North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

How much of the Whitby train is coach tours? That traffic won't stand much more than £20-25 single.

 

When the new signalling is installed the section times to Whitby will improve. It will much easier to work.

Whitby does bring passengers in their hundreds every day, numbers that other railways see only on gala days. I saw the first train from Whitby the other day. Six carriages, pleasantly filled. That single train was bringing in more revenue than the entire takings of one of the Thomas days.

Not to run a full line Whitby service in half term week at the Spring Bank Holiday seems to me to economic hari-kari.

One wonders where the real problems lie? The line is not a narrow gauge Welsh railway.

An experienced railwayman, perhaps someone just early retired, may be capable of sorting out the mess. What is clear is that the present lot cannot.
Are there any vacancies at the Tank Museum?

 

If you follow what @21B suggests, how much do you need those coach parties?

I recoil at the premiumisation model, but the hard nosed commercial side of me thinks that it may be the right answer.

 

I worry that the filled carriages on the Whitby trains is indicative of the wholly thinking rather than demonstration of sound business model. It looks a bit too much like a focus on revenue to me and the focus needs to be first cashflow and second on margin (surplus). If the trains fill at the current pricing then it could well be that the price is not high enough. And whether or not new signalling makes a welcome improvement to the operational problem, that will not change the apparent fact that the railway isn’t not sufficiently commercially successful and may be capable of being more so (and even if that still didnt result in it not needing donations and grants, more success would be better)

 

If my memory is not failing me (which I cheerfully admit it might), ISTR people saying that the Whitby trains were a good share of the NYMR's income. Would they be able to charge a third-party enough to make up for that (lost, if this happened) income? And if they did, could the third-party make enough profit to make running the Whitby service themselves worthwhile?

Noel

 

My hunch is that the situation at NYMR is complex, and they have problems with both volume and price.

The changing price strategies have shown that their fares are already right at the top of what the market will stand, hence the discounting that was applied last year and reports of shorter/less full trains. There are then some complex price/demand trade-offs that I hope that the management are on top of, to inform them where their income maximisation will be - but which I suspect aren't very compatible with cost minimisation given the nature of the line and the constraints it imposes.

My own hunch is that, more than anything, the railway needs to ensure that it maximises income to allow it to cover the fixed costs of running at all. And in that, I remain far from convinced that the internal cost attribution model provides adequate incentive to drive marginal income from their operations - which feeds into the whole debate about what is or isn't promoted. Instead, based on what's been said here previously, I have a strong suspicion that the internal understanding of marginal cost includes a relatively high allocation of fixed costs.

To illustrate my thinking, the obvious answer to how much does it cost to run a train is to take the costs of crew, fuel, and consumables, and divide by the mileage run. But in reality, many of those costs are incurred the moment you run a train at all that day. Even coal costs won't correlate that well to mileage once a loco is in steam (diesel costs will map more nearly). This means that, if you can cover the true marginal costs of running when you already have triggered your "per day" costs, it will make money. But if those "per day" costs are smoothed into "per mile", the opportunity to gain is obscured.

 

Whilst the franchise idea is an interesting concept of debating point I suspect it would come with a bundle of subsidiary issues to drive cost/reduce the price to the franchiser.
So a third party is likely to want guaranteed paths, so the NYMR would need to be flexible with its own trains and timetables. Reliable infrastructure as well, Bridge 42 may have been a one off but having something like that in "the season" would not go down well. Northern's excellent timekeeping will add to this mess as well.
Finally the ticket price is probably already at its ceiling.
Minimum of two locos and a set of ORR compliant coaches as a new operator will not get away with operating as the NYMR do.
My question is would the NYMR be "viable on its own". This is of course also the issue for the vast number of HR Lines in 2026.

 

I agree. Very likely to be much more complex than we can see from the outside.

The cost of the railway is undoubtedly high in infrastructure just the length suggests that.

Fully agree that the various price experiments haven’t found the right approach yet, but they may provide quite a lot of insights if used properly.

 

I go out for a bit and all hell breaks loose! Thanks Tom.
After a minutes thought, whilst it is a reasonable idea, I don't think that it is practical. If the venture is to satisfy the demand it is going to require two train sets c/w locos. One starting its day at Pickering and another starting its day at Whitby. At 24 miles, it is nothing like as long as the West Highland so the running time is going to be less, 1½ as compared with 2¼ hours. That means that you have to have a long layover or you want to get in a second return trip unless you bring your passengers back earlier than the majority want. Then there's the fact that, although the majority are going to Whitby, a substantial number aren't. If it's a franchise, does that mean the their trains only carry Whitby passengers or are others going to Levissam/Goathland/Grosmont allowed to travel as well and how is that reconciled in terms of fares? And, if you take the Whitby trains away from the NYMR, it will leave them operating just two round trips/day, one of which is often the diner which no longer carries the ordinary passenger. There's also the fact that most crews enjoy the trip to the seaside and would miss it if it wasn't there.
Rather than trying something different to make it work, I would be asking why it doesn't work. Back when it all first started, the Grosmont-Whitby operation was actually done by WCRC using their locos and crews so some franchising, or rather outside operating resource has been used. It worked but I believe it was expensive and only lasted the one year. When the NYMR took it all in-house, it also worked and I believe it was successful. So what has changed? We have lost Philip Benham who was the driving force behind the idea and implementing it and we have had two General Managers/CEO's who I don't believe had the necessary drive and enthusiasm. Virtually the whole management team has changed and I think that it is now driven by the easy option. The philosophy now appears to be how can we make it easier for ourselves rather than how can we do it and make it work? One example is the loco for the 09.20 from Pickering. The train goes all the eway through to Whitby and originally a Whitby loco was rostered throughout for this. However, that required a paid fitter to go to New Bridge each morning to do the FTR. It worked but changing management said why do we have to do that? Why don't we swap locos at Grosmont and just have an internal loco for the NYMR bit? It saves an early morning fitter. Operationally that worked but introduced a fourth loco and you still needed a second Whitby loco or required time consuming loco changes at Grosmont. Another example has been the loss of the Battersby running. That was the icing on the cake for footplater crews with 45 mph running over much of it. However, it was deemed to be too much trouble maintaining competence for only a few days/year at galas, despite its popularity.
The NYMR can be profitable running through to Whitby but it needs a management that can make it happen and that's something it doesn't currently have, IMHO.

 

This is exactly the sort of logical and positive thinking that current management simply don't have.

When the CEO post is next advertised (and please, please may that be very soon) I would urge you to apply for the job Steve.

 

Re Battersby and the Esk Valley in general.

If we retain Pickering - Grosmont as suggested.
Would it make the Whitby proposal more attractive to an outside party if the entire Esk Valley line was included in the Package? Transferring that section from Northern.
How far back towards Middlesborough would you go though?
Battersby - Nunthorpe - Middlesborough.
Where would be logical and economic transfer point?

 

So do I understand you want the franchisee to convince the ORR to become an OAO to Middlesborough, or have I misunderstood. Not sure current Northern users would like NYMR type fares or the franchisee the government fares.

 

I just checked the Jacobite price, and it starts at £76, which isn't hugely more than the NYMR £50 or so. Admittedly there is not a great discount for children, but I guess they are not pitching the Jacobite as a family day out.

And given they have run it for years, one assumes that WCR are making a profit at that level, even with paid staff and whatever track access charge they have to make to Network Rail. (Ignoring the recent issues over carriage provision).

Now, it is possible - perhaps probable - that the franchise model isn't the right way for the NYMR to go, and they would be better keeping it in house. But maybe now is the time to think of Whitby really as a stand-alone premium service that is its own profit centre - a bit like diners - with different marketing to the core heritage line services marketed more at families. In other words, I wonder if the £50 return is a bit of a compromise price: too high to attract families, but too low to cover the real costs of the service, and maybe lower than the market would bear if that market was "well heeled tourists out for a special day out".

So perhaps you end up at a £60 return to Whitby, focusing strongly on the Tourist market, making one round trip with a decent break in the town; and a £35 day rover on the Pickering - Grosmont section focusing heavily on the family (and enthusiast) market? So stop trying to cover both in one model? You'd need 2* 7 carriages and a couple of (Network Rail certified) Black 5s for the dedicated Whitby trains (based on one train in traffic and one spare throughout the season; both in use at peak times); and maybe about 15 carriages (but some of which could be vintage) and perhaps 3 - 4 smaller locos for the NYMR-proper, but none of those would need to be Whitby-certified.

Maybe that's not the answer either; I'm just trying to think "how do you make the service work with two very different markets?" Some of the problem has been trying to satisfy different types of demand with a single one-size-fits-all "get them to Whitby for £50" offering.

Tom

 

I would also be interested to see research on the typical tourists in the two areas to understand how that segmentation might work

 

Absolutely correct to say that it's problematic to cover differing markets with a one-size-fits-all product but the overall footfall has declined so much that available custom is no longer large enough to divide between the NYMR and a franchisee. As Tom suggests the service could be adapted to better fill the varying requirements of passenger types but to divide such a small cake wouldn't sustain two providers.

From a purely practical point of view I can't see any organisation taking on a Whitby franchise at any price and if Whitby is to continue with a heritage service no-one except NYMR could afford to provide it.

I'm not saying the NYMR shouldn't run to Whitby but the point is the NYMR could survive if it didn't..

A stand alone Whitby - Grosmont franchisee is a financial non starter.

 

I think the critical difference is that the track access charges paid to run the Jacobite do not have to cover as significant a proportion of the total cost of the infrastructure. The Moors one way or other only has its trains and no subsidy to cover the costs, whereas WCR share the cost with other operators and the line is subsidised as an essential transport link.