North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

I disagree I do not think any discount is to high. It needs to be the right discount.
People have become used to discounts and when they see £35 Travelodge rooms or £10 Ryanair fares buy now most will realise that they are limited, come with shed loads of restrictions, such as no refunds and are not available to walk ups. The few that do not fit into the category described by one of my former FD's as the "lunatic fringe"
The HR line ones are at least less of a lie than those on the National Network, where they blab about offering you the "best fare" that is usually anything but. As an example due to the thread on here about getting to the IOW for the steam festival I looked at ticket prices. All the booking sites force you down the advance single route, not offering, unless you drill down (how many bother?) an off peak day return with no specific train restrictions either way for £6 less. Even Lord Hendy seems to think we all want advanced tickets fixed to one train only.
What the correct discount should be I do not know but if it is a long time out made clear (not buried somewhere obscure in a set of T &C' no one looks at) it is NON REFUNDABLE then it ends up being a win for both I would argue. People can decide their own risk vs reward.
What I find strange is things like my local line where as long as you book before 23:59 you get around 10% off a return or 15% off a rover. That to me seems all weighted to online customer benefit, or penalising those on the day. You still need to man the booking office, I do not see what the railway gains at all.

 

Er…..no.
As a matter of interest, was 45428 the last loco to be repainted by BR (in 1967) when it was used on royal train duties.

 

I thought the last loco repainted by BR was 62059 at Cowlairs.

 

Dunno, that's why I'm asking the question. I think 45428 was done in May 1967 as standbye for the Royal Train, which was actually hauled by 45562 (30th May)

 

45428 was looking very neat and tidy indeed when I saw it on BR duty on the last day of steam in the Leeds area. I wondered why at the time. Thanks for that explanation.

A 2 second exposure on a rather wobbly tripod that cost me 30/- on a Co-op sale, photographed at Bradford Exchange, 30th September 1967

 

A bit of googling has not come up with anything definitive, but there is an RMWeb thread which seems to vote for 62059 being the last in Scotland and 70013 the last at Crewe (though 48773 is also mentioned).

 

It was hard to tell in the depths of the shed at Grosmont last week, but the impression I got (and also from looking at photos of it recently) is no, it doesn't need a repaint. I'm hoping it's a simple, end-of- steam, unlined job, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't.

We travelled last Wednesday on the line. Normally a family train trip is a birthday treat, but the weather on Monday was the best day for the beach. Original plan was Tuesday for the train to Pickering and back. In the end, with the way the weather turned out, Wednesday was the better option. Even a couple of days beforehand we weren't certain what we were going to do, it was entirely down to the forecast. You certainly wouldn't want to plan a trip two weeks in advance when it's so weather dependent.

Booking in advance is fine if it's the attraction you're booking - the problem is the NYMR isn't really an attraction in itself, it's a way of getting to other attractions. Other than the shed at Grosmont, there's not a lot on the railway itself to occupy your time between trains, except head into the towns and villages. Compare that to the Bluebell with Steamworks and the playground at Kingscote, or South Devon with the museum, rare breeds farm, otters and butterflies, etc. Plenty to explore on or very near the railway.

It's a real shame the Bellwood centre at Grosmont never happened. For a start it would have meant out of use locos could've been kept undercover. Such a shame to see the state of 75029 last week. It was only in traffic for less than 4 years after its last overhaul so should've been a quick turn round. It's now been out for a decade and with no sign of it returning any time soon.

 

What percentage of people make an enquiry on line and then turn up at the railway on the day to purchase tickets at the ticket office? Id have thought it was very low. The last time I attended a HRA meeting was about 15 years ago but I recall some of the North Wales Narrow gauge railways were then achieving something approaching 90% of income pre booked/on line. At the K &ESR ticket office income has dropped dramatically and the average booking office user outside of special event will either not have looked on line or discovered the railway completely by accident.

 

I suspect that it depends on what value one gains from booking online.

I referred earlier to an online booking elsewhere. If I weren't going to get the discount, I'd not have bothered - because I need to convert the booking into a ticket. Another railway I'm planning to visit shortly has a complex mess of a website, where I suspect I'll book online simply because it looks so ridiculously hard to to simply buy a ticket otherwise. Yet at another, my online purchase converts into an e-ticket which I can put onto my phone and which I can use straightaway.

Guess which of these three I'm likely to want to buy online. But in all three, I'll have used the website to get an idea of fares, timetables and how I get there. And sometimes (WHR 2021, I'm looking at you...), I'll do that assessment and go "not value for money".

Coming back to NYMR, the challenge is the nature of the trip. Having stayed in Pickering with small kids, I relate strongly to @5944's experience of planning a day on the railway when staying locally. How I balance beach, walks, and castles depends massively on the weather forecast. Whitby isn't, for me, a beach destination, so the train is great for a grey day when I don't mind having to look for a bit of shelter. So if I need to fix my day in advance, I may well not bother. But if it's going to be windy, I don't want to be shot blasted so I'll go inland instead - and with both EH and NT memberships, there are plenty of effectively free choices within a short drive that will give the kids a chance to run off excess energy. All of which goes to say that an advance booking model is, for this type of customer, value deducted.

 

I bought a ticket at the Tenterden booking office on Sunday.

 

And I was at the Bridgnorth booking office on Sunday . An excellent day out; hauled by a cl. 20 (recent memories of Porto and the Douro valley behind a Portuguese CP cl. 1400) and 10 out of 10 to the Highley Engine House, but I digress!

re booking on line, @5944’s own experience suggests a reluctance to book in advance due to weather depending issues and that is my own experience (see my post 7354 ). Indeed I found the Monday he refers to as being fairly quiet on a normally busy train, but the weather was of the “beach day” type as he indicates. This reinforces the advantage to the railway of offering a 30% discount, as it encourages advance booking before the weather on-the-day in truly known, and thus helps to smooth the loadings between otherwise busy and quiet days.

ps my experience is that advance bookings have increased since the introduction of the associated discounts.

 

Crikey - who would have predicted that?

Tom

 

For me, the only real advantage of booking online (if there's no price difference) is that I don't need to allow extra time to queue for tickets at the booking office on arrival. If I was going for the 0920 departure from Pickering for example, even if I'm staying locally that's a fairly early start so I don't want to risk any issues with parking or a long queue at the ticket office, so having my ticket already booked is one less thing to worry about - if I end up running in the door at 0915 I've still got a chance of getting on the train!

 

Do you still have to exchange your online booking at the ticket office (I haven't visited for 2 years) but on a busy day it didn't save you any time when we last visited!

 

Certainly the case last week in Grosmont - out of half a dozen people in the queue in the morning, I was the only person without a booking confirmation!

 

Yes you still need need to exchange your online booking for a ticket from the booking office and, if you have paid a donation fare, receive your Thank You voucher.

 

Why? Surely would be possible to do all that with an online print at home ticket?

 

I’d like to think that is the way to go like on the Big Railway, but the difficulty is how to stop someone buying one online ticket then printing several copies off to give to friends and family. At least with visiting the booking office the ticket can only be issued once.

An other issue with mobile phone tickets is there is no mobile signal for the majority of the journey (only whilst at the Pickering, Levisham (just), Goathland, Grosmont and Whitby stations; nothing in between).

I’m sure there is / will be a solution, but personally I’m not sure the answer.

 

What's to stop whatever it is that's shown at the ticket office being copied?

 

But how much is booking in advance going to save you? I say this as someone who’s looked at booking in advance at various railways and whilst there is that convenience of waltzing past the queue, the benefits of paying a card company to save 2 or 3 quid which after their ‘booking fees’ really don’t appeal to me.
Banks rip us off every day, why make them richer?