North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

The NYMR has had to contend with high fire risk periods ever since the first in 1976. It is nothing new so should be a well-seasoned event allowed for in timetabling and should certainly have been incorporated into Levisham signalling by now. For very many years the norm with Firecon 2* status was for diesel assistance between Levisham and Goathland. Why it has not been adopted is beyond me. It obviously adds time but not significant amounts if those involved are up to the job and the section times between the two don't require 25 mph running with a normal T/T. Granted there is a relatively long PWS at the moment which makes it harder.

* The NYMR has different levels of firecon working with different requirements from Firecon 1 with Maximum care by locomotive crews and no attempt to be made to make up lost time between Goathland – Levisham through to an all diesel T/T which used to be Firecon 4 but it has recently changed and I'm not sure of the current levels.

 

Don't blame the BBC for what's happened.

 

Those on the ground, both in passenger facing roles and operational roles do deserve everyone's thanks and appreciation. I'm only too well aware of what is needed when things go wrong in a big way as happened yesterday, not forgetting the knock on effects into today. I'm not envious of Matt and his team in what they have had to do but I am full of admiration of them.

 

As Tom said, why paid, but also why double manned? If the DSD is operable…?

 

Ah well. Least said, soonest mended. I expect the moorland will have recovered in five years time and hopefully the wildlife will have scuttled away before being destroyed. The important thing is that the service ran with a steam engine and passengers didn't have to write harsh things on TripAdvisor.

 

Who said they were paid?

 

Read above.

 

I did, but “who” said they were paid, or was it another assumption?

 

It depends on the severity of the fire but unfortunately your first expectation is likely to remain unfulfilled. It will probably take decades. Secondly, I suspect that you were thinking of larger mammalian wildlife when you wrote "scuttling away". Those such as deer, hares etc might well escape, smaller such as mice or shrews probably will not. However, far more important in ecological terms are smaller creatures such as arthropods, for example ants, spiders and woodlice etc.. They will, of course, mostly die. The plants and fungi are also wildlife and essential components of a mature ecosystem; they cannot move!

 

This area of Newtondale has been on fire several times over the years and I'm always amazed how quickly the black disappears and is replaced with greenery and, even by the year end, the casual visitor would not realise there had been a fire.. That's not to say the wildlife will have survived, I admit.

 

I actually quoted the post to start with????!!!??? It was D7076. Whether they are right or not I don’t know, that was my question.

 

Well they could have firecon 23.5 but clearly the system has failed.

 

You jest but I suspect you are probably near the truth with your scenario. The railway needs a huge daily income just to stand still. Based on last years published accounts, every day they are running they need to take £14,000+ just to pay the wages bill, never mind anything else. That has got to colour judgement.

 

I think I am right in saying Chris Price used to say he needed 20p a second income to cover all operating costs.

 

I know, but the ecosystem has not recovered. A new, but less complex system, has replaced it. It takes many years for a long-established heathland to be restored after a fire.

 

So £2.8M salary costs. Based on £14,000 x 202 days of operation.

In isolation, willy waving a number around does not show how much of a proportion of turnover, the salary costs are.

Is there a rule of thumb for maximum proportion of turnover used for salary costs, that heritage railways use? E.g. less than 40% good, more than 40% bad.

 

Can I ask what your scientific credentials are for making this statement? Have you been involved with a ecological survey of this area? Or are you making a broad-brush statement? This is not an area, for example, rich in sand lizard species , for example, which seem to be the hardest hit in heathland fires in the south of England. Typically, I think (could be wrong!) heathland species are accustomed to periodic outbreaks of fire and have developed survival mechanisms for such; the worst types of fire are those where the heath contains areas of peat bog where fauna that have burrowed in the the ground to survive are exposed to deeper pockets of fire - I do not think that the area in question is likely to contain such peat deposits.

 

30 years teaching science. I know that Newton Dale is a very varied habitat from walking in the area over the years and reading about it. There are areas of bog, but I don't know the perimeter of the fire damaged area and whether they were affected. My comment about recovery time is a broad brush statement insofar as that most people greatly underestimate the time for a long-established ecosystem to recover from fire. I doubt the dale caught alight very often before the railway and comparatively recent climate changes. AFAIK the only detailed scientific paper on fire damage on the NY Moors relates to Rosedale Moor in 1976. This is a somewhat different habitat.

 

Actually, I got the figures wrong when I looked them up. The actual staff costs were £3,945,664 inc. pensions, etc. and based on 187 days of operation, as per the WTT, that works out at about £21,000/day or, with 6 trains each way/day, £3,500/return train. In terms of proportion of turnover its 41%. Ten years ago it was suggested by Paul Lewin that a benchmark for staff costs of heritage railways should be about 25% of turnover but I think this is probably a bit low today. The FfR's figure excluding donations was 29% for the last reported year.