North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

Everything can be argued to be heritage once it is no longer in everyday use around us, but as a railway enthusiast I prefer to score the value of "heritage" in terms of their difference from the norm, and their rarity. For example, towards the end of the LMS era the interiors of their carriages began to look similar to the Mk s that replaced them, but I would prefer to travel in the earlier LMS iteration, and it is a sign of quality to be able to offer them (or GWR/Maunsell/Bulleid/Gresley options) It is something of an insult to lay visitors to argue the it doesn't matter to them and they will not notice. As most heritage railways are registered educational charities, aren't we supposed to be informing and educating them?

If I was hell bent on recreating the NYMR at its birth the carriage fleet would be essentially stagecoaches mounted on rails and the MPD staff would all be grooms or ostlers! Mk 1 corridor stock only appeared very, very rarely on the NYMR in the BR era, right up to closure, the predominant coaching stock used was non-corridor stock of NER/LNER origin. Nowadays the volume of stock needed demands that it should be Mk 1s, but it has to be said that it is not ideal and we should not pretend otherwise.

I'll reply to this briefly. The NYMR claims to be an educational charity. There are some like myself (here are others as well!) who feel that the interpretation being presented is becoming increasingly separated from the truth as to be increasingly approaching fantasy. Some of us feel that we have to make an effort to try to draw attention to this and to try to steer the focus back to something closer to realism. If we leave everything to be determined and adjusted to the realism of here and now most, if not all, of the value of the railway as an historical artefact will be lost. "nd generation DMUs are approaching the end of their service lives on the "big railway". Will there be calls to introduce them on the NYMR, and if there were how could they ever be justified as having any historical value in that context?

 

This ex-member recalls such pieces. He is also aware that the discontent runs much deeper, and lies in significant questions about the underlying strategy and approach, where the answers have often been framed in “we're not there to run a railway for the volunteers” language. That does not leave an impression of engagement, but of telling; reinforced by structural changes that designedly reduce ordinary members’ influence.

 

To be fair to @Lineisclear the long-term trend is that the number is about 42%. It peaked at about 52% in 2022 but then returned in 2023. Looking more closely, it looks like that 2022 figure is really about the income side (i.e. the denominator the fraction). Turnover looked really poor in 2022, but seemed to recover in 2023, and that affected the ratio.

Interestingly, the Bank of England calculator suggest inflation was about 28% between 2017 and 2023, and the turnover growth from 2017 to 2023 is about 31% - in other words, the railway has largely held its own in that time. Of course, railway inflation may not be the same as general inflation, but in broad terms, the NYMR hasn't done too badly on that measure - compare for example the WSR which by my reckoning is probably about £1million down on fares relative to where it should be. [Caveat: there is always a risk in these kinds of analyses that the year chosen as a baseline, i.e. 2017 in this case, may also have been anomalous in some unseen way].

Where I diverge a bit from @Lineisclear and lean more towards the broad thrust of @35B comment is in budgeting. @Lineisclear makes the point in budget terms that staff costs are predicatable and can be budgeted for, whereas inflation in consumables can't be so easily - especially in a year like 2022 when inflation changed very rapidly. That is true, but the flip side is that if the revenue side is weak, it is hard to reduce staff costs rapidly, whereas to some degree, consumables can be scaled back more quickly. To me, that looks like the story from 2022: the revenue side was weak but the railway was already committed to a high staff budget with little scope to adjust. That is the strategic risk of having high staff costs.

Tom

 

I am not a member. It seems to me sitting in the cheap seats that you describe much messaging of the board’s position (which is good), but not much in the way of board listening. Do you for example have attitude surveys? Do you publish plans and ideas, ask for feedback and then demonstrate how you have altered the plans? Has there ever been something which once consulted upon, wasn’t done (even if that were trivial and not something the board saw as essential)? If you have done all this, then I might agree that what you are left with is an impossible rump. A railway needs to be pretty darn sure that that is what it has though.

 

There’s always room for improvement. Personally I’m a great believer in the benefit of listening. Unfortunately living not quite as far away as 60044 the opportunity to “go walk about” for that purpose is not a great as it used to be although I still manage to make the trip up north roughly once a month. The frustrating thing is that the tone of some of the comments on here is not borne out by volunteer surveys . There are obviously some people who are unhappy which is concerning but survey after survey has indicated high levels of volunteer satisfaction. Perhaps the problem is that majority tend to be silent?

.

 

You read he unofficial Facebook page, so you must know that I'm not the only person who is unhappy with the way things are going Not all of them share the same concerns as me (perhaps I'm more of an idealist than most). You should also realise that as in most things, there are usually some people who try to make things better, but behind them there is usually more people who agree with what is being said but who are not inclined or prepared to stand up and say so. Volunteer surveys may seem to be a worthy idea but there can also be an element of "Have you stopped beating your wife?" in the form of loaded questions that are essentially unanswerable in anything other than favourable terms. I'm willing to bet one of Steve's Mars Bars that when you did go "on walkabout" there was probably quite a more verbal satisfaction than written surveys ever contain.

 

Rather than just a measure of satisfaction I found it valuable as a learning opportunity regarding the views , concerns and ideas of volunteers and paid staff. In particular a personal chat helps identify backgrounds and useful experience that might not otherwise be apparent. When an individual board member’s walkabout experience is also reported to the Board

 

Sorry, slip of the finger on my ipad……you also end up with a better informed board .

 

I think you're potentially unfair on the question of volunteer surveys, but they do need care to get right and ensure that they tell the board what they need to know, rather than confirm what they want to hear. Management by walking around is important and necessary, but it's success relies on the ability of those managers to elicit all flavours of feedback, and then to assimilate it - including, where necessary, adapting their approach.

There is the famous picture of the damage patterns on wartime aircraft, and whether the damage patterns should be interpreted with the damage sites being protected, or whether the areas not found damaged on returning aircraft were atcually the areas to focus on. My suggestion, given the determination with which the NYMR board have pushed through their strategy over recent years, is that it's what is not being said that is most important, and where face to face contact may not be the best way for learning to percolate upwards. If nothing else, the results of surveys are documented and can be compared year on year - where data is always better than anecdote.

From outside, my impression is that NYMR is a "watermelon" organisation - showing green on the outside, but starting to glow red inside. It would be very interesting to see stats on volunteer satisfaction (especially to questions like "Would you recommend friends and family to volunteer here", aligned to changes in the volunteer profile (e.g. average time volunteering). The concept of "net promoter" score is very American in it's bias, but my experience is that the model is surprisingly useful. It's not very British to say that only a 9 or 10 out of 10 is positive, and less than 7 is negative, but it is surprisingly effective in flushing out weaknesses in organisations, especially where investment is needed to fix problems before they become serious.

 

Again, that is a typical lawyer's response - i.e. it doesn't answer the question!I hear a fair bit of a different point of view, and sadly most of it comes from long term volunteers who have decided they have had enough and walked away - and that is not indicative to me of an organisation that is in rude health.

 

As the person who said that the prime purpose of the NYMR as far as I'm concerned is for me and other volunteers to enjoy themselves, it was not tongue in cheek and I stand by that statement, as far as I'm concerned. It is not only me though and it is the reason why the majority of heritage railways started and remains their prime purpose (for volunteers) today. If a railway does not provide that enjoyment for the volunteer he/she is not going to continue to continue and will almost certainly see the demise of that railway. Other people may have a different prime purpose but I would suggest that very few people would consider the prime purpose of any railway to be a charity. I also note that Lineisclear also suggests that it is "an inconvenient fact that not all heritage railways depend on volunteers." That is true but the number is minute and they are certainly more streamlined organisations with far less staff. I really do doubt that the NYMR could survive without volunteers on a large scale and I would suggest that this is true of all the existing lines that have volunteer input.
However, on to more important things. I don't think anyone would consider Mk.1 coaches to not be heritage but, if you compare them to the likes of the Gresley coaches, only a fool would consider them to be more heritage than the latter. I think that 60044's continuing and valid gripe is that, having provided the NYMR with a full set of operable teak coaches they have, one by one, been cast aside when in need of the railways money being spent on them with the lame excuse that Mk.1's are heritage so there is no real need for the older vehicles as the former can cover their everyday needs. Even Joe Public appreciate the quality and antiquity of the Teaks when they are side by side and I have lost count of the number of times that I have been asked if there is a supplement for riding in them, even when they say 3rd class. I can imagine the uproar at the Bluebell if they adopted a similar "Mk.1's are heritage so we'll concentrate on these" approach

 

You highlight a circle that railway managements must square - that if they do not provide the volunteer enjoyment, they will not have volunteers, but that charity law does not support "give a bunch of volunteers a good time" as a reason for the tax concession.

My view is that a good management will enable both. My problem with the logic applied by @Lineisclear, on NYMR and elsewhere, is that it tries to isolate each factor and leaves no space for them to multiply together.

 

Despite what you have said the Board fails to communicate satisfactorily and it certainly fails to listen. It rarely provides the necessary information to allow people to make up their own minds and quite often is economical with the truth. How anybody can make a statement along the lines that 76079 is unsuitable for NYMR services and is to be put up for sale to give it a future is beyond comprehension. It's even more incomprehensible when they say they hope someone will buy it, overhaul it and allow it to stay on the NYMR. The plain truth is that the railway needs the money so is selling its jewels. It might have been more acceptable to the railways supporters if they had told that truth. Other notable decisions made by the boards that have never been well explained have been the cessation of wartime weekends, cessation of marriages and the dismissal of the Levisham Wombles, to name just three. One-liners such as "it's now no longer profitable" and " it involved too much paid staff time" are insufficient to carry majority support.
You have said that it is the boards job to lead and that is very true. The board also needs to listen, which it seems to be incapable of doing. There are some very good posts on here by 21B and 35B and you and the board would do well to take heed of what they say. These two people are not stupid and know what they are talking about. As do a lot of others, both here and elsewhere.

 

I'm afraid that, in my humble opinion, everything is black and white in Lineisclear's world. 'The law says this' is paramount and that is all there is to it, never 'How can we do this?'

 

Steve’s suggestion that the primary purpose of a heritage railway should not be acting as a charity really highlights the problem. Whether he recognises it or not as a member of the NYMR he is a member of a charity that exists to deliver its public benefit charitable purposes. If its primary role is, as suggested, to provide volunteers with the opportunity to enjoy their hobby it could kiss goodbye to NLHF funding, the £1million investment by Arts Council England, exemption from rates and corporation tax. That would be a sure fire financial recipe for early conversion to an environmentally attractive cycle path,
It seems to be overlooked that I’m a working volunteer on two heritage railways. Of course I do that because it’s enjoyable but I accept that both railways are not there for my personal benefit. The “How can we do this” for those railway that benefit from being charities involves acceptance that their volunteers enjoying their roles are contributing to the charity’s achievement of its charitable purposes not just to the operation of its railway.

 

Like I said, you see everything in black and white, unfortunately. You don't consider that the two can exist together, only that one excludes the other.

 

I am somewhat perplexed as to how such apparently conflicting perspectives as are being aired on this thread can exist.

If "the railway" (i.e. one or more of the constituent bodies) is a charity then of course the trustees of that charity must run it in pursuance of its documented charitable objectives. If operation of the railway depends on volunteers, as nearly all do, then those volunteers have to be kept at least fairly happy or the railway will close. There is no black/white, no either/or. Both constraints are absolute. Steering a course that satisfies both may be very hard but it is absolutely necessary.

 

A little while ago, I was talking to our C&W Director. Being a member of the board, his prime responsibility is to ensure the railway always has sufficient rolling stock to operate the services planned, so his outlook tends to be very maintenance-focused: he is always thinking of what he needs to do to keep the current fleet operational.

Some years ago (under a different management at the top) he had tried, I think unsuccessfully, to get volunteer support to assist with maintenance. Nobody particularly wanted to do it, preferring to work on particular projects even if those might have long lead times (and therefore not be operationally useful in the short term).

More recently, some of the volunteer groups have been reinvigorated, particularly the SR Coach Group (looking at pre-nationalisation SR carriages) and the wagon group. And lo and behold, by keeping those groups motivated, suddenly the C&W Director finds that those volunteers are willing as required to assist on some maintenance tasks where necessary: encouraging the volunteer groups to work on interesting, but not necessarily immediately remunerative, projects has swelled the resource available for maintenance on the core operating fleet. The relationship between projects that volunteers are motivated to work on and the company's need to maintain an operational fleet turns out to be symbiotic.

It would be interesting to know how many hours of volunteer work are encapsulated in this photo - or how much pride it generates amongst the railway's volunteers.



(Not my photo).

Tom

 

On the Bluebell, we have definitely had our ups and downs in terms of the relationship between membership and operating company. (We probably had the grand-daddy of all such arguments in the early 1970s, but that was before my time!). But in more recent years, I can think of two particular nadirs in that relationship. One was a period when (former) company and society chairmen were keen to promote at every opportunity the concept of "one railway", the clearest possible indication that it wasn't. The other was when there were volunteer seminars held in which it appeared that volunteers were being consulted on the way forward for the railway, but which were facilitated in a way that steered the conclusions to what seemed in retrospect a pre-ordained conclusion.

Since then we have had a considerable change in personnel in both organisations and I would say morale and feeling is much better. That doesn't mean that the company board aren't having to make tough decisions, and I doubt you would find any volunteer that is 100% supportive of every single decision (*) being made. But it comes back to trust, and at the moment I would say that there is a high level of trust in those at the top of both company and society. If someone is asking you to go in a tough direction, it helps if you have the feeling that, were you to slice them open, they'd have "Bluebell" running through the middle like a stick of rock.

On another railway, I note the SVR is currently taking some strategic, but tough, decisions. But it seems from the outside that there is considerable support from volunteers, members and shareholders for those changes. I think a significant factor in that is that the leader driving those changes is a volunteer of many decades, and clearly there is a perception he is "one of us", not "one of them". On the Bluebell, my feeling is that we have been at our strongest when the company chairman has come from inside; and we have had problems when the chairman has been appointed from outside without the strong background in volunteering or the railway's culture. That doesn't mean being unreceptive to external ideas, but it does mean being sensitive to the unique culture of the place.

(*) Decisions can be both active and passive: things we choose to do, and also things we choose not to do - tough if that's your pet project.

Tom