North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

The event is 23rd May onwards. It starts on the day the full line will be available to be open.

 

Financial suicide has long been the specialty of the current NYMR management (by which I do not mean the current CEO, but the layers above her). They have lost massive amounts of money for several years running, now.

Noel

 

If the work is complete?

 

thanks. It was the Mattel fee that wasn't specifically mentioned and I couldn't reconcile and that affected every otherr calculation. Is this an accurate figure or a finger in the air one?

 

This event was put in the schedule before Bridge 42 was delayed, so any calcs should be done assuming Whitby trains would have run as normal if the event wasn't there. That's certainly the information the so called management team would have had in front of them when they decided to run it.

 

Thanks. I thought Ramsbottom was further than that but it was an estimate from google Maps. Still significantly different, though.

 

Deleted. Duplicate post.

 

Its such a shame IMO. On the one hand I applaud them for trying Thomas again after all these years. Getting kids interested is what will determine the longer term fate of all of our railways. But to cut off your core market at any time just seems ridiculous. Especially when you are financial dire straights! If that is a condition that can't be worked around then this event should never have been put in for those dates. Maybe they could have run it before the 'grand' reopening. But if Bridge 42 is open the Whitby trains need to run. Its as simple as that.

 

Tom's correct with this. It was @Sidmouth4me who I was referring to. His posts were far more informative and someone I voted for when he put up for Trust Board.

 

Interesting he hasn't posted since December, but was last seen on here yesterday. At least that means he's still reading here and hopefully using comments where he can.

 

There could be a resurgence of interest in Thomas in the next few years, Mattel have a new season broadcasting on Channel 5 from the autumn which returns to using models (or at least things that look like models but are probably AI) and pleasingly with stories that 'reflect the heritage of the brand'. This is welcome, after the rubbish cartoon animation from the last time we saw Thomas on telly. Thomas the Tank engine gets a makeover and new look - BBC Newsround

 

Unlike so many other railways, NYMR does have large numbers travelling through the main season. Any interruption to that season needs to be worth it.

It's a figure quoted by other lines who host Thomas.

There will be pent up demand for Whitby due to the bridge closure. It's common to see the first train to Whitby of six carriages loaded to around 70% or more. Roughly 300 seats or more. Maybe over 200 passengers. I've been on it with load seven and found the last two free seats.
We never see actual figures. Everything is shrouded in secrecy, yet they have more data than ever before. What are they hiding?

 

I’m not so sure. I suspect that the management were aware of the likelihood that the works would be delayed well before it was public knowledge.

 

Are you sure? I would think that the people who were commuting (daily; or weekly, or whatever) to Whitby would have found alternative means of travel during the closure. I expect some will prefer the train, and will switch back, but not all will.

I can come up with numerous plausible explanations, but there's no way to select one as the correct one (heck, there may be multiple correct ones), so I won't bother to give them (and there's apparently no way to fix the problem(s) leading to them, either). All I can do, sadly, is sit back and watch the Greek tragedy of the NYMR play out.

Noel

 

????? I think the pent-up demand that was referred to by a previous poster will be from holidaymakers staying in and around Whitby. I suspect the pent-up demand from those using the NYMR service as a commuter service could be estimated using the fingers of one hand!

 

Won't their holiday be over, and most of them gone, by the time the propping is done, and the line open? (Yes, there will be some new/replacement holiday-makers, to effectively replace the ones leaving, but surely the possible potential backlog is capped in size by the average holiday duration?)

Ah; I had assumed the service to Whitby was used by people commuting; I gather that was incorrect. (I'm not local, so I have no direct knowledge of who was using the service.)

Noel

 

They are hiding the fact that passenger numbers are no where near those of a few years ago. At an open forum last yer, Laura point blank refused to answer a question about traffic figures asked by one person, dismissing it with the comment that they are not relevant and it is income that counts. If you take last years traffici ncome and divide that by an average fare of £30 the you only get 144,000 passengers, nothing like the 300,000 quoted a few years ago.

 

But has average journey length stayed the same? Put it another way, maybe passengers, passenger miles and revenues are all relevant metrics.

 

She also seems to be missing the point that, at a fundamental level, income is largely related to the number of passengers travelling, whether they are bucket & spade carriers or people in their finery travelling on the diner - and a CEO with anything more than half an idea of what they are doing will recognise that all categories will make a contribution, provided they are being carried at a profitable rate, and that a profitable rate will will not not be the same across all the categories1