North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

I don't undertand how you arrive at that conclusion. The purpose of the vist to Beamish was to pick the brains of those leading a succesful visitor attraction ...... to seek the advice of "outsiders" as you suggest. Their advice and assistance was given free of charge. Commissioning consultants to advise on "all aspects of our operation " would be hugely expensive. The aspiration for a Pickering reconfiguration is still there, including a new
C &W facility adjacent to the carriage stable. What's missing isn't ambition but the money to turn that into reality.

 

Building the new Carriage and Wagon facility would be pointless without a plan for reconfiguring Pickering. I'd be interested in seeing what sort of figure "hugely expensive" encompasses by comparison with a huge wage bill. But we all waste our time really.

 

Jim, the ambition would not only be to give the C&W team the better facilties they deserve but to reconfigure the existing site/ building into a visitor centre . If you have plans and ideas for how that might be configured I'm sure they would be welcome. Incidentally I'm not denying that the wage bill is substantial but what's your your alternative? Dispensing with paid staff that have been recruited because volunteers willing and able to do those jobs were not there would be a sure fire recipe for rapidly closing the railway. Just as it can't manage without volunteers it can't do so without its employees.

 

That begs a number of questions, not least about how roles were/are identified and filled. However, and most important, it doesn't touch on how the organisation might seek to refocus the overall workforce, with a view to shifting the ratio of volunteers to employees, not just in total but also by function.

The language, over some time, has focused on the difficulties of finding volunteers in a way that reads as discouragement, not encouragement. Even if, or perhaps even especially if, volunteers are hard to find, the focus should be on proactively seeking and welcoming them.

 

I doubt that anyone would take issue with that objective. It’s not an outcome that can be achieved quickly and of course it depends on there being enough typically part time volunteers to provide the necessary resource. As discussed previously volunteers taking over from employees is problematic because it’s hard to argue that the replaced staff were redundant.

 

Without going over previous discussions, I'll confine myself to noting that (a) no one has suggested redundancies be required, (b) employment law offers more scope than you suggest, and (c) you make my point about focus and tone in what you say (entirely truthfully) about the difficulties with finding volunteers.

 

I was present at those early meetings. I wasn't present at the later ones, when the purchase of the Stape accommodation was discussed and nor was I there when the abysmal bastardisation of the Gresley BG was discussed - if I had been I would have been bitterly opposed to both on the grounds that one would be an underused facility and the other a shambolic "restoration". I would also have opposed the dispatch of the Gresley TTO to a contractor for conversion to a fuss-free saloon, on the grounds that the NYMR had previous experience of their work on repairs to the Gresley buffet following vandal damage The quality of the work min both cases proved to be woefully substandard and the LNERCA has had to effect subsequent rectification damage to both. These three items alone could have generated substantial savings towards a new carriage workshop and conversion of the exiting one to a visitor centre, but I fear there was no appetite for it.

As usual, you distort other's arguments; I don't think anyone has suggested mass redundancies. I'd prefer to see natural wastage and reorganisation of posts to include more flexible working as I believe that there's enough scope to amalgamate posts or spread the work among several individuals and if that can be done there ought to be plenty of scope for bringing in part-time volunteers. There just has to be the attitude and willingness to find ways of incorporating them.

 

I'm not sure that entirely accurate. I sense that quite a few people would like to see paid staff replaced by volunteers sooner rather than later. If they're not redundant then the only sensible alternative is natural wastage which is why I suggested any shift in emphasis would take a long time to have any substantial effect. I'd support a policy of employment only where sufficient suitable volunteers are unavailable and agree that the onus should be on showing that attempts to recruit volunteers had proved unsuccessful. It's interesting that the trend towards employment is occurring elsewhere , even on railways that have prided themselves on their historic levels of volunteering. It suggests that regulatory compliance and the scope and scale of activities involved in running the larger heritage railways means they tend to be further down that trend line.

 

Obviously short of stock still, if only 2 Whitby sets are out all the time and the 1055 ex Pickering diagram is still down as "A" Shorter set of carriages with limited seating.

Plus the crazy Sunday offering "Auto" This service runs only in April, May, and June. A beautifully restored, diesel-powered North Eastern Railway Electric Autocar with limited seating.

On other dates, this service does not operate.

Not wishing to be nasty, but how long will the Auto last mechanically, ideal turn for a 101 unit.

So Sundays in July and August seee departures from Pickering at 0930, 1210, 1520 and from Grosmont 1040, 1350, 1705.

Sundays are the only day we have visited over the last 2 years and some days the trains were very busy (5 each way) and other quieter, for reasons unknown.

I can see visits being on par with 2020-22 when I visited but didn't travel at all.

 

As usual you seem to be trying to find reasons why volunteers cannot be used, rather than finding ways to use them effectively.
You shouldn’t be waiting for an employee to leave before you start looking for a volunteer replacement. You should be continuously offering your volunteers experience with all departments and trying to have a volunteer trained and ready to step in if someone leaves. It makes sense even from a sickness/holiday cover point of view.

 

I'd like to see a strategy that defines what the balance is, and puts management under an onus to positively recruit volunteers, rather than presume paid staff are the primary option - and with teeth when they can't be found. The detailed means by which this might happen is secondary; I for one accept that a policy of natural wastage may run quite slowly.

At present, there is a gap between the words you use and the tone that comes across - something which I and I suspect a number of others are reacting to.

 

So your suggestion is that we find space and resources to duplicate roles expecting volunteers to shadow employees (possibly for years) until their opportunity to do the job for real arises?

 

If it does it's because I'm realistic about the opportunity.

 

Possibly. But my experience is that "realism", pitched low, has a tendency to be self fulfilling.

 

Fair comment but there’s equally no point in a dogmatic approach to the challenge.

 

We agree entirely. Which is why I'm so uneasy about the scale of NYMR payroll relative to other railways, and the degree to which questions about using volunteers more are answered in terms of reasons why not, rather than reasons why to. All accept that paid employees are essential on a business as large as NYMR; the question and challenge is about the balance.

 

In a word, yes. The volunteer does not need to shadow consistently but enough to learn the job. It’s obvious that you see no need for this and are content to just keep recruiting paid staff.
If you’re whispering in a board meeting of 20 people “is there a volunteer who could fill in for Joe/learn Joe’s job” then it’s not surprising that you fail to recruit volunteers.

 

I’ve said more than once in this discussion that when I decided to give up my role doing footplate rostering after 10 years ther was no search for a volunteer successor, it was simply given to a member of paid staff. Why?

 

The point goes further. If we are talking about "Joe's job", and we have a situation in which one volunteer can only deliver 1/5 of the output of a full time employee, "Joe's job" should be a misnomer. The discussion should be about "Joe's roles", so that familiarity can be shared, and possibly that absence of one person covered by a number of different people.

I also suspect that much of the volume of work is relatively non-specialist and should not need in depth shadowing. Roles that are more specialist, requiring certifications, qualifications, or simply in-depth knowledge can then be focused on and different approaches taken to the employee/volunteer trade-off.

My hunch is that in many of them, the answer from paid experts would tend to be "you can't afford me", and that there would need to be a strong focus on finding effective volunteers with the type of deep knowledge necessary to perform the task.

 

No, I’m just curious as to why any volunteer would want to do that. Most want to do something worthwhile and enjoyable. Watching others else do their jobs waiting to see if they decide to leave doesn’t strike me as very attractive.