North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

Unless things have changed, all locos have spark arrestors, mesh covers over the dampers and most, if not all, have ashpan sprinklers.

 

... which, as @21B notes, makes the drafting of the announcement rather odd, strongly implying as it does that such features are only found on mainline locos!

Tom

 

That’s what I would expect. As @Jamessquared says, the drafting is odd. The sort of detail that has a habit of biting back in my experience.

 

Deleted. I shouldn’t guess.

 

And of course main line locos never set fire to the lineside, do they.........

Peter

 

Wonder if the announcement was worded by the head of marketing ,the marketing manager ,the director of customer communications or a third party marketing agency as all the senior public and customer relations team were too busy ?

 

News has broken this evening that Chris Gee, the NYMR PLC's chairman has resigned. The official statement was quite brief and otherwise uninformative. However, a statement attributed to him says: "I resigned as a Director last week. A fundamental disagreement with the CEO and Trust Chair over an emerging issue, exposed some real differences of approach to leadership and what matters most. It’s a great railway and I will continue to support it and advocate for it as a member and visitor."
Intrigued and concerned about the 'emerging issue.'

 

Terrible news. Things just seem to be going from bad to worse at Pickering. Where is the railway heading to......

Peter

 

Of course that, rather bland, statement will lead to a lot of speculation as to the underlying reasons. IMHO it would have been better to come up with something a bit more informative, but I'm not sure that honesty and/or believability counts for much when some of the parties are no doubt defending their own behinds.

It has now been announced that Colin Marin, the PLC vice chairman, with temporarily assume the role of chairman. From the frying pan to the fire, it seems; here is what is being said about him by a volunteer on the railway: "He was Chair of a Trust in the North East. Big big medical issue caused his resignation. Hushed up." Just the sort of person needed by the NYMR and will probably fit in well (particularly as I( don't think he's a volunteer of any sort.

 

I really don't know, Peter.

 

I've been making that point on FB even before this happened, but I'm just dismissed as a troublemaker. The NYMR is lurching quite rapidly towards insolvency but people seem to have closed minds towards the thought of that. It is tragic.

 

is this him?

https://find-and-update.company-inf...cers/PJgISNZZwUYlB4bHkRhuDQGFnHM/appointments

A former NHS manager, just what a struggling small private sector company needs!

Sawdust.

 

Never underestimate an NHS manager!

 

Not really "hushed up" - a simple Google search will reveal the issue.

 

Seems like an issue with a vast number of NHS trusts down south what some must be regarding as a "smoking gun"
I have never heard of the guy before so I have no idea of his ability, but if folks want CEO's to fall on their sword when something goes wrong and never work again we will soon run out of them. Mind you we would run out of football and F1 team mangers long before that.

 

Given that NHS managers have been struggling to deliver an ever rising expectation of service for an ever low real terms cost, such a person might in fact be very useful to a heritage railway.

My only note of concern would be that the NHS sometimes looks to this outsider like an organisation where the preservation of the organisation is more important than the service delivery and/or where the patient/customer needs are considered after those of the organisation. (I don’t mean clinical needs, those are clearly foremost, but they are only part of the experience of using the NHS). I sometimes feel some heritage railways are already behaving like a bureaucratic behemoth to their detriment.

 

I'd have thought that with all this talk about the 'health' of the NYMR an NHS manager would be just what the doctor ordered.

 

I don't know this individual at all, but I think that what the NYMR needs is a management team that understands the concepts underlying a heritage railway, and the motivations of the volunteers who help to support and operate it. This chap doesn't sound like one of those, so he should fit in well with the rest of the management team.

 

One wonders what the Emerging issue was. Must be serious for him to resign.

 

What is really disappointing the railways volunteers is that Chris Gee has been seen as a breath of fresh air, willing to post on Facebook and elsewhere and enter into meaningful discussion which is something (Lineisclear excepted) that senior management have refused to do. In fact, staff have previously been warned against doing so if what I have been told is correct. A few weeks ago he posted asking for ideas and suggestions from volunteers to help the railway move forward and received a good and positive response. It looks like the railway is in for another session of mushroom management with volunteers only getting to know things by secret whispers .