North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

Somebody was listening to you. Footplate and driver experiences (inc Steam both ways) for the season are all listed now. Most understandably start from when Grosmont access is restored but they are all there. All are a bit steep for me on current budgets, but I understand your argument. At the end of the day if they can sell at that price it must be good for the railway. And in fairness, checking against a couple of others they don't look out of kilter for what's on offer.

https://www.nymr.co.uk/Pages/Category/footplate

 

The footplate ride offering is very popular and, in times past, has been booked up for months in advance. The offering has previously been for steam in both directions and the railway goes to lengths to ensure this happens, changing the timings when necessary. The majority of participants have had it bought as a gift, usually to celebrate a significant milestone event in their life. I generally ask the participant what the event is and quite often it happened many months ago and the date of the trip was the nearest they could get when it was booked. If I was organising one for a special event and wanted the date to coincide, I’d be looking to do so 12 months in advance.
The offering had previously been restricted to one footplate ride per day to keep it simple. I always enjoyed having these guests on the footplate although I know one or two drivers didn’t.

 

Most visitors on the MHR I enjoyed having along, but when it was every single trip of a day it had an effect on training, and a marked impact on enjoyment. I didn’t enjoy the visitor who passed out on the footplate and collapsed on to the floor narrowly avoiding smashing his head on the rocking grate mechanism and shunting the cleaner into thw backhead. That was not a pleasant day out.

 

The training impact is why we only allow one per day per loco, regardless of what the loco is doing. So if you are on a three-trip day, only one of them (normally the first) will have a footplate visitor. We also only allow them where our risk assessment says the cab can take 4 (so driver, fireman, 3rd man and visitor - the driver and fireman concentrating on their job, and the 3rd man looking after the visitor). You won't get a paid footplate ride on a Terrier or the Atlantic!

In most cases people are just glad to be there and don't necessarily know much about what is going on, but from time to time you get someone who clearly knows a bit more. I remember one trip on Sir Archie when we had a guest and firing wasn't going very well. I had this slight sense that he was more observant than normal. On the way back, when things are a bit more relaxed, I spent some time talking to him and it turned out he was a loco owner and loco crew himself over in New Zealand, and was very aware of exactly what the firing situation was! But he was very good natured and we could bond over Kiwi-isms (and the fact that Bulleid was also a Kiwi).

Tom

 

Technically true, but covering the 12:15 ex Pickering with a y rather than an X would make more sense to me and make it clearer to the general public