NYMR what happend to sundays?

The title says it all realy, but what happend?

A few years ago you pick a good weekend, pop the tent in the back of the car and spend a weekend at Goathland, with a busy peak running time table on both days you could ride one day and take photo's the next. Then last years time table dropped to only 6 steam on the sunday, and now this year only 4 with two diesel. It would appear the time table is saying one thing, whitby or bust as there are no whitby's on a sunday, which to almost anyone else out there would mean 8 steam on the sunday and for one day a week you don't have to worry about getting the whitby train on time. Secondly I don't get the logic behind it, weekend always have the best potencial as you have people on short brakes, day tips and taking a week or tow off, secondly most are not working, that goes for volunteers as well. Then if you look at your holiday makers who stay a week, most arrive and leave on the saturday, as a result sunday should be your best day of the week.

 

This has been discussed, and the reasoning for the Sunday timetables, explained on the NYMR forum.

http://nymrunofficialforum.atfreeforum. ... t2829.html

 

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Dont have access on this PC and I only use the other these days for film editing, so I never noticed the posting on NYMR forum, however since the railway is not a local railway it needs to attract visitors from far and wide, and like wise it needs to know what they think.

 

This URL is not available unless you are a registered user, so I'm still in the dark.

Regards

 

Just managed to boot up my other PC and wade through the topic on NYMR, for those who don't have access but are intrested the jist of the official stance I think is a combination of won't to sumplfy the time table and sunday opening hours have effect the numbers on sundays.

I will try to ted carefull on this one as some people have raised strong objections (not posted) to me mentioning this hear and secondly despite this NYMR is still one of my favourite railways, which after all was the reason for asking why in the first place.

So, hear goes..

I suspect the sunday issue must have effected all Railways and some down turn in numbers must have been expected, however the current program only nocks the nail in the coffin and secondly as I pointed out will have an effect on weekends, so in turn effects saturdays on possibly mondays figures.

I hope next year we may see a return to sunday steaming, as least back to six trips as I for one miss going on a sunday or over a weekend.

I will add one positive note that has helped these last few months, is the weekend roster, at last we have some idea what is running.

ps: As always I would request make sensable posting and not hijack the subject which was not my intension.

 

In our defence, the NYMR is not the only railway to have found Saturdays improving and Sundays getting quieter. When I mentioned to a friend from the Severn Valley that a recent Special Event had taken more on a Saturday than a Sunday that he said that was what he expected for their events and I realised this was a real trend and not a one off.

I suppose the reason is connected with the rise in popularity of shoping as a leisure activity - John Leech lists the SVR's main competition as the local shopping centre. This isn't as true for the likes of the NYMR, West Somerset and other lines in tourist areas, but the NYMR is not impossible as a day trip from some pretty large towns and cities, so in this market, it is a rival. Don't ask me why this seems to be the case more on a Sunday than Saturday - maybe it is the one day the whole family can go out togther and exercise the credit card!

The earliest data I have on is 2004 - long before Whitby - and this shows in July that year, every Sunday had lower takings at Pickering than the Saturday, and my quite some margin.

Looking at last weekend, Saturday had grown by over half at Pickering over the 5 years, whilst Sunday had grown by only 1/6th. Back in 2004, it would be the Saturday that had two round trips by diesel and possibly a poorer timetable (I can't remember - may have been the same).

The fact that it isn't possible to operate into Whitby on Sundays obviously affects the attraction to passengers and the timetable. When we run to Whitby (6 days out of 7 at the moment), up to 50% of passengers starting at Pickering buy a ticket to Whitby, although many also break their journey at Goathland or Grosmont (or both) to make a full day of it.

The good news on NYMR Sundays is that the when the timetable group met last night, the need to improve Sundays was clear to everyone and the current plan for next year (subject to working out detail like loco and crew diagrams, and then approval at Board level) is to improve the Sunday service at all times of the operating season. Details will be finalsied and announced later in the year.

Steven Hogg
NYMR Finance Director

 

Thanks for the feed back, great news on the time table for next year. Any chance you can fix the weather as well?

 

Glad to hear that things may change next years. My partner is no great lover of steam but she will tolerate a mix of hill walking and steam on the NYMR, what she's not interested is coming to the NYMR and end up behind a diesel. Hence I've not been able to persuade her up there for our usual mini breaks this year.

 

Spamcan81 - you could try convincing her to take a Bank Holiday brake ob the Moors, as August Bank Holiday Sunday will almost certainly be all steam.

In fact, at one point we could have been heading that way for this Sunday as all but 1 diesel was out of action as of Monday - the one - 50 027 - is, however, the one planned for use this week!

 

Bank Holiday = loads of kids and a jam packed Whitby. Selling that to the other half will be nigh on impossible. Thanks for the suggestion though.
There's also the slight problem that I'll be charging around Yorkshire behind 70013 with my mates on Bank Holiday Monday.

 

Good news that 50027 is out on Sunday =D> =D>

I will be down for two round trips \/

 

There's one problem with that - we're also promoting a family event this weekend. The two markets tend to clash!