North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

It would be interesting to know if any railway covers costs from day to day ticket sales.
Certainly the editorial in the recent Bluebell magazine made it clear that normal trains to not generate sufficient income for the railway. It needs events, and I would suspect you could parachute that statement into nearly every line.

 

I don't think anyone would argue with any of what you have posted here BUT that's no excuse for the larger scale events being poorly thought through and properly organised - which this one palpably wasn't.

As @mdewell says, "Perhaps rather than relying on 'big bang' events/visiting locos they should be doing more to promote 'routine' services. Surely those would result in more spread out demand through the day, with no particular requirement on joining at one end or the other. NYMR are not the only railway that seems to be becoming more focused on the 'big bang' strategy" - but he obviously hasn't been following the thread long enough to have seen and read all the other posts saying exactly that!

 

Three points:
1. If you've seen my previous posts on here, you will know that I am also in the "no excuses" camp.
2. I also believe that there is significant scope to nurture intermediate demand, at little or no marginal cost
3. It doesn't help those, like @Lineisclear or @Sidmouth4me who are doing their best by their lights for a railway they do love, to just kick them regardless of the direct relevance of an observation.

 

Actually, if the strategy for FS is--- mainly hired out around the country with just a few big railway trips--- then given its extraordinary popularity and pulling power, if that strategy creates a significant cash injection for the railways, that is not a bad idea. Obviously you've got to manage the event.................

 

Absolutely true, but if you are going to live by events, you have to be able to deliver them. That means the whole day - which starts and finishes at the car park! I’m not detecting too much criticism of the concept of hosting Flying Scotsman: the criticism is about the delivery as a total experience.

Tom

 

I've no problems with first two points, but I take exception to the third one! I'm giving kickings to those I think deserve them, not those who don't. I don't think I've had a pop at @Sidmouthforme - and that's because I don't think he's part of the management team;@ Lineisclear, on the other hand was and remains a very influential voice with the SMT. The changes he brought about on the Trust Board resulted in much of the loss of "institutional knowledge" from that source and replaced it with people who are much more familiar with balance sheets and accounting policies but who have a much diminished collective knowledge of running a railway - and if he rang around other recent hirers of 60103 he doesn't seem to have gained much useful information from them. I'm a 52+year supporter of the NYMR ad desperately want it to survive in the first instance, and then go on to prosper, but I don't see much to encourage me. The visit of 60103 should have been an opportunity to build up reserves for the next big development, but I think its more likely just about going to cover the wages bill till next Easter - if that! - and that's worrying if no other changes are forthcoming that the business boosted.

 

Well, The NYMR and Grosmont have been mentioned on BBC Yorkshire News for all the wrong reasons.

 

Illegal parking 'gridlocks' Grosmont during event - BBC News

 

Delivery and Communication

We were recently lucky enough to attend 'The Railway Children' play at Oxenhope. Even before we had bought the tickets there was advice about reduced parking at Oxenhope, which car parks to use at Keighley (but with an ask to use public transport where possible) and a special train from Keighley put on for each performance. Oh and 8F brought in specially to haul that train with extra coaches on hire from the VCT! It was also extremely well organized from the moment you approached Keighley station as well as one of the best theatre experiences I've ever had. A real credit to an almost entirely volunteer run railway. Even if something had gone wrong in all of that you could see the effort had gone in, the planning had been really carefully thought out. Everybody we saw left with smiles on there faces.

With the FS visit to the NYMR there wasn't any advice about parking until after it was already going wrong during the first couple of days. Even that advice is almost out of date as it recommends using Goathland or Pickering which won't have trains to Grosmont (except FS) next week. At least this week had one service running up and down the line even if the timings were a bit messy to connect with FS effectively. If this had been an event that attracted an unforeseen amount of people it might be forgiven, but its the Flying Scotsman! Tickets are prebooked. They know the numbers. Its about as predictable as you could possibly get!

 

My point is not about what either of them may or may not have done, but about the specific post and its response.

 

Not saying it is not an issue but 23 fines? I thought from what was been posted here it was a major gridlock disaster. 1700 fines in one weekend across Poole and Bournemouth is true parking difficulties. Plus of course council tax payers having to pay £200 a pop for every vehicle they towed away.

 

https://www.nymr.co.uk/News/parking-at-grosmont-station-during-flying-scotsmans-visit

Parking at Grosmont Station during Flying Scotsman's visit

Parking at Grosmont Station for this event is very limited.

Please only attend Grosmont Station during this event if you have a ticket to travel on our Flying Scotsman or North Yorkshire Pullman services, walk-up tickets are not available on the day.

 

Hardly a valid comparison. Poole and Bournemouth are both very large towns with a combined population of 350,000/400,000, depending on your definition. 1700 fines equate to one per 205/235 residents. By contrast, Grosmont is a small village with just one road through it and a population of 318. So those 23 fines equate to one per 14 residents.

 

For Goathland read Grosmont. Goathland is a well scattered moorland village with far more parking potential than in the narrow confines of a cramped settlement like Grosmont.

Peter

 

On the latest NYMR twitter ad for Xmas, someone has replied:
"Will Santa be bringing you more car parking?"

 

Thanks. I meant Grosmont, of course, and have amended my post accordingly.

 

Have you ever been to Grosmont? As someone who lives in a semi rural village I know what a PITA parking can be, trying to compare parking in 2 large conurbations in Dorset to a small village in North Yorkshire isn’t really fair. Apples and oranges spring to mind.

I’ll await your ‘well when I worked for BA… we did it like this response’

 

If on average each visit a traffic warden issues 1 parking fine and on this occasion then they issued 23 - then I would say that's a problem. As somebody pointed out - car park gets filled up with train one, train two pax arrive before train one leave - therefore nowhere to park and Grosmont isn't exactly a dual carriageway. So yup - chaos I would say. Mind you, despite the council saying "we've visited 54 times last year" I wouldn't put it past them to pay a visit of course!

 

I’m told that, following the publicity about the problem, some people were arriving very early in the day to get a parking space, even though they may not be travelling until the afternoon. That would compound the problem as they would occupy the space for a good number of hours.

 

Which from a passenger perspective is an entirely rational response to suggestions of limited parking.

Tom