North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

Bridgnorth is a very attractive little town with some decent pubs. It's very quick and convenient to access if you stay in the "up" part and there's always the cliff lift if you don't fancy the slog up and down to the lower part by the river.

 

The whole pricing strategy is quite baffling. A day rover for the NYMR is £49.50. The "Treats Across the Moor" is £55 for a round trip. The diner is £99 but now includes a £49.50 day rover (not that you can make much use of it due to the timetable).

Having a dedicated set must be expensive so you can see why they want to run it as much as possible. Yet there are days in November where the line is being opened simply for one return trip with the diner, including steaming a loco, when they've shut the line on other days to reduce costs. How can that turn a profit? Do all of the signal boxes need to be opened as well to run a service?

I see from the accounts catering makes a lot of money for the railway, but it doesn't state how much of that is from the dining train. Car no. 79 had been out of traffic for over 9 years now due to the amount of work required and lack of funds. Garnet is very nice inside, but the 1980s moquette in two of the other Pullmans doesn't give a premium impression - seats in the Bluebell's far more quality vintage Pullmans are the same price and more authentic looking.

It's just another example of the railway lacking any sort of imagination. Other railways offer different menus and different experiences throughout the year. The Moors is simply a roast, or variations of, with the occasional cream tea chucked in on a random Tuesday in September.

The SVR offer 42 seats rather than nearly 130, but only need two vehicles to operate it instead of 5. It's also attached to normal service trains so a path isn't lost. A sold out premium lunch train on the SVR will bring in nearly £6000. The Moors, despite offering three times as many seats, only brings in a little over twice that yet has far more overheads to cover.

 

SVR is generating quite a lot of income from its mainline connection these days!!

I think the SVR has survived the storm because it quite quickly realised it couldn't continue 'just' as a heritage railway.

 

Interesting that you suggest SR is a heritage railway.
Are we?
We primarily are there to move people from A to B, however, commercially yes we do have themed weekends and gala's but predominantly we keep cars off the road between Norden and Swanage

 

The S(wange)R is a railway that uses SR (Bulleid and Maunsell) and Pullman carriages as well as LSWR locos; I think that a lot of its supporters might not agree that is is a heritage railway. If they don't, why not put more emphasis on the Class 33 and 4TC set and DMU for day to day services?

 

Why is the pricing strategy baffling? At least now including a complementary day rover allows some passengers to catch a standard service train to Grosmont in order to join the Pullman

Which dates are they in November?

 

Well the 4TC is not ready and the 33's (or 20) have been in service along with the 117 and 121 (on the Sunset Specials) during the high season and other two train days. Quite a few Facebook posts about which diesel is in service each day. So whilst emphasis maybe be steam diesel well publicised as well. Diesels also shown on the loco roster page.

 

Back in the 80s Pickering to Grosmont was 50 minutes. Today it's 1h05 or longer and the Whitby journey is 1h50.

The 1640 from Grosmont takes 1h10 to Pickering. It sits at Goathland until 1705.

Some padding is useful, but is there too much?

Lack of ordinary coaches on the diner constrains the number of journey opportunities.

The NYMR was legendary for its Wartime weekend. Could the format have been refreshed rather than simply abandoned?
Thousands attended and the trains were packed. 350 on the first train from Whitby alone. Other railways would be desperate to get such loadings.

 

Day rover £49.50.
"Treats" £55, return trip only in converted BG, no hot drinks included, all prepackaged food.
Cream tea, £65 including day rover, travel in Pullmans, tea/coffee included, fresh food.
Dining £95/100, including day rover.

It's so inconsistent. The cream tea sounds like the best value for money, as it's only £15.50 more than a day rover and incudes proper food and free drinks. The "Treats" one means a single return trip from Grosmont with a load of sugary snacks included.

The timetable is such that most days you either risk a 25 minute connection at Grosmont before the lunchtime diner, or get there two hours early. Heading back to Pickering afterwards means an 80 minute wait. Sundays is much better though.

Regarding the November dates, I was wrong. It's November and December - 16 days, Tuesday to Friday. Only one Saturday diner in December.

 

The 17.45 ex Grosmont is timetabled for 60 minutes to Pickering, and I’ve certainly done a quicker on a late running train (my record is leaving Grosmont 38 minutes late on the 14.40 ex Grosmont arriving back just 2 minutes down at 17.22.

I suppose the issue is train regulation at the passing loops, ie
- ensuring that two trains do not enter a loop at the same time
- Ensuring a train from Grosmont is never stopped on the approach to Goathland station, due to gradients
- Ensuring sufficient time for passengers to cross platforms for a return service
- Ensuring first train in / last train out rule

The existing Pullman operates as 7 coaches, the maximum length for normal services, if Jenny (converted horse box now containing a generator to provide electricity supply to the kitchen in particular the extractor fans), the GW saloon and Brake are added. The existing Brake is often used to convey Travel and Treat passengers, when normal service passengers cannot normally be conveyed, and never dogs due to the carpeted area and health hygiene regulations.

There were two key issues
- organising road closures etc, which local businesses were not willing organise themselves. Plus inherent offsite risks, again which local businesses were unable to cover, eg accidents, weather causing cancellations etc
- many of the trains contained many re-in-actors travelling for free and others without a ticket so despite them being well loaded they were not making sufficient revenue.
So overall, whilst a popular well attended event the railway itself made a loss but yet carried the commercial risks….

 

I've heard this for one or two other similar events as this being a reason to stop doing them. Rather than cancelling the event though, have they tried, y'know, just not doing that?

 

Personally, I’d rather the Pullman set used a normal Brake and Mk1 for non-dining passengers, with the dining set reduced to 3 Pullman coaches to compensate but at a higher premium. But then the question is whether the increase in revenue through the availability of the train to non dining passengers (ie making the overall timetable more attractive) outweighs the loss in profit from the dining element through reduced seats (though itself outweighed by a possible increase in fare to dining passengers). Difficult question to answer though I suspect more people would be upset by an increase in Pullman fare than benefit from an improved passenger timetable.

 

My hunch is that it's the basic £49.50 that's the problem. If the discounted fares are treated as the true fares, then the other fares start to make more sense (though not the cost model). The trouble is, that is an internal view applied to customer pricing.

 

Understood; but I wonder if it would have been possible to make some alterations to fix the defects, while not discarding all the visitors to the railway, and the attention and visibility for the line they bring - effectively (if the loss could be avoided) free in-person advertising. These days, with so much competition for people's attention - why discard it when you've got it, would be my query.

Noel

 

Points which are both valid and raise any number of questions in my mind about the relationships involved- and of various parties' attitudes to those relationships.

 

I can't remember any train timetabled to do Pickering -Grosmont in 50 minutes. That would require a start to stop average of 21.6 mph with no allowance for station stops. The NYMR has always been a bit cavalier with its approach to timetabling and speed limits, though. Here's something that I did for an Inspectors meeting a while ago.
"The appended graphs show the theoretical times to travel between Grosmont and Pickering and vice versa assuming all speed limits are kept. An acceleration rate of 0.3mph/s has been used, along with a braking rate of 1 mph/s, irrespective of gradient. These figures are considered to be reasonable without the use of full regulator and full cut off or dropping the vacuum to zero. The graphs assume that, once up to maximum permissible speed, this is maintained at all times until braking is required. The sole departure from this is that I have used a section time of 15 minutes from Grosmont to Goathland as to run at 25 mph with a Cl 4 loco and 7 coaches is demanding horespower it can’t produce. The slight differences between up and down times are due to the slower speed (5 mph) over crossovers and at High Mill in the down direction.

Station times have been set at the first train to arrive at a crossing as 5 minutes and the second train to arrive at 3 minutes. First train to arrive at Goathland is considered to be an up train and the first train to arrive at Levisham is considered to be a down train. The logic behind this is that the ‘boxes are at that end of the platforms and, certainly at Levisham, avoid the fireman having to walk back and collect a token. To do so adds significantly to precious time. A 1 minute stop at Newtondale is also allowed for.

The speed limits are based on those given in Table A of the Sectional Appendix and the chainage at which they start. The date I have for Table A is April 2006 and I am unaware of a later issue. There are anomalies between those positions given in Tale A and the speed cut-out markers on the ground. I have included any changes topermanent speed restrictions made since Table A was published The graphs do not include any allowances for temporary speed restrictions anywhere.

The graphs show that a time of 65 minutes is achievable in the down direction and 70 minutes in the up direction, which are close to normal times used in planning. Obviously reduced station stops and not crossing trains can reduce this."

 

One obvious question might be why cannot wartime events be re-jigged to exclude any need for road closures? They are surely not commercially sensible as they draw visitors away from the railway. The lack of any indication of any possible alternative ways of preseving the event as a money spinner, as opposed to simply cancelling it, seems to me to give lie to any idea the the commercial management these days is in the least bit commercially minded. Looking for a quiet and easy life seems more like it.

 

Quite possibly - though my question is more to do with how it is that collaboration couldn't have delivered benefits to all concerned.

 

One question about events that occurs to me is ho much space does the NYMR have adjacent to stations? On the Bluebell, we run quite a lot of events at different scales, but we are comparatively fortunate that we have a variety of locations (*) in which we can stage an event "on the railway" but "away from the trains" as it were. That certainly makes the logistics somewhat simpler.

Tom