North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

To operate the planned T/T they need one steam and one diesel to run to Whitby. I think Pebbles is the only one they have to fill the diesely bit.

 

With Whitby stalwart Sybilla stopped since 2024 from memory, has anything happened to get it back in traffic yet, hopefully now inside, but I imagine it isn't which is criminal if it goes the same way as the 24.

 

Another problem they have is that people help the railway during the operating season and often take time off in lieu and save this up until the winter when there is not the operational urgency. However, this affects numbers during the closedown period and reduces the numbers available to dd othe work. I've long thought that the idea of stripping all the locos down over the winter is the wrong approach, especially when they (usually) give them a P & V exam despite not having achieved a reasonable mileage. The excuse is that they don't want to do it during the season when they need them operational. However, this means that they get done far more frequently than necessary. Last year,according to Moors Line, 5428 did 5,312 miles, 44806 did 3,660 miles and 926 did 3,405 miles. Hardly excessive mileage.

 

That's a good point. Though they're not completely closed for that long, with Santas and Winter Whitby Warmers or whatever they called them. Though that should really only take up a couple of locos, allowing nearly 5 months for all other maintenance to be undertaken. But it always feels like everything is left to the last minute. Now they've got a month to go and three locos to reassemble.

 

Is there someone on the railway who has responsibility for planning which locos get which work done on them when, or is it all haphazard?

 

I would imagine that it used to be Piglet but now he's been promoted to Director of Engineering it is probably Nick Simpson, as the Mechanical Engineering Manager. I have great respect for both, but I think we should bear in mind that both started out as apprentices at Grosmont Shed and presumably absorbed the practices they grew up with, and have never experienced anything different. For those with long enough memories, when Maurice Burns (who was a professional engineer) was NELPG CME, everything was meticulously planned and plotted out - and work was generally completed at the allotted time, however tight the schedule. There is now a Project Planning Manager at Grosmont, but it remains to be seen how much difference he is making, to this outsider at least. This winter is perhaps his first chance to make a difference.

 

No but they aren't exactly "motorway driving" as a classified for a Mondeo would say. But the NYMR has a tendancy to run their locos quite. And I'm never sure if its just the line is that tough on locomotives or if they're being driven like a Nova down a country lane (to stick with a metaphor). Haven't heard about 47077 in a hot minute but with a month left till opening day, its a poor look.

 

Even if you went in with a clear plan, it sounds like it could take a while to feed through. For example, if (as it sounds) all the locos have boiler tickets aligned to fall over the closed winter maintenance period, then it is not easy to suddenly spread them out so they fall at intervals through the year - unless you choose to re-certify some at artificially short intervals to reset the point in the year that they need to be withdrawn. At the very least, moving to a situation in which all your maintenance is done in one period to one where locos are withdrawn for maintenance at intervals is likely a plan that would take several years to see through (and that is before you account for the law of sod).

It definitely feels like an odd way to run things. I guess the rationale is to ensure you have maximum availability during the peak summer months, but if you withdraw everything all at once for maintenance in the low season, you are on a bit of a tightrope between "maximum availability" and "no availability". Staging things more evenly does mean that there is never a time when you have all your fleet available at once, but there is also never a point when you have "none of your fleet available". It sounds like they are trying to go too lean on the question of "how many locos do we need to run the service?" Getting that number down is a way to cut costs, but gives you a very sharp cliff edge at the "we've cut too far" point. But if I'm right, it's not a situation that you can just easily recover from in one season; it would take several years and a fair amount of resource.

Tom

 

How many miles in total, and how many steam miles did you do last year? With how many locos?

If you are routinely giving every loco a P&V after only a few thousand miles, then that sounds very wasteful - or else someone is forgetting to fill up the lubricator each morning I think we generally reckon on about 20-25k miles, so each loco would typically have either one or two intermediate P&V exams within each boiler ticket. Obviously based on monitoring condition and what is reported on drivers' tickets etc.

Tom

 

Who is Pebbles?

 

37688

 

37688 "Great Rocks"

 

Isn't the real problem that if one trims the loco fleet too close to the 'how many locos do we need to run the service?' edge, if there is a (necessarily unexpected) failure, one is totally hosed? Many failures (e.g. boiler tube goes bad) aren't exactly overnight fixes.

Noel