North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

I may be wide of the mark but I genuinely believe that the Whitby problem in part is because holiday makers used to spend a day on the railway and then a day in Whitby. Now they do both on the same day. And with prices as high as they are you are unlikely to get many doing a repeat visit. I thought the 12 month ticket was an interesting idea but again, it wasn't managed well. The pricing was silly for a start. Maybe if you'd had it as a free or discounted repeat visit within seven days then fair enough, but 12 months for the price offered was ridiculous. As a result it of course got stopped by inflating the price sky high compared to its previous offer and i suspect not many sold last year. Not because the price is wrong now, but because it was wrong at the start. Bad messaging!

Its been said before but if you go back to the days Philip Benham was in charge there were many smaller events throughout the season. These days the events have largely disappeared other than the Diesel Gala in June, and the Steam Gala at the end, and not a lot else. The railway backed away from running the Wartime weekend because it wasn't making money out of it (due to not managing it properly IMO) and despite that event now being run in Pickering again, the railway didn't even collaborate to run an extra train or two. Between Whitby, Goathland and Pickering there are many events on through the year that the railway just don't seem to get involved with. I'm not saying they would all individually make bucket loads of cash, but in the main trains are already running so it wouldn't take a lot extra you would think to use those to bring in, or god forbid, transport some customers to and from them.

IMO the railway really need to start working more with the community around it. How is it that they employ all these people in 'advertising' yet fail to have relationships with the towns and businesses immediately around them?

 

I agree. It would be interesting to see a HRA analysis of sector wide trends. Personally I suspect

(a) incomes and tastes and relative prices have changed. What does a weekend in N Yorks cost relative to a weekend in Prague or a week relative to a week in Fuengirola?

(b) the infrastructure is even older, the rain is falling harder (as someone almost said), the civil and mechanical maintenance costs have risen in real terms and coal....

Possibly the NYMR's cost structure and location ( relatively far from the day out market) puts it in a particularly exposed position but I can't believe most of the drivers are unique to one railway. Slightly like the position of virtually all League 2 football clubs but without the prospect of foreign owners coming in. Not unlike the Canal and Rivers Trust.

 

There are many squeezes on people's pockets. Cost inflation for the railway but the effects of sustained high inflation at up to 10% together with food and fuel increases makes things harder. Add on the effects of Trussonomics driving up mortgages over a couple of years, and people are cutting discretionary spending on days out. They want value for money.

Older people who regularly travelled in the shoulder season may be less inclined to visit due to mobility problems, there may be a demographic effect. Many are on waiting lists for the NHS and this may prevent travelling.
Others may be travelling to more exotic locations such as Laos or Vietnam to make up for time lost to covid.
The pandemic and war/inflation and Brexit have changed things.

 

Good luck to any railway trying to pretend the tourism market is what it was in the 1990's, or even pre-covid, particularly the longer lines. There was recently a post here about Alton Towers in decline, there was feature on the news the other day about zoos struggling etc . The world has changed, people may blame covid but I suspect it would have changed regardless.
I suspect that internal services on the NYMR need to have some dining option to make them viable with steam, be it breakfast trains , lunches, afternoon teas etc. Have some standard seating tagged on for those who just want a train ride. Either that or it's the low cost DMU option .....

Jon