North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

I don't want to reopen the debate on charitable objectives but, since the latest ones were devised and the railway imported people from the wider heritage sector, including a GM with no railway background, and consultants obsessed with how to be another Beamish, the railway has certainly found itself in a new position - halfway up sh*t creek.

 

And, where secondary spend is concerned, it always needs to be remembered that it is not £5-£10 profit to the railway, but £5-£10 income that has to pay the costs of what has been purchased.

 

Surely this is a bit like Khan's (highly dubious?) argument about the cost of London Freedom passes.
It is only lost revenue if you actually have to pay out, or lose revenue from someone else if the train is full to carry that person. They may actually spend something whilst they are there. Now in the London case TFL may have to pay something to the NR TOC's I suspect, but on TFL services then I suspect many Freedom pass holders, or in our case Heritage Line season ticket holders (which is what free membership travel would be) may not even reach the threshold if they had to pay for every trip.
The years I have had a season ticket on my local line (which is 4.65 times the price of membership) it is rare that I make more than one round trip at a time and to be honest most of those would not be made at £22 a time. Yes I may buy a book or some magazines, but I also feel it does give any attraction a better look if people see that there is actually some usage going on.
I agree it is all a balancing act.

 

If travel is free and used regularly, I can see the secondary spend actually being less (if you go once, it's a special event, have some food and drink, buy stuff from the shop etc, but if you go frequently, it's not an event, you've seen all the stuff in the shop, put that book back as you might buy it next time, just have a cup of tea and bring a sandwich).
The railway makes nothing from the farebox and less secondary spend per trip.
From a cold hard marketing and sales perspective, I can see why membership isn't a good deal for the railway.
(FTAOD, I can see lots of good reasons for membership)

 

After a lot of soul searching I’ve just renewed my membership. £60 is a lot to pay for four poor magazines a year ( I get free travel in any case) but I do want the railway to survive and prosper and being a member is one way to support it.

 

Many thousands of hours and much research effort has gone into arguing about the reimbursement factor! I think there are three differences. On the NYMR you have to pay for your card ( £60 half fare £150 free). Plenty of pensioner travel in London is not optional whereas all travel on NYMR is. Thirdly, virtually everyone in London lives within walking distance of the network. Unless you happen to live in Pickering or Whitby, maybe Malton, there is a significant cost in getting to the NYMR. These all affect the equation.

Actually I think the NYMR tariff structure as a whole this year is pretty sensible. Whether discounting at the busiest time of year makes sense, not sure. And why you can't buy a three station trip on line I don't know. I'd have thought train to Goathland, walk down to Grosmont, train back would be one of the most popular itineraries. But those are just two specifics.

 

Is that not the £24.95 fare, Pickering to Grosmont return although you would be leaving short at Goathland?

 

No, because technically you don't have a ticket from Grosmont to Goathland then. There is a £34.95 one that allows a full line trip, but you can't buy it online.

 

The formica and melamine look is correct for a late-build Mk.1 - you might not like it personally or think it 'vintage' enough but that doesn't mean it hasn't been "properly restored".

 

We had some hard data presented at the Bluebell AGM last weekend which allowed putting some numbers to it.

We have two classes of membership: life members (who currently pay something like £900, but who of course may have joined years ago) get unlimited free travel. Annual members get half price travel.

Ticket data shows that on average, life members make 1.2 visits per year and annual members 1.4 visits. From that, and the membership numbers, you can work out that the fares “foregone” by discount / free tickets amounts to £154,000 per year based on advance prices, but the amount collected in subscriptions was £181,000. So it is actually cash-positive: not by a huge amount, but sufficient I think to dispel the characterisation that membership is an inevitable drain on resources. (Obviously, that is based on our fare and membership structure).

More importantly, I think given that cash impact, I think the intangible benefits of having a large membership are more than worthwhile. That view is strengthened because the financial impact is minimal, even allowing for the other costs such as a magazine.

Tom

 

Sorry, a shorthand. What I have in mind are the MK1s sold into preservation that had been “modernised” and which have generally been maintained “as preserved” rather than restored to as built condition.

But in the context of comments here, I think there is a significant difference in atmosphere between a) the teams, b) 1940s/50s era “original” condition vehicles and c) later interiors.

 

Interesting stuff, thanks Tom. I wonder how many visits it would take to make it cash-negative?
I'd also look at how many "tag alongs" they get, ie taking a grandchild for a day out as it "only" costs the child fair (until you hit the gift shop, cafe etc)

 

I’m sure you could go very granular in the modelling, but I suspect in the end you wouldn’t come too far away from those figures. For example, if people use their discount to buy gala tickets, the amount “foregone” is a bit more, but I doubt however you cut it, you are going to find membership in our case is either positive, or very low negative. We aren’t foregoing hundreds of thousands of pounds in lost fares.

At which point two further things come into play. The first is that the costs of hauling those passengers are near zero - they are occupying otherwise empty seats, we aren’t putting on additional trains. And the second is that there is a massive “soft” benefit of a large membership in providing a resource bank of skills and advice, and a group of stakeholders who might turn into donors. And then, not least in the case of the NYMR who have set their stall out to chase grants - how much better does it sound to a grant-awarding body if you can say “this railway is special, to the extent that 10,000 people care enough to join as members” relative to “this railway is special, to the extent that 1,000 people care enough to join as members”. In other words - numbers matter.

Tom

 

Out of curiosity, what is the labour impact of membership? To what extent does maintaining a membership require volunteers to divert from other tasks, either directly (eg membership secretary) or in publicity (eg your role in Bluebell Times)?

 

I think that is very difficult to answer. BT isn’t a membership publication, so isn’t a valid comparison, but Bluebell News is produced explicitly for the membership. So let’s assume I spend 1 day per quarter on that to produce the loco report. If every other contributor does pro-rata levels of effort, plus there is editorial work - all done by volunteers - let’s say that production requires 50 days per quarter. The issue is whether that effort is opportunity cost in other areas. In my case the answer is clearly no - if I didn’t do that one day per quarter, it wouldn’t translate to one extra day of availability for footplate work. Mostly that is because the time is different: a day on the footplate is a whole day away from home (and probably in my case the evening before) and the family in which I can’t do anything else. Whereas the one day of effort writing an article is largely done at home and in convenient breaks between other domestic tasks.

So undoubtedly managing a membership society generates some work which wouldn’t otherwise need to take place, but it is far from clear cut that doing such work represents an opportunity cost on other areas of volunteering (with I assume the subtext “which might be more closely related to running a railway”).

There is also the point of course that tasks such as running a membership list or producing a magazine don’t scale with size of the membership. I’d spend a day per quarter writing an article whether 1,000 or 10,000 people received it. So even if there is an opportunity cost, that isn’t an argument for shrinking the membership base; and there are plenty of other good arguments for growing it.

Tom

 

Thanks - somewhat as I suspected, that the effort is incremental but probably not to the detriment of other volunteering.

 

As a result of a journey on the Lakes Express, I was very fond of speeding along in unrestored Mk1 toilets when they still existed on the mainline.

 

Just a little annecdote:

I'm a volunteer at 'my line', to which I went this afternoon for a round trip.
I've spent many hours at home over the past week writing and reviewing timetables, and sending emails regarding railway matters.
I payed nothing to get on the train, as I'm a volunteer.
I sat in a spare seat, so didn't waste space.
I got chatting to a passenger and was telling him about the line and its operation.
I also took a photo for some other passengers, pointed two groups in the right direction for toilets, and told someone confused what station we were passing.
I spent a fiver in the buffet car.
Upon arrival back, I closed about 20 quaterlights to help the staff lock up the set.
This weekend I'll be dressed up on the platform, giving my time again for free, in seemingly sweltering heat.

To be honest, I think my free ride today was of net benefit to the railway.
Appologies that was a little random but hopefully related to the topic of membership etc.