North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

It's the biggest weekend and half term of the year in Whitby. The railway is closed today and tomorrow. It's nuts.

 

Negative waves again (I jest!) At one time, the NYMR did have a significant business with coach tour operators, but it was allowed to lapse for various reasons - the discounts that had to be offered and the fact that most journeys tended to be one-way only - meaning that the coaches had to access Grosmont at some point, which wasn't ideal, given the roads in and out in both directions. On the other hand, coach tours do provide some certainty of business, so perhaps one part of any new business plan ought to be to try to revive them in some degree - maybe from Pickering to Goathland, and on internal services? Others may not agree, but I'm still convinced that the NYMR has increase its visitor numbers by whatever means it can.

 

The idea of the NYMR doing dynamic pricing is suicidal and could only come from a mind wildly out of touch with reality. Heritage railways need a set price point per journey. Offer specific discounts for low traffic weeks or for the last return of the day, but making dynamic pricing a part of the model can't even be a serious suggestion, can it? Do you have any concept of how unpopular it is in every other part of life where it's been tried?

 

....and that in itself sums up the current management. Not a ******* clue! (and I think we have seen that applies too to their very (but seemingly only) vocal supporter!)

 

Embsay has been mentioned; the experience there suggests that the questions are about degree (the railway is now almost entirely oriented towards coach traffic), and managing the reservations so that coach parties get their seats (easier for a Pickering - Goathland journey than the opposite, for example).

Commercially, it's a form of dynamic pricing - offering discounts for volume and early booking (better still if early payment can be achieved!). But that takes us back to understanding the customers and the segments they fall into - something that recent years' results suggest seem not to have been a strength

 

I’m not sure that the coach tour is as prevalent as it was pre-Covid. It may have recovered somewhat in the last couple of years since I stopped observing, but there was a cliff edge drop in 2020 that was very slow to come back, and hadn’t reached the levels pre that. So it may now be much more difficult to find coach firms that want to come at all?

 

Load 6 …

 

Just remind me which railway’s management decided earlier this year decided to reduce ticket prices in the summer school holidays .

I suppose we should be grateful NYMR have managed to run any full line trains this week and not replaced them with a Thomas or Bluey event that claims to cover its costs instead .

Keep on leaving those begging envelopes around and wonder why no one donates …

 

A slight improvement on last year I suppose - October half term week last year, Flying Scotsman hauling prebooked trains, non Flying Scotsman services were only 5 coaches long and completley packed. Oh and no services running on the Thursday + Friday last year either.

 

I certainly wouldn't suggest trying to build a business that is heavily focused on coach tours to the exclusion of "turn up on the day" visitors, but surely any well-run business should be looking to maintain a range of customer types to diversify its risks? The apparent lack of interest in any form of commercial variation or experimentation in the face of declining visitor numbers and ongoing annual losses leaves me completely bewildered when the most senior one of them started out as the marketing manager (although I don't think she was very highly regarded in that role either). It's almost as if the senior management don't really care, since they'll still get paid.

 

I agree that all avenues should be explored. I wasn’t commenting on the competence or activity of individuals, just reflecting that the market has definitely shifted where coach parties are concerned.

I think it is important to be tolerant of mistakes at present. There is no stability in the market for days out, the pressure on cost of living sees to that. A lot of experimentation is required.

Of course if you are going to experiment it’s essential that everyone knows what is going on. Both the potential market and the internal stakeholders have to understand, and those are things which don’t seem to be very well executed at present.

 

By all accounts the place is heaving and a parking wardens paradise.

 

The contributions of both the outgoing Trust Chairman and the PLC Director were woeful and symtomatic of the incompetence and complacency which has brought the line to it's knees.

The incoming Chair of Trustees was slightly more hopeful though I think more could and should have been said about the need for more revenue coupled to major reductions in non-productive staff. I do acknowlege he needs to establish himself in the role but unless he acts quickly there will be nothing left to chair.

Overall a thorough waste of time and I am very cynical about whether any meeting "planned" for early 2027 will take place as there is no legal requirement. Trustees and PLC Directors including the CEO clearly have no wish to face further awkward questions.

An exercise in whitewash.

 

A dreadful box ticking exercise that lasted a whole 22 minutes. It came across as a politburo briefing. The CEO was not at the table and was seated in the audience being briefly included once.

Will the meeting in the new year be recorded and will it be open to questions, especially from shareholders, many of whom live miles from the Railway?

The incoming chairman did give grounds for optimism, I hope he will not be "got at".

 

Wow! I have a day out and about and I come back to over 30 posts.
you keep trotting out the 'what's matters is generating surplus' line and ignoring everything else associated with it. Did the CEO learn it from you or did you learn it from her? Yes, you have to make a surplus but you can't make a surplus without revenue so the latter is just as important. what you also seem to be conveniently forgetting is that that surplus is also very much dependent on costs and, strangely enough, if that cost base comes down the surplus becomes easier to achieve from that revenue stream. We (hopefully) all know that costs can be divided into fixed and variable costs. Those fixed costs are there whether you run trains or not and, if you amortise those fixed costs over every train run, then the more trains you run, the cheaper they get to do so. Now, even I am not daft enough to take that to a conclusion based simply on that fact. @Jamessquared has said several times on here that the direct costs of running trains is relatively small and, by inference, a train doesn't have to carry too many passengers to make it worthwhile doing and contributing to income whilst the fixed costs remain just that; fixed. As long as a train more than covers its direct costs, can be worth running. Of course, there is a point below which you can argue that it is not worth all the hassle to do so even if it makes money but that will always be subjective. Volunteers, especially, will want to think that the time they have given to the railway has been worth it.
I'll not go into fixed costs and, in particular, the wages bill, as we've done that to death

 

It’s not a case of avoiding questions but being able to give definitive answers. As was confirmed next season’s business plan is being finalised. Once it’s completed Trustees and management will be able to give much more informative responses to questions. In the meantime the two AGMs had to meet the deadline for the basic statutory formalities which are of very limited interest to most Trust members and PLC shareholders.

 

I have it in good authority that the main reason for five day running for the last two years is to give the railway a better chance of getting through the season by reducing the wear and tear on track and infrastructure and give the MPD a chance of providing sufficient locos to run the service. Whilst the adoption of this principle may be right, the execution of it has been totally misguided.

 

I get this but will spare myself the 22 minutes of YouTube. However, that then puts the focus sharply onto the quality of stakeholder engagement - the impact of the very welcome YouTube video is undermined by the lack of substance in what was said. I don't regard the incomplete state of the business plan as a justification for this. Even accepting (reluctantly) that not having it yet is a necessary evil given the nature of the business, I'd expect some level of ability to answer at a strategic level which sadly doesn't appear to have been in evidence.

 

AGM's used to be interesting and lively events with a packed Memorial Hall. They were a social event well worth going to and the various presentations were informative and gave food for thought. This weeks AGM was affectively a cowards way of hiding behind a screen and avoid answering awkward questions, relying on the fact that they could legally do so. It was pathetic and those that agreed to it should hang their heads in shame.