North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

It would be interesting to see the 10.55 and the other trains advertised as being LNER 1930’s coaches when they are used and see if it attracts more passengers than when it is simply a set of Mk1’s

 

I don't recall anyone saying that the withdrawal of the teak train was responsible for a fall in visitor numbers. I think it may have been a partial symptom, but in all honesty I think the underlying "disease", if we may call it such, is much more widespread and corrosive than that. In the past the teak train was seen as a source of pride, nowadays it just seems to be a nuisance, a troublesome anachronism that the present management was lumbered with by a previous one.

Sadly, I think it is a widespread disease, and spreading more widely, with a loss of interest from the management in the NYMR as a heritage railway, being replaced by a vision of a tourist railway run as cheaply as possible with as little effort as possible and manned increasingly by paid staff. As I have been saying for some time now - and it is a view being heard increasingly from others as well now, a reset of approach is desperately needed before any more damage is done. What management of another heritage railway, for example, would be unable to imagine a possible use for a newly restored Edwardian dining car or a restored teak observation car and let ithem go elsewhere, ?

 

Sure; but do they bring in fare-paying visitors - visitors who would not have come were they not there? Because that's the most important way in which they would be significant for the NYMR. (Without enough fare-paying visitors, the line cannot continue on.) Whether they reinforce the heritage and preservation characteristics of the line, or not, is meaningless, if the line has to shut down.

(I am aware that there's a certain irony in my making this point, as I have, previously, talked about how heritage lines, such as the NYMR, need to understand that they aren't just simple businesses. I don't retract my point, not at all; but heritage lines have an aspect that are businesses. They just aren't just simple businesses.)

Noel

 

They are enjoyed by a good number of people visiting the line. There are a significant number of people who have donated to their upkeep over the years, many have given their labour free of charge to restore them . Up until recently the arrangements for use worked well.
They are integral to the NYMR's identity, being part of a supporter organisation for many years. To hear them dismissed by the Trust Chairman at the last AGM was pretty galling.

Do they generate extra passengers? Maybe they do, it's hard to say, but when the people in charge increase the fares, then change the fare structure three times in three years, plan timetables that reduce the railway's core income at busy times and frequently use diesels due to lack of steam locos, it's even harder to tell.

 

Are we confusing two different things here? Working out what trains will run and when each train will arrive and depart at each station is for the people who understand railway operations. Formatting that information for publication on paper and on the website is a separate task requiring different skills and knowledge. Both tasks, having been done, need to be checked by independent person(s). Whoever did what in producing the successive NYMR public timetables, something went seriously wrong somewhere.

 

My emphasis in the above quote. It's a point you've made before, but I don't think it's true. A couple of questions:

1. The earliest Mk1 is 1951 (I think), the last Bulleid designed coach was built in 1949 (or thereabouts). Why might an example of one be considered representative of a bygone age, but not an example of the other?
2. Mk1s were built (mostly) between 1951 and 1964. Should that also mean than any locomotive built after 1951 cannot be considered to represent a bygone age?

Poorly/minimally restored Mk1s are certainly far less appealing, but doesn't mean that Mk1s per se can't be considered 'heritage'. The design is 75 years old for heaven's sake.

 

I don't think vintage coaches will straight up encourage loads more people to visit a heritage railway.

BUT
When people turn up and see the vintage stock, they will have a lovely time, come back next year, and recommend the line to all of their friends, generating more revenue.

Also, if they arrive for the first train of the day, plan to do one trip, and go home, they may chose to stay for longer when they see the vintage stock, do another round trip, and spend more money in catering etc.

 

Agreed. Despite sometimes minimal age difference, pre-war designs do appear generationally older than the Ml1s. Bulleids do, to me, fall with a properly restored Mk1 - as opposed to the Formica and melamine that characterise many

 

Well, I'm sure that a few of those 17 marketing staff could be checking the conjecture by tracking social media and seeing how many people use the #ItsGotToBeTeak hashtag!

Being serious, two points strike me about this debate.

The first is that word of mouth has always been the most important marketing tool, but these days "word of mouth" increasingly means "what do people share with their friends on social media?" Railways are in the "delight" business: what did you do today that made someone delighted? (i.e exceeded their expectations). Those are the moments that are likely to get shared with their friends. So when the train drew into the station or they entered a compartment - did they go "wow"? Outside of a few nerds, I doubt many people are actively choosing their heritage line based on rolling stock - but I bet the social media "word of mouth" is much greater with the teak stock than with other stock. Related - sometimes if you are taking water and you see a child, you might ask them to "help me turn on the water" - it's a trivial thing, but it might be a memory they cherish (and a photo that mum puts up on Instagram). Similarly, how much effort is it to allow someone onto the footplate during a layover, relative to how delighted they will be with the memory?

The second point is about soul. Of course the financial side of a railway is vital to its survival, but there has to be something more than just carrying as many people as possible from A to B. "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills." Are the Gresley carriages the easiest and most efficient ones to operate? Probably not, but they are a motivator: a symbol of why you choose to do this hard thing (operate a steam railway, with all its financial and regulatory challenges). Once you forgo that notion - that some things have an intrinsic value all on their own - you are on the path to just doing things the easiest way possible, which probably means become a bus company. Of course, not every volunteer will see the teak carriages as their personal "moon mission" - but the critical point is that you can't just measure a railway in pounds, shillings and pence, however important those are: there has to be soul that goes beyond that to justify the railway's existence. The seeming lack of motivation to run vintage carriages is symptomatic of a little piece of that soul dying.

Tom

 

Happily, I believe that the Trust Chairman at the last AGM is now the former Trust chairman - good riddance to someone who clearly had no idea of what the Trust should be all about. Hopefully he's not the last in that category to go.

 

I think the more instructive piece of research might be “how many people in the UK are even aware of the existence of heritage railways?” I don’t think it is many.

A few years ago (2020) Steam Illuminations on the Watercressline was national news (here, in the US and oddly im Russia) A bit of light in dark times. Our PR contractor reckoned we had reached about 100 million views across the newspapers, TV etc. the playing fields at Alton had people stood to watch the trains go by, probably near to 1000 people every night for the two weeks we ran. It was odd times, but we generated more interest than ever before or probably ever will.

This mass of publicity was interesting for incites it drove, one of which was that locally (within 20mins drive) most people didn’t even know we existed before (and some not afterwards I have no doubt).

The only issue I have with this debate is that in addition to not peeling off bits of soul, we have to recognise that times have changed and we have to reach new audiences. Our older ones remain important, but are shrinking as a proportion of the population. The word of mouth has to come from people who don’t know about us now, and who are blown away by what we do. (Teaks might be important to that)

 

Some excellent points in the last few posts. We should not be afraid of change, but that change needs to be for the better. Obviously customer facilities (toilets, catering, shops etc.) have to be in line with modern expectations but the experience of travelling on the railway and enjoying "a journey back in time" has to be a core aim, and we have to accept that our visitors might not be quite as well informed as we are, so visual cues, like steam locos, teak or other wooden carriages, semaphore signals, signal boxes, level crossing gates, even wooden platform barrows etc., all play their part in providing those cues. It's a picture that needs building with a background as well as a foreground.

 

Quite possibly, to both; but how can we measure the effect? (As Lord Kelvin famously stated, “when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind".) @Steve's suggestion (here) , to see if " trains advertised as being [teak coaches] attract[] more passengers than when it is simply a set of Mk1’s", would capture part of the effects which you hypothesize. but not all.

Noel

 

You could do a survey at the exit of railways asking what the most memorable part of their visit was?

I suspect that vintage stock alone does not have much of an impact on visitor numbers, but the overall heritage experience, as pointed out above, does.

 

Quite so. As enthusiasts (which is all of us posting on here are) we have our individual preferences, and sometimes it's easy to forget that, but it really is the overall picture that makes the most impression.

 

Indeed. You wouldn’t expect visitors to the Black Country museum to go specifically for the blacksmiths but it might have a bearing on the enjoyment. What marks put the good museums from the also ran is the ability to bring something to life. I am not sure that the Moors does this as well as it might, because most energy is expended on running tourist commuter trains.

 

On the three main trains to or from Whitby just 15 passengers on each would equal £400k per year. The same as Gift Aid in 2024.

Losing around 9.5 passengers on each of the three would be a £250k pa loss.

Attracting just over half a carriage extra on each of the three trains, with almost certain steam haulage, would bring in an extra million pounds.

 

Maybe those who bemoan here that 'they' at the NYMR in marketing, management and other positions aren't listening might like to consider that it's comments like the one quoted above which ensure they don't.

Imagine if, in whatever your job/hobby is, you have a bunch of 'experts' online accusing you of being effing useless at it and pontificating at extreme length about how effing useless you are and that they can't wait for you to eff off into the ether. Would you listen to their opinions? Would you go "Yeah, you're right. Silly me. I'm a sack of shite at this gig, aren't I?"

Or, in an effort to protect yourself and your sanity, would you deliberately ignore the place where such opinions are aired?

There are things happening on the NYMR that I'm also angry about. Chief at the moment is the discriminatory discounting of fares during the school holidays against those who choose to travel outwith the screaming melee of the school holidays. It's discriminatory against many on the neurodiverse spectrum and those who cannot (or who choose not to) have children, as well as those who simply want a pleasant, quiet train journey.

And yes, I did go all-in on the naivete of falling for the old "we've won an award" (<cough> that nobody's ever heard of <cough>) ruse. But 'they' at the NYMR are far from alone in that particular form of narcissistic gullibility.

When do we all admit to ourselves that constantly slagging off people associated with the NYMR with phrases like 'good riddance' and 'hopefully... not the last to go' don't achieve anything? All they will achieve is to make forums like this more determinedly ignored. Let's not lost sight of the fact that for all their real and perceived sins, these are still human beings, like you and I.

 

For my part, as the author of the comments that so irk you, I hope that I was on the receiving end it would a. serve as a reminder that my job/livelihood depends on the success of an organisation that is clearly in a perilous state, and b. make me all the more determined to prove the critics wrong.

What I hope it would not do is encourage people hang on to the job determined to make things worse, untroubled by the fact that things can still not be seen to be going well.