North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

Who does the overhauls on the locos the NYMR paid staff or the loco owners staff?

 

NELPG maintain their locos and the Essex Loco Society look after 825. Peter Best paid for the overhauls on 44806 and 2253 but they are now maintained by the NYMR paid staff, as are all the others afaik.

 

Well, I suspect the answer is probably fairly obvious, even if a little uncomfortable: that over a period of many years, they haven't put sufficient money into loco overhauls to keep up with a rolling programme of maintaining a stable fleet size.

Now, I realise that answer is pretty glib. And inevitably there are circumstances that make that difficult - overhauls get more expensive, so maintaining a steady fleet requires ever more money each year, not just a steady state cash flow. Very few railways - certainly amongst the larger ones operating big mainline engines - have the same sized fleet now as they did 20 years ago. And it hardly needs stating that you can't spend money you haven't got, even if you urgently need to do so. But the obvious answer to your question is about resources. The deeper question is about why the railway is no longer able to generate the level of income it needs to maintain its locos, carriages and infrastructure.

Even back in the 1980s when we had 12 or more locos available, you wouldn't be able to keep them all available all the time. We need three most weekends and I suspect have routinely had 4 - 5 available, with 2 -3 undergoing some kind of minor repair / washout at any one time. Even with 7 available, there has been the odd weekend when getting 3 available has been tight.

For a big event such as is coming up in August, you plan of course, aligning maintenance ands washout cycles so everything can run. But an event like that has been known about since the beginning of the year, and all sorts of cycles of washouts, annual boiler exams etc will have been being juggled to get everything available on one day. Same goes for carriages. One reason why the vintage sets see so much use over the summer is to allow time for maintenance on the side corridor Mark 1 set so it will definitely be available in October half term and again in December for pre-booked Halloween / Winter Lights / Santa trains. You don;t want to hammer that set over teh summer and then have it stopped for an exam when you have pre-booked tickets for it in October.

None of that is rocket science - it is a question of having a service plan for the year that everyone (commercial, operations, maintenance) all agree on, and then everyone does their bit to ensure that the things needed from their respective sphere of influence is ready when needed.

I was thinking about that statement, and what you need a CEO to do. I suspect that on most railways - and I'm sure on the NYMR - the respective departmental managers of infrastructure, loco, C&W, operations etc all pretty much know what they are doing and how to run their own department. So really the CEO needs to deliver two things above all else. Firstly, they need to put in place and then deliver an annual plan (and probably a longer-term one as well) so everyone is working to the same timescales: no good the loco manager saying "I need to bring this loco in for a washout" just when your Santa season is starting. And secondly, they need to deliver the revenue to allow those departments to function, to timescale. A workshop with half a dozen paid staff who can't get on because there isn't the money to buy some necessary materials is still burning money while providing no output.

So I think the "understanding of heritage railways" is a bit nuanced. They don't need to know the minutiae of any of the specialist railway disciplines; you have managers for that. What they do need to be able to do is firstly appreciate the systems nature of a railway (how everything impacts on everything else); secondly to have the confidence to challenge the specialists about the necessity of any spending - but then the humility to concede when the requirement to spend is clearly articulated; but above all the commercial focus to keep the money flowing. If the money is there, the rest of the railway will look after itself.

Tom

 

Steam wise with Manston away my line has 3 locos, as does the MHR as far as I know. Bluebell has more but I suspect could not turn out the 7 they will need for the next gala without some pre planning. @Jamessquared may know the average daily availability.
I appreciate this was not targeted towards me - and I don't know as much about the loco department as others will, but I can talk to some extent about the Bluebell loco situation.

Running fleet:
34059
73082
80151
32424
65
72
2999

That is indeed seven locos. However, three are needed to run most weekends. And, there are caveats with some of the above engines. 2999 is obviously on hire, to cover for the loss of 6989 I believe. 72 is not big enough for regular service trains other than off season. 65 is on its last legs with a year left on its ticket. 32424 has had lots of down time recently and I think needed attention in the works. Basically since Covid it has been a pool of 4-6 ish locos hauling the brunt of trains. There have been times when diesel substitution has occurred very last minute. I also note that throughout much of the summer holidays only two engines are ever steamed - 33108 is the third at weekends. Whilst the situation is not dire at this moment, there is still an engine on hire, and it seems tight.

I'll let @Jamessquared correct and augment my comments as he is from loco.

 

I think there's a third leg to this, as the other two are really only facets of senior management (as distinct from task management). Over and above those two, the role of a Chief Exec is to set the tone of the organisation. There's a layer over and above the tasks of holding people accountable for delivering, where a good CEO can cause the organisation to deliver more than the sum of the parts, and a poor one can make it deliver less than the sum of the parts. That can be simplistically summed up as "leadership", and is not really about management at all.

 

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1LSe5CH6Z3/

2253 on a very well loaded 7 coaches this afternoon.

 

2253 is no doubt a very good investment and will likely pay for itself pretty quickly in this spell of weather. 7 well filled Mk 1s = good income, its how this is replicated, sustained & built upon - but it shows there is demand.

What is concerning is the comments about lack of investment in infrastructure. This is building up huge issues in the future on what is an 18 mile line, which could bite at any point - just as the bridge did this year. Very much a false economy.