North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

This reminds me a bit of some of the conversations about the WSR, where everyone could agree that the line was too long, but no-one could agree on which end should be mothballed!

The difficulty on the NYMR as I se it is that Whitby adds complexity and reduces flexibility - essentially, you have to start with thinking about Whitby in terms of timetabling, locos, rolling stock etc., at which point your options start getting constrained. For example, comment has been made upthread about offering more events, and the success of the Bluebell's Model Railway Weekend - which was great, but that sort of event was essentially built round two venues, with a frequent service between (the normal two train, 75 minute interval service, but with additional shuttles threaded in between). That all becomes harder to manage if (a) you don;t have the venues and (b) your timetable is constrained by the need to manage the Whitby service.

It's a difficult nut to crack, because I suspect both sides of the argument have elements where they are correct: on the one side that Whitby is where the passenger demand lays, but on the other that operating over Network Rail drives complexity into the railway and removes flexibility. On the Bluebell, if we need to adjust a timetable by 15 minutes to accommodate something to do with an event, it's fairly easy to do - much harder if the starting point for your timetable is set by Network Rail.

Tom

 

There's also the problem in that there's no proper road access to Grosmont, nor any space to expand maintenance or storage facilities. That's going to limit what you can do from that end. What really needs to happen is the Esk Valley line gets resignalled and a loop goes in at Sleights, so the frequency of Whitby services isn't entirely constrained by Northern services.

 

I received a communication today, which is self explanatory.
"I read the National Preservation forum on the NYMR.... I am getting concerned people might think the poster called Richards who has recently been quite uptight about another member is me. As I don't have a profile so can't post, would you mind putting up a post clarifying Richards is not me, i.e. the NYMR driver Mark Richards."
Job Done.