North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

Very true - has anyone looked at the Mid Hants line-up, for example, of late? The West Somerset cupboard looks fairly bare, too., as does the East Lancs. I feel bound to agree that the NYMR seems to be guilty of grievously underusing No. 29, though. Years ago the SVR decided to start using its fleet of smaller locos to a greater extent, and I believe that was one reason why 45110 was sold, although I don't necessarily believe it was a good decision.

 

£5000 won't replace many crown stays.

 

Major overhaul costs have gone through the roof. The days when any railway can have a shed full of operational locos have gone, unfortunately. It is now a case of sweating the assets.

 

I can second that regarding the Bluebell. A couple of years ago there were four operational loco on a line where 3 run every weekend day. There's 6 home fleet now (one being Fenchurch) but we've been dependent on 6989 and more recently 2999 on hire.

 

I don't think that is quite true - I'm not sure we have ever been down to only 4 steam locos since the early 1970s. We are thinner now than in recent years, but typically with about 6 - 7 operational locos in any year. (Of course there are times in a year when the number may be lower due to running maintenance, but the mileage charts typically show 6 - 7 steam locos in traffic in any one year. It was normally about 8 pre-Covid. 2022 was the tightest year with 5 of our own locos and one on hire. Currently it is 6 of our own and one on hire.

We do also have a loco on hire currently, but that has been more or less the case for the last twenty five years, except for a few years around 2016-2020 ish when we made do without any hired-in loco.

Tom