructure group at all - there was one at Levisham, but they have been driven away, and I think that more or less all non-rail infrastructure work is carried out by contractors. It all comes down to the heads of departments and their ability to enthuse the volunteers within them. If that can be achieved it will create the atmosphere to welcome more volunteers to join, and whilst it may be true that there are fewer potential volunteers these days, they haven't yet disappeared. However, I think the outlook remains grim - I don't think that the management and trust board between them could be trusted to take a dog for a walk, especially if it involves them leaving their cosy offices and actually talking to people(MBWA!), and until that situation becomes recognised and dealt with things will not get any better - and that's at best, the worst is desperately worrying.

 

And that spectrum is also driven by the number of days in the year you operate.
So if you are a line like the NYMR, Swanage, RH&DR or WSR that goes to a coastal resort ( to name a few) I would expect the need for the paid to volunteer ratio to be far higher than say a line that for most of the year only operates at the weekends or with a couple of extra days in the week at peak holiday times.
That of course leads to a different debate about when lines should actually be running services, based on infrastructure and rolling stock costs and the number of locos you may need.

 

To be fair to me, I did not attack the increased CEO's salary as unreasonable, but I did attack it's 50% increase as unreasonable in the face of the PLC's performance, which I have said was by no means stellar. The policy adopted this year was to effectively increase prices and decrease what was on offer, and the steadily increasing use of discounting throughout this season suggests that everyone (and there have been a lot of people doing so) saying that the prices were to inflexible and expensive should now be entitled to shout out "we told you so!". Now that might be excusable for a new CEO, but when that CEO comes from within the ranks - and was formerly the marketing manager! - it becomes a lot less so. If, eventually, she is made to fall on her sword, then those who appointed her should be obliged to do the same. At the same time, I agree that penny pinching is not an option, but perhaps a bonus system based on actually improved results would have been a more sensible option. This candidate must have convinced the selection panel that they could greatly improve the situation, so they should have been challenged to prove that. Beyond that, the post I'm referring to is meaningless waffle. We all know and understand the need for both paid staff and volunteers, and the challenge is to increase the latter group and increase their numbers, so that more income is generated to invest in the railway, not in paying more people.

 

Where do you get the claimed 50% increase in salary from? In any case the CEO is CEO of the charity not just the subsidiary PLC so it's the improvement in the conslidated financial position that matters.
I agree that the ideal is to find more volunteers but the question of what you do if they're not there isn't addressed. If you can't afford to increase paid staff numbers, and increase the surplus generated, aren't cut backs and retrenchment unavoidable?

 

I'm sorry to be picky, but this sentence demonstrates what niggles about the balance between paid and volunteer at NYMR. At face value, it implies a massive assumption about the relationship between income and headcount, namely that more surplus relies on more paid staff, and therefore the inability to recruit must require cut backs and retrenchment.

The whole point that I and others have been making is that gross income need not be correlated in this way, and that the mindset needs to be on how that extra revenue (which we all agree is needed) can be delivered without increasing the fixed costs of the business.

 

Totally agree as an objective and we must try! However, the cry is often one of reducing fixed costs and specifically labour costs. Successfully fishing in a declining volunteer pool should help, as should greater emphasis on selling premium priced experiences, but if it was that easy it would already have been done. The point was simply that unless large numbers of suitably qualified/competent volunteers can be found to replace paid staff then taking out substantial amount of their cost is bound to result in a dimimished railway. .

 

That presumes that all of the activities performed are essential. I would be shocked if any railway were 100% efficient, and there were nothing done that could be done without.

 

A simplistic answer would be that around 15 miles away the Yorkshire Wolds Railway seems to be thriving and attracting volunteers. Clearly they are doing something rather better than the NYMR. In part that must be due to the fact that they are building a new railway whereas the NYMR has stagnated, but against that the NYMR ought to be able to offer far more by way of enjoyable opportunity for potential volunteers but still seems to be losing out. Perhaps a wholesale change of management - or at least management attitudes - to a more volunteer-friendly atmosphere might help?

 

Which suggests looking at it as a numbers game. Success in that mindset is seen as a having a lot of volunteers or possibly a “better” ratio of volunteers to paid staff. That’s only true if the volunteers attracted have the skills and competencies to substitute for paid staff . A railway could have a high proportion of volunteers but if they lack the qualifications, essential skills and competencies required having more of them may be counter productive.

 

Quite a few of them have migrated from the Levisham Station Group who did a lot of trackside work beyond Levisham, and a lot of infrastructure work around Levisham. - are they now "non-people"? I feel that you are clutching at straws here - presumably the YWR comes under the same purview as the NYMR. It's my belief that there are plenty of folk on the fringes of the NYMR with the attributes you mention, but the railway does not provide enough encouragement or them to step forward. It has a much larger membership than the E&BR or the KWVR, but those two lines have far more volunteers in their loco departments. Excuses really don't wash, the NYMR falls down on its volunteer recruitment and retention in the broader area. You have trumpeted rising numbers of volunteers in the past, but never given any indication or breakdown of which departments they are going into. A big rise in conservation volunteers, for example would be all well and good but is unlikely to be of much help in keeping trains running. Hordes of people drinking tea on platforms are also of limited value.

 

Stating the obvious, but have you ever thought about training the volunteers to do the jobs you need done?
Most railways have something in their articles about passing on traditional skills. If the NYMR isn’t prepared to train volunteers then it doesn’t take a genius to work out that they will end up with a shortage of people trained to run and maintain the railway.

 

In terms of the extra territorial activities of Levisham Station Group volunteers it’s best not to go there! Whoever was to blame they came close to costing the railway a huge amount in fines but that’s been dealt with and is water under the bridge. As to increasing the number of volunteers we seem to be in full agreement. It’s not about numbers per se but the skills and competencies they can offer.

 

Most heritage railways ,including the NYMR, have a proud record in training volunteers in traditional railway operating skills such as footplate duties, signalling, station duties etc . That’s not the problem. Can you realistically train a volunteer to provide knowledgeable legal advice, accountancy and financial management skills, marketing, professional hr management, civil engineering expertise or all the other myriad skills that are essential for the proper management of a heritage railway? A moments thought would suggest that’s wildly unrealistic in which case, unless there are volunteers with those essential skill sets, you either have to employ staff with them or buy in the resource from external suppliers which can be more expensive.

 

I can't help wondering of this conversation about paid vs volunteer staff actually needs to step back a bit, and consider job roles first, and only then look at how you resource those.

For example, in the operational side of a loco department, there are the obvious roles - driver, fireman, cleaner, diesel driver, diesel secondman - all of which can have fairly well defined promotion pathways based on meeting certain competences. But then there will be a host of other micro-roles: an overall locomotive superintendent, inspectors, trainers, assessors, a yard foreman (or possibly two at the NYMR as their are two separate yards) to manage processes and standards on shed; a roster clerk to manage rostering; a notices clerk to manage writing and publishing notices etc. Some of those are management roles (i.e. ensuring the right things happen, rather than being the person to do things); some are "doing" roles. On a preserved railway, some will be quite substantial but that doesn't necessarily mean they have to be paid roles, and in some cases could be split. Some could be done by anyone, others very definitely have an element whereby they require significant experience.

Across a whole railway, there are likely to be large numbers of what you might call "micro roles" such as rostering, managing notices and so on - even things like being the administrator of a railway's HOPS (or equivalent) system.

When you have all those roles, you can then consider questions such as:

• Do we have to do that role? If not, you certainly shouldn't be paying anyone to do it.
• How long will it take?
• Can it be split between several people, or does one person have to do it? (That is most likely if the role carries some accountability where you need to know where the buck stops; if the role carries responsibility but not accountability, it can often be split)
• Does it have to happen at a fixed time, or could it happen at any convenient time? (For example, a shed fitter has to be available when the locos are going off shed. A roster clerk needs to put the hours in, but could do it at any time of day or night).
• Does it have to happen at the railway, or could it happen remotely?

At that point, you can start to ask "does this job have to be done by a paid member of staff, or could it be done between volunteers?"

I think that leads you down two different pathways. Firstly, on the volunteer side, it makes it clear that the old days of "turn up and we'll find you something to do" are probably gone - even with volunteers, you need to think about covering the tasks that need covering. And secondly, on the paid side, it forces the question "do we need to pay someone to do this portfolio of roles, or could we ensure everything gets done by breaking the job into discreet micro-roles, each of which could be covered by a volunteer?"

Cost pressures are affecting every railway, and while I certainly am not advocating a model of "volunteers can do everything", I think it is incumbent on any railway director of a loss-making railway to be really considering in their department to what extent each role needs to be covered by someone paid. That may of course mean changing some of the paid roles so that the key performance metric is less about doing the job, and more about creating a framework to enable volunteers to do a job.

Tom