North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

Looking at the booking pages and the scattering of seats that were occupied, no.

Regarding the station buffets, assuming three staff are needed all day, even at minimum wage staffing costs will be about £400. To even start to make a profit that's going to need at least £600 in sales. Fine on a normal day, but on a day when there's only two services all day, is it even worth opening? Promoting on train catering would probably have made more sense, but the website doesn't even say if there's a buffet on the train! It doesn't say if the station buffets are open either, which isn't good.

They're capable of offering prepackaged food on board, as evidenced by the dreadful sounding "Treats Across the Moors" bags. Surely offering morning coffees and croissants or cream teas on board wouldn't have been that difficult? There's nothing available on the FS services at the end of October either, not even through Fox and Edwards (who do have block bookings on every train).

 

That assumes that commercial models are the way forward for heritage railways (it may be, for some - probably a very few, though). I'll go into broken-record mode (again) and query that (although of course the numbers have to balance).

Noel

 

One of the film crew told me it should be broadcast late October. I saw them interviewing some of the passengers, then while I was having lunch they had Paul Middleton doing a piece to camera on the platform near where I was sat. They did about four or five takes, I imagine he's used to it by now!

 

My criticism is about the flip flopping, not the pursuit of cash. The stated objectives for 5 day running never convinced and, if the suspicions voiced by some about maintenance capacity are correct, the sudden pursuit of cash suggests a degree of mortgaging that is uncomfortable.

 

Yes. My point is that flip flopping may be both justified and appropriate, but it has to be communicated, which if it is it becomes thoughtful experiment (a good thing) not indecision and panic (bad thing).

 

again an artificial distinction. By commercial in this context I mean finding ways to fund the railway by selling products and services. The other leg is fundraising, which is the altruistically motivated gift of money, however given that no one gives for no reason or purpose, you must still create reasons to attract the donor

 

Seems there are a number of heritage railways that seem to be commercially minded whilst maintaining the heritage side, it can be done


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It is true that heritage railways need to be commercially minded, and should operate following good business practice, but this should not be the overriding concern. They obviously have to cover their operating costs and more, but it seems impossible for them to meet the larger capital costs without external help and that comes from grant awarding bodies, and also - crucially - from their supporters. I'd suggest that it is far more important to pander to these groups, on the whole, than it is to the general public who form the bulk of their passengers. The grant awarding bodies will be looking at their performance against their charitable objectives, and the supporters will be looking at their performance against their heritage objectives. It is quite hard to alienate the majority of customers; there will often be a few dissatisfied ones regardless of the circumstances. Most will at least be sympathetic even at challenging times, and really they are, individually, only minor contributors, and the better the offering in terms of heritage experience, the more tolerant they are likely to be. Look after the various big donors ought to be the watchword, but also remember that people are normally there for the heritage experience, and the better that is, the happier they should be.

 

I suggest that your thinking is, in turn, just as out of date! Whilst bit is true that grant-giving charitable foundations are feeling the economic squeeze as much as anyone, much of the money received in recent years by the NYMR (and, I think, other heritage railways) has been more in the form of grants to protect employment prospects from government organisations such as Yorkshire Forward and North Yorkshire County Council, and as long as times remain hard it is reasonable to expect that they will continue. As for donations, they may be affected too, but people, both rich and poor, will continue to die, and legacies probably constitute the large donations. What is more worrying is that the various NYMR discussion groups are hearing people saying that they are considering rewriting their wills to exclude the railway because they are dissatisfied with the way it is developing and run. I'm surprised that the Trust and ~PLC Boards haven't not taken note of that and acted to address their concerns. Heads in the sand doesn't begin to describe it!

 

Or time. It would be interesting to see a comparison between monetary donations, and the value of donated time. (Although one would have to decide how to value it - using matching free market salary numbers for each trade/specialty might be more accurate, but would require more data gathering, rather than simply using an average GBP/hour.)

Does anyone know if any line has ever done such an accounting?

Noel

 

That sort of calculation is done fairly often, not least because some grant-awarding bodies require the recipient to part-fund projects, but allow volunteer time to count towards that part-funding.

However, in all this discussion about whether railways are "commercial" entities or not, you can't get round the fact that that you can run out of profits as often as you like, but you can only run out of cash once. In other words, certain things need paying for in cold hard cash, and if you don't have the cash, it can stop you running. You can have all the volunteers you like, but the coal merchant will want £10,000 for that lorry-load of coal: he won't accept 625 hours of volunteer labour at £16/hr. So it feels a bit of a false distinction to say that railways can be non-commercial: they have to fit into the normal business rules about solvency, and the normal business disciplines of understanding your costs, and understanding your income sources, still apply.

Where railways are unlike conventional businesses is really two-fold. Firstly, volunteers do exist, and to some extent you can trade off time and cost by using volunteers. If you have to relay a mile of track, the rails, sleeper and ballast will likely cost real money, but you could decide the extent to which you would use volunteers to lay that track - doing so is likely to be cheaper than having paid contractors and lots of machinery, but likely slower. That balance between cost and speed is at least a decision you can make in a rational way.

The other way they vary is that they have additional sources of income available over and above the normal business income, i.e. the fare box. Primarily that means grants (though they often have strings attached); altruistic donations (typically with fewer strings attached); and donations in kind. (In the example above, you may in fact get the rails, sleeper and ballast donated by the mainline industry - such deals are not unusual).

The NYMR seems to be basing some of their business strategy around attracting incoming grants - my concern with that would be the strings attached, since frequently such grants are to deliver outcomes that wouldn't necessarily be your core proposition.

In other words, if you are railway with a £50k hole in your budget and you win a £50k grant for a "community outreach project for moorland sheep", the likelihood is that you haven't plugged the budget gap. Instead you are now just a railway that still has a £50k hole in your budget but is now surrounded by well-informed sheep. Chasing grants may make you bigger, but doesn't necessarily make you more financially resilient. There is a very real risk with such grants that the lure of the headline figure blinds you to the very real additional costs of delivering the outcome that the grant-awarding body wants.

Tom

 

That's a big nail head hit by a big hammer, Tom. Chasing grants where they are wholly focussed on what you want to do is fine and the ideal but where there are peripherals the waters get very muddied.
When the NYMR did their big HLF grant application for the carriage shed they fell into that trap. The original plan included volunteer accommodation, which was all well and good but things went awry when no suitable accommodation could be found. Rather than go to the HLF and tell them the problem they opted to buy and refurbish a building in Stape, some 7 miles from Pickering and with no transport links or resources, such as a shop or pub but of little use to anyone without transport or a desire to cook meals. It's a great resource but totally impractical for most people wanting volunteer accommodation. How much use it gets isn't known as it is one of those closely guarded secrets but it is in reality a millstone as it requires maintenance, cleaning and utilities to be paid for.
As regards volunteer labour costs, when I last did a large HLF grant 20 years ago, as part of our project contribution, ordinary volunteers were costed at £50/day, skilled tradesmen at £150/day and senior managers at £300/day. I would think/hope that these have increased in the time since then.

 

I wonder if the hire of Tornado was paid for at least partly in kind?

Sawdust.

 

I think the COVID and post COVID government grants lulled the NYMR into a false sense of security, that they were too important to be allowed to fail. But there's no way handouts from the public purse to heritage railways are going to continue, when the Great Big Railways is going to be a vehicle for treasury cost-cutting.

The sad truth is fixed costs and especially the wage bill have been too high for over twenty years. I can remember Murray Brown when trust chair telling me that there had been record passenger numbers around the time the Atkins building was opened. I asked him how much profit was generated, we have broken even was his reply. That set the alarm bells ringing for me. A season like that would have generated a £200k profit not many years previously.

I'll not say any more for now but hi to Lineisclear, remember when you came to see me in Harrogate?

Sawdust.


Sawdust.

 

Interesting. Could you point me at any, please? I'd really like to check out the money/time balance.

I did already say "of course the numbers have to balance".

Or even really plug the budget hole (as your example indicates).

Noel

 

I'm not sure I wholly agree. Certainly I think some railways are too focussed on the commercial at the expense of the heritage - I won't deny that. And in the case of the NYMR I think they're both overly focussed on the commerical and apparently not very good at it - ironic given the marketing background of the big boss.

However, there are very few heritage railways that would survive without being commercially minded. Look across Yorkshire at the Embsay and Bolton Abbey Steam Railway. No longer living in their overdraft every month (or at least they weren't at the last update I saw), they're doing an absolute roaring trade on their dining and special events trains, they host weddings throughout summer and the success of their switch to the Polar Express experience at Christmas for the past two years has seen them be able to make major investments in the railway that will see them in good stead for years to come - completing Bolton Abbey Plat 2 & 3, I believe extending Plat 1 at BA too, obtaining a footbridge for BA which is being refurbished, buying 4 or 5 PCVs to use for storage and other purposes, a marquee for hosting events, they've had to build a wooden extension to Plat 1 at Embsay to fit six-coach trains and although they took loans from members to purchase the Class 20, I believe these are all but paid off thanks to income from Polars too... All of it made possible because they've been incredibly savvy with their approach to commercial operations. And all of which then enables them to run events like the fantastic Hunslet Gala earlier this year for enthusiasts.
Of course they aren't perfect - a post on that railway's thread (as I think you saw) said it felt overly focussed on the coach parties etc and they do need more to keep you there after you've had a riude but which is better run at the moment?

 

Deleted - question answered off thread.