North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

Very good

Very good points, and I have previously advocated that heritage railways should be doing more to actively train their volunteers in heritage skills given that so much of what we do is archaic by modern standards, and that schools seem to teach ever less by way of practical skills. Most railways have apprentice training schemes, though few can afford to sponsor what might once have considered "proper" apprentice training, but if volunteers are to play an important role going forward we have to try to vimprove their skill sets as well

 

Absolutely right, particularly the last sentence! The challenge for the whole sector is that just preserving and operating heritage railways no longer generates enough money to make them sustainable. It's also right to focus on people (for example the NYMR's specific charitable purpose of promoting the health, social and welfare benefits of volunteering). That focus also means being a responsible employer that strives to provide secure long term employment for its paid staff. Writing charitable objects isn't easy. Thet have to fit within the prescribed categories in the Charities Act. Running a railway in accordnace with the wishes of its members and volunteers isn't one of them! As highlighted part of the investment in people, when heavy engineering skills are becoming scarcer, is investment in apprenticeship schemes such as those the NYMR has been running for some time. At the other end of the scale it's also sponsored an engineering degree course. The latest intitiative led is a pathfinder apprenticeship scheme, partnering with a higher education college, which needs the support of other heritage railways willing to participate by engaging their own apprentices. Naturally it's an idea that the HRA is keen to help come to fruition.

 

I realise its a fact that 60044 cannot accept but ex BR mark 1's are heritage stock and appear so to the vast majority of passengers. After all they are now considerably older than the LNER teaks were when they first arrived on the railway. Heritage is a moving feast. What seems modern to those of an age like 60044 and myself appears positively antique to later generations. The achievements of LNERCA volunteers are truly outstanding, and the NYMR would be poorer without the LNERCA's teak set, but it's far from the only heritage stock that the railway relies on. A charity's registered objects are fundamentally a legal issue. It's an issue of the core purpose of a heritage railway charity and the way if functions fulfills those charitable purposes for which it exists. Someone who also comments on here, and whose opinions I respect even if I don't always agree with them, once suggested, tonque in cheek, that the core purpose of the NYMR was to enable its members and volunteers to indulge their hobby. If that were true it couldn't be a charity. Trouble is that that there's an element of truth in the suggestion (and not just for the NYMR) which is where the tension between member and volunteer expectations and the pupose of the charity occurs . As a former research scientist 60044 wouild no doubt be guided by the evidence. Why is it that heritage railway charities state their purposes as being things such as "education of the public" or at the very least as including a committment that they exist for public benefit? Because just preserving and operating a heritage railway (which is what motivates the members and volunteers) is not of itself charitable. The evidence of that is clear for all to see. The other inconvenient fact is is that not all heritage railways depend on volunteers. There are at least three that don't including the one that's possibly the most commercially successful. Before 60044 has a fit of apoplexy I'm not suggesting for one moment that is an option that should be contemplated for the NYMR but it helps to put things in perspective. A version of the NYMR could possibly survive without volunteers but it would not be anything that I and 60044 would want to be associated with. The future for larger railways is indeed a partnership of volunteers and paid staff. The suggestion that the latter should be regarded as a disposable feature on short term contracts is unworthy and could turn the NYMR into the P&O Ferries of the heritage railway sector. It's also inevitable in a highly regulated industry that many volunteers will be in situations where they are managed by paid staff. Some volunteers may resent being told when and how they can enjoy their hobby but the reality is that their opportunity to do so will often depend on those paid managers who some appear to believe shouldn't exist.

 

@60044, I think there are some broken 'quote' tags in your reply that makes it difficult to decipher?

 

There's a lot to agree with here, including that it is nigh on impossible for any organisation the size of a modern large heritage railway to rely solely on volunteer labour. However, I find the elision of a concern about the ratio between volunters and paid staff, and the abusive treatment of staff by P&O, concerning.

One consistent theme in feedback on NYMR is discussion of the high payroll, and associated high proportion of paid staff to volunteers.

I think @60044 and others are justified in their concern about the impact of this on both culture and sustainability of the railway - including that a side-effect is to lead NYMR to operate more and more like "the most commercially successful".

Nurturing the volunteers, so that they are enabled to indulge their hobby within the purposes of the charitable objects, strikes me not as something to fear, but a highly effective way in which to increase the number of volunteers, and give them the sense of belonging that will draw out their energy to enhance the railway.

 

The argument that BR Mk 1 stock is "heritage" may be true, but imho it is a flimsy one. For one thing, on the NYMR at least it has not been maintained with any regard to its heritage. I don't believe there is a single piece of genuine replica material (upholstery or wall plywood, for example)to be found, whilst windows have been plated over in some cases, and so on. In addition, the term "heritage" usually implies some degree of rarity, and when virtually every standard gauge heritage railway in the UK is using basically the same stock it's hard to argue that they have any real merit.

As for charitable purposes, it is of course clearly true that operating the railway is a primary one, but it is also true that there have to be nuances. The NYMR, for now at least, is operated using coal fired steam locomotives. If it was to switch to predominantly diesel haulage (perhaps even using cascaded 2nd generation diesel units or even 2nd generation locomotives) then I think there would be a serious falling off of volunteer support. It is the availability of steam era rolling stock that drives much of the interest, and the different ways in which operational practices prevailed. Much of what we do now is fundamentally safe, but radically different to "big railway" practice.

The comments on my suggestion of changes in employment practices shows a clear lack of understanding. In act so called "permanent" contracts can still be terminated at short notice and the recipient is in reality no better off than someone on a fixed term one - and the fixed term contract provides encouragement to perform ones job well; someone on a long term contract can simply coast their way through it. The "P7O Ferries" comment is also unworthy. That was unworthy and despicable management, a good manager will always stress that there is an implied agreement that a good employee on a short term contract will always be treated well by the employer, the short term nature should not be seen as a threat, but more as security for the employer at times of exceptional hardship. In the end the management process is all about treating all staff well and getting the best from them. Dictatorial management doesn't go down well, and neither does aggressive (or indeed passive!) "bolshevism"! I really don't feel that this is something that has been been appreciated by many on the NYMR!

 

It made sense when I typed it, but I've edited to make it clearer by putting my responses in bold type.

 

You should be able to insert quote and unquote tags.

 

If a Mk1 is not Heritage then what is? Heritage means from a previous generation and these are certainly that. Strane on the mainline folks are moaning about Mk2's not being Heritage
I am unsure if you are just wanting to recreate the NYMR as it was at its birth, otherwise I am at a loss of what your beef is.
It is one of the longest Heritage Lines and runs many days over a lengthy season. Do you really propose it should be fully operated by volunteers? if so where are they all going to come from?
You obviously have a big issue with full time paid staff, but like many of the major heritage lines how are they going to operate without them, be they full time, part time or seasonal?

 

A welcome dose of balanced common sense!

 

Being somewhat remote from this discussion (not an NYMR member etc) I looked at the accounts to see if they shed any light on the matter.

The following table comes from the accounts - the year is the year in question, i.e. from the following year's accounts document. I went back to 2017 since prior to that, it seems there was both a change in accounting period and also some kind of structural change that resulted in a very steep rise in both turnover and staff; presumably some merger of organisations that had previously reported separately.



2020 was COVID year, so clearly anomalous. It does look since then that there has been an increase in numbers of staff. There is a caveat though, made clear in the accounts, that the numbers are people, not FTEs - so the rise could represent an increase in part time or seasonal staff. Nonetheless, in raw numbers, staff figures are increasing. (My working assumption is that large rise in numbers in 2023 represents considerable numbers of seasonal staff in catering).

I also looked at staff costs (salary, NI, pensions) against turnover. [And of course allowing the fact that turnover, profit, cashflow etc are all different entities!] 2023 looks like something of a reversion towards historic levels; 2022 in particular looks like a very bad year with significantly rising staff costs and falling turnover, which seems to have been somewhat turned round in 2023. Even so, when all is said and done the railway has to find about £300k per month to fund its staff costs.

It's not very clear in the accounts what the railway's other major costs are, though in the long term, I am not fully convinced by @Lineisclear point that the significant cost pressure is "rampant cost inflation in materials and consumables" rather than staff costs. If that were true, you'd expect the staff costs to be falling as a proportion of the whole. (If materials and consumables are consuming an ever greater chunk of the pie, everything else must be declining). But in fact the staff costs now are basically the same as they were in 2017: about 42%. I think it is true that consumables and utilities became very expensive very quickly with the inflation and energy price spike of a couple of years ago, but things seem somewhat to be reverting closer to the long-term trend. The staff budget represents the same proportion of turnover in 2023 as it did in 2017, which wouldn't be the case if it were consumables that were driving long-term cost pressures. Or to put it another way, if consumables have risen sharply in cost, then that rise has been tracked by rising staff costs - which isn't necessarily a good look.

Heritage railways are marginal entities at best, so it is quite proper that management must look at both the cost and income side of that equation. However, I would be somewhat worried that the NYMR response to the income side seems to be betting the farm on a long-term ability to attract grant funding, rather than seeing how it can grow its organic revenue. The concern with chasing grants is that they don't represent free money, and quite often drive developments that are perhaps at something of a tangent to the core business of running a railway. A six-figure sum to restore a historically interesting item of rolling stock is worth chasing. A similar sum to enhance the biodiversity of the line side, while undoubtedly a good thing for the local bird population, isn't necessarily contributing anything to the charity's core purpose (*). In other words, simply winning grants shouldn't become an objective in its own right: they are only worth having if they enhance the core purpose of the organisation, which is to run a heritage train service using historic machinery and operating skills. (And if you are an educational charity, by running those operations, you promote education by demonstrating a once common, but now rare, aspect of history).

On the costs side: does the NYMR have a full inventory of all the roles it needs to operate? And when perhaps some niche role becomes vacant or for any reason materialises, is there at least an assumption that the first port of call will be to see if there is a volunteer that can do it? Paid staff have the undoubted benefit that you can, if operationally required, ensure they are present when necessary. But I've seen before how easy it is to see some role and make a natural assumption that you will recruit, rather than at least first asking if there is anyone within the membership who has the necessary skills, time and willingness? One of the key reasons for cultivating and valuing the membership is because they are likely to contain within people with a very diverse range of transferrable skills.

(*) For clarity - I'm interested in wildlife myself, and am all in favour of improving biodiversity. But a railway charity needs to ask itself - are we a railway charity, or a wildlife charity?

Tom

 

Thanks Tom. A very perceptive post that reflects precisely the strategic issues that NYMR management have been and are considering including the the vital question, before recruiting paid staff, of whether there's a volunteer who can take on the role? The only gloss I would put on your analysis is that it's often likely to be a case of are there volunteers? With the occasional notable exception they tend to be part time so for a railway of the NYMR's size it can be a case of finding a number of volunteers to substitute for one full time employee and, when that's the case, consistency can be a material consideration.

 

It can, and I respect that. However, I do observe that NYMR is a significant outlier in it's use of paid staff, which raises a number of questions about the spirit in which those questions are being asked.

 

An important distinction between employment and other costs that Tom alludes to is that the former tend to be easier to predict and therefore budget for. When other costs shoot up the impact on annual results compared to those budgetted can be disproportionately severe. As an example just the NYMR's annual coal bill plus its annual insurance premium now amounts to a cool £1million. That's why I highlighted such other rampant costs increases as a principal influence on financial performance.

 

In which case, all other things being equal, I would expect the proportion of expenditure devoted to employment to fall. Instead of that, based on Tom's numbers, it is fluctuating around 50% of turnover, while the absolute value is steadily rising - as is the headcount.

 

It's not apparent where the 50% figure comes from. Tom's calculation was around 42% but in any event that's on the basis of published accounts for the financial year that ended many months ago. Since then there has been a programme of redundancies and early retirements whilst other costs have continued to escalate. It's misleading to draw conclusions on the basis of data that is so far out of date.

 

The figures are those publicly available, and later management accounts will of course show an adapted picture. I stand by my observation that the explanation of rising costs over the last few years doesn’t reconcile well with the position of staff costs shown in @Jamessquared’s analysis.

 

@Lineisclear you stated quite correctly that:

“Running a railway in accordance with the wishes of its members and volunteers isn't one of them” in relation to allowable charitable objects.

I think we both see this statement as the root of the discord seen on a number of railways. But, I think we see the statement from different directions. Your point appears to be that this means that Trustees and Directors may have to make unpopular decisions, and members and volunteers may have to put up with things they don’t like. Mine is that they have to find the way to communicate and to collaborate with the membership such that no decision is ever a source of contention.

I believe quite firmly that trustees and directors that shut themselves off (as some do) and do not engage in a continuous discussion with volunteers and members who are the most important stakeholders will ultimately fail to lead their organisations toward sustainability.

All support for a heritage railway (leaving aside the three that make no use of volunteers) have the roots of their support within the volunteers and members (and shareholders if there are any). These people form the basis of all other support. Without them the railway would have to be completely reorganised, and would likely be weaker. The legitimacy of a heritage railway as a community asset, charity and as something the public at large supports, rests on and derives from the volunteers and members.

It will obviously not be possible to please everyone all the time, but Job 1 for a board of trustees running a heritage railway, is to ensure they have the broadest and warmest support of the membership and volunteers at all times. This group of people are the ones with the best interests of the railway most at heart. If the board and they have a different vision of what that looks like, then I am sorry, it is only the board’s fault that this is the case. That board needs to get out and communicate.

 

All very true but as the old saying goes it takes two to tango! I don't know if you're an NYMR member? If so you would have seen the "State of the Union" article in Moors Line magazine. You would have had access to to the comprehensive financial and progress reports at AGM's refreshed by on line reports from the CEO, published summaries of board minutes etc. the open forums both in person and on line where the board and management team answer questions. We agree on the root of discord and on the basis of support but sadly there appears to be a vociferous element that are not willing to listen. They may be disappointed if a heritage railway does not fulfill their particular wishes espcially where it has had to adapt to survive in the the world in which we now operate. Of course it's the board's job to communicate but it also has to lead and make decisions that sometimes not everyone will agree with however much the reasons for those are explained and justified.