North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

Thanks for the positive suggestion. Such communication must also be clear and honest. As Steve is so fond of saying Bulls*** baffles brains. It doesn’t have to the CEO or either Chair but I agree communication should be better. That also requires willingness by all involved to listen and be prepared to change possibly deeply held beliefs.

 

Firstly, just let me say that as with several others here, while I frequently disagree with what you say, I absolutely support your right to hold the views you have, and welcome the engagement here: a one-sided debate is not a debate at all.

I'm sure you would also agree that the railway is in a difficult financial position, and therefore needs to increase income, or cut costs, or both. Where I am not sure is what your prescription is for that: I've got the sense from you of lots of things that can't be done, but not much of what can be done.

On the cost-cutting side: you seem to have ruled out significant staff cuts, on the grounds that redundancy is expensive. I agree with the latter point, and also that redundancy should be avoided if at all possible, not just on cost grounds, but for moral / morale reasons. But that doesn't mean headcount can't go down through natural attrition: it requires a laser-like focus to avoid new recruitment when someone leaves, always asking the question "could a volunteer do that? or "could an existing member of staff have their job boundaries shifted?"

Frequently when the subject of volunteers comes up, particularly when doing individual critical roles, your stock response has been "volunteers can't do that". I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you are talking less about capability, and more from an overly-legalistic reading of the point that volunteers can't be forced to do any particular kind of work or at given times, and therefore can't be relied on to do time-critical stuff: while there may be a legal nugget of truth in that, I'd encourage you to simply look around the rest of the sector - and the wider volunteer community - where thousands of people are doing critical jobs, and ask yourself "how do they manage to get volunteers for roles we fill with paid staff?"

The other elements of cost cutting you have put forward is around reducing service and reduced use of steam. On that latter point, it comes from weak economics in my view, an over-emphasis on just the fuel costs within the overall cost base. Fuel is only part of the traction cost, and traction is only part of the operating cost. On the latter point, while clearly it doesn't make sense to cart volumes of empty space around, you can't cut your way to profitability in a business that has high fixed costs and low variable costs. If you cut the service, all you end up doing is spreading the fixed cost over a smaller base, which just adds to the cost pressures - and therefore disincentive to travel - on those remaining passengers.

So much for reducing costs, what about increasing revenue? This is where I have drawn an almost complete blank in your writings. As far as I can see, the one solid idea is "appeal to grant-giving bodies". But you can't build a business case around that: grants should be the icing on the cake, not the cake itself. I think from your writings the Arts Council England grant was of the order of £1m - which is great, but over how long? How many years are you going between each £1m grant, because that is the duration you have to amortise the cost. In other words, gaining a £1m grant is great for the article in that month's Heritage Railway magazine; but leaves you nothing in other years. And even then, a grant isn't free money: you have to deliver something for it, so the impact on the railways profitability may be much less than the grant suggests. Great if it achieves an objective you already had - restores a building, or modernises your IT, for example - but the headline figure rarely makes as big an impact on the funding deficit as might seem. If you are not careful, a £7m p.a. organisation losing £500k per year can get a £1m grant and become an £8m p.a. organisation still losing £500k per year!

Beyond that, I'm at a loss as to what your revenue generation ideas are. You seem to have no desire to increase membership numbers, seeing them as a financial drain, even though in hard cash terms, members provide a small but welcome boost to finances. You seem to have more or less written off passenger growth, putting forward many (valid) reasons why current cost pressures might dissuade passengers, but without the further thought about how you could challenge that.

So the TL,DR: you have to cut costs, or grow revenue. Everyone agrees on that. But what I hear from you inevitably boils down to reasons why costs can't be cut, and reasons why revenue can't be grown, and a "Hail Mary" move that the answer will come from increased grants. So the valid question is: what does your financial future look like? How do you propose to balance the books?

Tom

 

Precisely that. All need to be willing to listen and change beliefs if required. All I would add is that it will require a sustained and sincere effort from the board and management and that the first move should come from the board and management and preferably before the morale becomes worse. Waiting until the frustration turns into anger would be a mistake.

 

From what I have been reading on here, with no personal knowledge, the railway will sink unless someone takes drastic action. As the management seem only to be rearranging the deck chairs so that less people can sit on them, a threat of a volunteer strike is the only other apparent possibility.

Whether or not that social media policy is a good one in general, and whether or not it is appropriate for this particular railway at this particular time, those in charge need to engage somewhere.

 

Engagement is a two way street. Someone has to make a first move. Let's see what next week brings.
Sawdust.

 

Absolutely! Everyone needs to stop calling for some people to be silenced; and everyone needs to be civil to everyone - even people who they think are horribly wrong/confused! (Just calmy/politely explain to them how/where they are 'confused'.)

You make many good points, all of which I agree with - but let me focus in on this one.

Looking around the sector, I think the NYMR has to do both - but always 'focus' extremely intently on controlling costs. The current leading people at the NYMR have not, historically, been as intent on that as they should have been (or, slightly worse, been too cost-conscious in the wrong areas). Alas, current law means fixing a big part of that financial hole - on the expense side - will be a slow process. The line is now in a hole (in financial terms) which it can't quickly/easily escape from.


Which brings me to my second main point - one you didn't mention: financial help from supporters (in legacies, etc). The logic that follows there is very simple.

It is, I think, accepted by most everyone, that the NYMR needs substantial financial support (donated, not loaned) from the outside; without it, the line cannot long go on. (Hereinafter, 'point 1'.) How long 'long' will be, I don't know enough to say; a few years, is the impression I get.

Many (most?) of the people who could provide such donated substantial financial support from the outside are unwilling to do so, because they have lost confidence in the current management. (Hereinafter, 'point 2'.) (To confirm that perception, several of them have spoken publicly to this point).

It would seem to me that if the current management want the line to survive (which I accept that they do), point 2 indicates what they need to do, per point 1.

It has been previously said (in effect) that if people did not accept that they needed to contribute to the line, under its current management (like them or not). the line would fail. I would suggest that this gets hold of the wrong end of the stick; it is, instead, the current management who need to make a decision, under point 2.

That would not guarantee the long-term success of the line, of course; a number of steps (which I won't detail) would have to follow. But without the first step, none of the others could follow. I seem to recall a quotation, which I cannot at the moment recall, about how when sacrifices are called for, everyone must sacrifice. Just so.

Also, having sacrificed themselves, they would then be in a more favourable/believable position to request that people who are, legally difficult-to-change, part of the line's current unsustainable cost structure, follow their example. (In effect, to start digging out of the hole the line is in, on costs.) Yes, if many of those people do as requested, the line will have to move quickly to replace those who are essential, with volunteers. But, financial holes don't vanish easily.


Mind, I do not expect the current management of the line to see the logic laid out here, and follow it. Then again, had they been perceptive, they wouldn't have painted the line into its current inescapable corner, by trying to adopt an unworkable business model for the 'business' aspect of the line (which involved hiring/retaining - the problem pre-dates them - a lot of un-fireable staff, etc).

We shall see, though, what is truly the most important thing to them: a) retaining their control of the line; or b) the continued existence of the line. Because points 1 and 2, if correct, say that those two goals are incompatible.

Noel

 

I feel that I have been misrepresented by @Lineisclear over the course of this argument. It is true that I do feel that there are some high high salaries in the SMT that could usefully be reduced, particularly certain ones at the top of the tree who are paid as consultants and could be terminated quickly, with their roles taken up by other members of staff, and it is quite probable that natural wastage could be usefully employed if there wasn't such a headlong rush to replace anyone who leaves. This really applies to administrative staff- all the engineering staff are desperately needed.

As others have said, communication is vital but I would phrase the need slightly differently: what the NYMR really needs is a people-friendly leader, someone who can unite the aid staff and volunteers to work together to fix the problems. There are people who can lead in individual areas, but what is needed is someone who can orchestrate them. Sad to say, the present CEO does not seem to be that person, and she seems to have only one weapon in her armoury, which is seemingly one of longer term destruction - cut maintenance budgets, cut anything that looks like it might involve more effort than picking up a phone, run down services and price the business out of existence. She has had her chance and has failed to make anything better, on the whole. It is now time to say "Thanks, but it's not working" and move on.

 

Tom,
I agree fully with your assessment. I think the underlying problem for the sector is that a model that is based on the public paying enough to make heritage railways viable is becoming increasingly unrealistic. My personal conclusion is that costs can’t be cut enough to restore its viability, at least not without making the railway a lot smaller. That leaves new sources of income which need to generate a huge amount over the next few years. Far from not valuing members I think they are potentially the salvation of the NYMR and some others. When you join an organisation engaged in most other leisure activities you expect to pay fees that ensure the organisation is viable. After all that is how the NYMR started before it could sell tickets to the public. If the capacity of the public to cough up is no longer sufficient I think the burden has to fall more on the shoulders of those who want to see their railways continue. Conversion of the operating entity to CCBS potentially offers its investors ( including the wider community) the opportunity to vote on the way the railway operates instead of the very limited voting influence in a traditional charity. The question is whether such closer involvement and greater influence can justify higher membership fees? I think it may come to a choice between that and full or partial closure as I can’t see the very substantial sums required coming from anywhere else.

 

People are not going to donate (myself included) without seeing both a change in attitude and more importantly a plan to reduce the cost of administration, along with debt reduction and increased spending on the infrastructure.

Sawdust.

 

Absolutely. There's no point raising more money if it is all just going to end up p****d down the same bottomless pit. We have all - except @Lineisclear! - saying that the cost base has to be reduced, particularly in the administrative arena. It reeks of the Thatcherite era of having so many people working out the cost of everything that any potential savings to be had are dwarfed by the admin cost of finding them!

 

delete double post

 

Then smaller it must be.

Sawdust.