North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

People do make mistakes you know. I made them all the time during my working life, the knack is either to correct it quickly when noticed or make sure they are not too important. And a train that runs on two days between Grosmont and Goathland at 10:15 on a Sunday is hardly a massive mistake.

 

It's not a massive mistake, but like @60044 says, it appears to show a lack of care and attention to detail. The updated timetable is now on the website. It's the beginning of May, the line has been running services for 6 weeks, and that timetable is the twelfth one that has been uploaded so far this year! I get that the situation has been constantly evolving, but it just makes the railway look sloppy and amateur.

 

I think it would be helpful (in the latest Whitby/Goathland TT) if the Sunday timetable was labelled as Sundays, rather than just using the dates.

 

More photos of the B42 works have been posted on the Unofficial NYMR FB site.
A coffer dam erected to create a dry area on the shed side of the bridge, and a sleeper pad laid …..

 

A real concern must be that if we are seeing a myriad of small mistakes not being detected by proofreading, how many larger ones are being made in the documents that we don't get to see. Professionalism should start from the highest level and work its way down but does it?

 

I broadly agree, but there needs to be some care not to form a hanging jury on the basis that, because they're wrong on the major things, they're therefore unutterably inept.

 

I made a point based on my own observations, I did not make an accusation; everyone is free to do the same as I have done. Perhaps I am being unfair, so I'll be interested to hear what others think!

 

We have had so many timetables but my concern is that the Grosmont public meeting, on April 13th,gave the Mayday weekend as the reopening date yet, just ten days later, the reopening was moved to 23rd of May. Three weeks later.

Was this already known about? Or did the management have heads in the sand?

 

Did they say May Day weekend or May Bank Holiday. People always seem to hear what they want to hear over these two (never understand the purpose of the one this weekend anyway).
Maybe the railway misquoted, maybe people misheard, but the dates align with what is officially The Spring Bank Holiday.
Was it officially minuted or recorded?

 

It was May Day weekend. First through services were meant to be Saturday 2nd May.



They're still in the damming and foundation installation phase by the looks of it.

 

Mind you it does only say "our goal".
I spent my life managing or working on projects that had a goal that was rarely achieved. I think the "best?" was our SAP installation that was about 5 years late and descoped from the original plan. Still it gave the SWR 701 introduction a run for its money.

 

The bridge appeal total has reached £240,000.
Good news

 

That was dated 21st April. That was the last time they updated anything regarding the bridge. It's really quite embarrassing that they can't even be bothered with weekly updates about a project that costing them a huge amount of money, both in expenses and lost income. Two months minimum with no Whitby services, I wouldn't be surprised if they were at least a million quid down on where they should be at this time of year.

Anyway, thanks to North Yorkshire Weather Updates, here are some photos of the propping commencing today.

https://www.facebook.com/share/1ayPM11QwU/





15 days to get the bridge propped, everything cleared away from site, point rodding and signalling reconnected, everything inspected and tested. Weather forecast is looking unsettled which won't help matters either.

 

I think there’s a lot more embarrassing stuff than that going on. I received an email today with a copy of the latest weekly newsletter, the email said that the cost of propping so far is upwards of £650,000 and that there’s another 4 bridges that need propping before any kind of reopening can take place, meanwhile the newsletter tells of another appointment in the commercial team.

if the figure of a million lost is twice what it really is they have still suffered costs of over £1.1m and still have money to spend on new staff . Time must be running out for this railway.

 

Thanks for posting those - most interesting. The original drawings for the proppings (visible here) show a slightly different structure: a pair of smallish square piers, underneath each up-/down-river support girder. They have actually built full-length piers instead, which is actually better. The load imposed through the props is spread over a larger area of river-bed, so there is less chance of subsidence there (and thus less chance of the pier tilting under load).

Noel

 

I get the NYMR staff & volunteer weekly newsletter and i've just looked back at it. No mention there of £650K or additional bridges needing propping although I do know that Br.18 has been mentioned previously. Which newsletter are you referring to?

 

The OP did say "I received an email today with a copy of the latest weekly newsletter, the email said that the cost of propping so far is upwards of £650,000 and that there’s another 4 bridges that need propping" (emphasis added), so if correct, it wasn't in the newsletter.

PS: If the propping alone is in fact "upwards of £650,000" (and if that clause is correctly copied from that email, and is indeed the cost of the propping alone - which I can believe, looking at the size of the crew they have working on it), that's more than previously estimated for that phase. I can't be bothered to dig up the original estimate for that, but in an April news update, the line said "NYMR aims to raise a minimum of £800,000 to enable the necessary repairs to be completed", which I assume is a total for both the repair and the propping. There's no way the repairs are going to cost only (£800,000 - £650,000) = £150,000.

PPS: I was somewhat dubious about that "the cost of propping so far is upwards of £650,000"; I looked, and found this news item: Major funding milestone of over £130k reached for vital Bridge 42 project - "the total cost of the propping works, including hire and removal, is approximately £250,000". Although it's possible the cost of the propping has gone from £250,000 to £650,000, I suspect it's more likely that the person who sent the original email made a mistake.

Noel

 

You’re right. My bad reading.