North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

Regarding the £49.50 annual fare. The issue for me is that it is rarely just that. If a couple then I am struggling to persuade a non-enthusiast wife that we should spend c£100 for two of us for a train ride. As a consequence, whilst I live in Bradford and now travel regularly to visit my Mum in Scarborough I have only ridden on the line once since covid. I visit Pickering station and the shed shop at Grosmont from time to time (always spending money) but as I have other people in tow £100 minimum is out of my league (as the others are unlikely to want to ride again in the following 12 months).

Former NYMR member and volunteer at Grosmont 1982 to 1990, mainly for the DPS. I love the line and area.

 

I like the thinking, but I recall a conversation with Chris Price some years ago that suggested that price premium was partly a response to the situation before that time of chasing ever more bums on seats, but never actually being able to carry enough before the costs got bumped up as well. In other words the more you carry, the more trains, which means more cost…..

As always it must be a balance? I’d be interested to know what the trends in passenger numbers, revenue and profit have been. My guess is that the premium pricing has reduced numbers, but increased the surplus, BUT, costs have risen so rapidly over the last 5 years that the gain has been used up (and more) in just dealing with inflation.

 

Fair comment. I'm reminded of how pendulums work, and the fact that they rarely settle in the middle!

 

This is a while ago I know, but I think it is still relevant.
My wife and I visited the SVR back in Aug 2016 and did the whole line (with an upgrade to 1st class in the Gresley teaks) and a visit to the engine house. I can't remember the exact figure but it was something in the region of £20-25 each.
We then visited the NYMR in Oct 2017, joined at Goathland and travelled to Whitby. From memory, the prices were similar to what we had paid on the SVR.
We revisited the NYMR in Jul 2021 and travelled from Pickering to Goathland. Again from memory the price was similar to the SVR whole line/NYMR Goathland - Whitby.

My wife remarked on the relative costs (albeit several years apart) with the comment that the NYMR seemed very expensive compared to the SVR. It would also have been an attraction to have something similar to the engine house where we could have stopped for lunch/a cuppa.

In my opinion the £25 mark is a more reasonable fare for holidaymakers who are spending money on food, drinks, gifts and admission to other attractions. For families this becomes even more important as the costs for a day out can escalate very quickly.
Perhaps the NYMR should look at promoting fares and operating schedules that would appeal to those wanting to do part of the line?

 

As is often the case, threads on here cover a lot of ground, so I thought I'd pick up on a couple, the first being that of identity and where we as individuals might be 'coming from'. I understand the convention of using pseudonyms, but never got around to it. I'm a retired Probation Officer and Trustee of Leeds Civic Trust and Leeds Buildings Preservation Trust. I made the acquaintance of Nick Stringer in the early days of the NYMR lottery bid and he subsequently asked me to help set up the LNERCA's Kirby Misperton carriage facility. Right until his untimely death, we were planning on making a pitch to bring the former Pickering Blueberries teashop into beneficial use in similar fashion to the successful Grosmont Crossing Club. I still feel such a venture would have many benefits, not least that of helping to restore 'soul' to the NYMR. On many occasions I can't help but feel the organisation is run like a government department.

Poor communication is often cited and has only worsened in my experience. Why is this so with so many staff and a proliferation of social media platforms? Why is there no regular report from Board meetings to give some feel for direction or even a vision, let alone a shared one? No wonder rumour and misinformation fills the gaps. The NYMR has planning approval for a new carriage facility next to the stable. Is it in scope for financing any time soon and if so, what thought is there for re-configuring the Pickering Station site? What about the Station Hotel? Not more offices surely when volunteer accommodation in theory is a top priority? The list is actually endless, but what prompted my departure more than anything is a complete inability by management to understand the concept of meaningful engagement.

 

Just a comment re National Trust, it is nationwide with many properties, most with toilets which also are them useful as stop off points when travelling, Our holidays journeys often have a NT stop off for this reason. NYMR is not the same for families.

Sent from my SM-A556B using Tapatalk

 

Maybe best to consider alternative visitor attractions in the area such as Castle Howard (£65 family ticket), Flamingo Land (from £44.50 adult pre-booked, £35.50 OAP)), Eden Camp (£19 adult). All 3 offer various discounts and offers and some have free parking. It isn't obvious to me which market NYMR are now chasing but any business like a railway with high fixed costs needs customer volume to survive. A long and relatively expensive train ride is probably a poor value attraction to many families when rival attractions offer greater interest for all age groups (children's play areas, animal petting etc.). Meanwhile the traditional "grey pound" customers are also being squeezed by cost of living issues and having probably previously travelled don't feel obliged to do so again unless they can see significant benefit from the annual pass element.

In fairness to the NYMR the Welsh Highland full line £69.50 adult return fare is much higher and doesn't feature the free return element but reference to the Society magazine, which does give a lot of information about passenger volumes, also shows the popularity and demand for shorter cheaper journeys with many alternative options between the two railways serving Porthmadog. It is also apparent that cheaper one way trips by coach parties (or return by bus) form a significant part of their business model.

 

The management are clearly getting rattled by the criticism here and elsewhere, and have decided they need to fight back and stifle any criticism:

(the message here posted by Roger Melton, NYMR member since 1971 , founder of the 80135 fund in 1972 (when I was still at school!), Former editor of NELPG news 1976-9 and NELPG committee member till work caused me to move to Salisbury), later Chairman of the LNERCA for over 20 years, when the the working teak fleet went from 0 to 7, and for which I successfully wrote several grant applications to HLF and other bodies)

Clearly they are devoting a lot of time to trying to manage and suppress the criticim, but seemingly none whatsoever to dealing with the inadequacies and/or shortcomings in their own approach that gives rise to them. Stupid, in my view; you don't fight a fire by throwing petrol on it!

 

Wow! This is surely straight from the Greg Wallace book of how to deal with negative media.

 

Just to add, the photograph of a blog post above is of a post made last August, rather than something that's come out in the last few weeks.

 

A reaction to criticism that neatly personifies how out of touch the SMT is. But I think most of you reading this thread will have gathered that from the musings of their surrogate mouthpiece on this board.

 

First time I (and many other s) have heard of it, though! It has just been posted on FB. Doesn't seem to have worked, though, does it?

 

Yes. Although I can see why (say) a 50% premium over the SVR, for the Whitby and moors factor, makes sense and brings it to £37.50, £49 does look pretty steep by comparison.

Also the balance between families with children and couples/singles without seems a bit skewed. Two parents and three children paying exactly the same as a couple looks pretty bad value for the couple especially as the family will take up a whole compartment.

 

Apparently for the last several months we have been infringing a trademark by contributing to a thread with "North Yorkshire Moors Railway" in its title. (Should I have inserted the trademark symbol?)

 

If they're staff/volunteers then they've been able to see it since August which is when it was posted internally. If they're not then much of the content isn't particularly relevant other than the section regarding Trademarks but that was discussed on FB at the time as I recall.

 

But not elsewhere. And it raises significant issues over the reach of a corporate body over volunteers, and what constitutes consent.

I'm with @60044 about the wisdom of this approach; it tries to fix a problem by hammering on the symptoms, and ignoring the underlying condition. Calpol will bring down a temperature, and a temperature is a symptom of sepsis. It doesn't follow that Calpol will do anything useful about sepsis. At best, it may mask the symptoms - at which point it may also make the disease harder to cure, and worsen the outcome for the patient.

As a trademark, NYMR might also want to consider the judiciary's approach to Stelios Haji-Ioannou, and their disdain for his approach of trying to turn plain english into trademarks. They may also want to consider how little scope for action the various large corporate employers have over what appears on Glassdoor from their employees, making the reality of working for them apparent.

In the meantime, I presume that the image posted has been superseded, and that the postings by John Bailey demonstrate that the "core leadership team" are no longer expected to stay off social media in relation to NYMR.

 

I can’t see how the trademark could be infringed by a thread on a forum. I can see that it “might” be if the forum was called “North Yorkshire Moors Railway” and not National Preservation. Trademarks generally prevent people from representing themselves as something they are not. The use of a trademarked name to describe a subject of discussion isn’t an infringement so far as I can see.

It might be a reasonable move from the NYMR, but the optics of this are terrible. It’s a case of not “what” but “how” being important. The desire to be clear what is and is not officially sanctioned material about the railway is fair. It comes across as censorship which is unfortunate.

 

Yes, that's absolutely my understanding too. Although perhaps to be safe we should start referring to the NYMR as "TRTMNBN".

 

I can't see how the statement made can have been thought through to any degree at all tbh. The Flickr group alone has 29K+ images taken on the Railway and contributed from 1000+ Flickr 'members'. The Group is titled The North Yorkshire Moors Railway and similarly there will be countless private Albums on the site with NYMR as the title/label.

Then there's YouTube......