North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

It would be interesting to see the 10.55 and the other trains advertised as being LNER 1930’s coaches when they are used and see if it attracts more passengers than when it is simply a set of Mk1’s

 

I don't recall anyone saying that the withdrawal of the teak train was responsible for a fall in visitor numbers. I think it may have been a partial symptom, but in all honesty I think the underlying "disease", if we may call it such, is much more widespread and corrosive than that. In the past the teak train was seen as a source of pride, nowadays it just seems to be a nuisance, a troublesome anachronism that the present management was lumbered with by a previous one.

Sadly, I think it is a widespread disease, and spreading more widely, with a loss of interest from the management in the NYMR as a heritage railway, being replaced by a vision of a tourist railway run as cheaply as possible with as little effort as possible and manned increasingly by paid staff. As I have been saying for some time now - and it is a view being heard increasingly from others as well now, a reset of approach is desperately needed before any more damage is done. What management of another heritage railway, for example, would be unable to imagine a possible use for a newly restored Edwardian dining car or a restored teak observation car and let ithem go elsewhere, ?

 

Sure; but do they bring in fare-paying visitors - visitors who would not have come were they not there? Because that's the most important way in which they would be significant for the NYMR. (Without enough fare-paying visitors, the line cannot continue on.) Whether they reinforce the heritage and preservation characteristics of the line, or not, is meaningless, if the line has to shut down.

(I am aware that there's a certain irony in my making this point, as I have, previously, talked about how heritage lines, such as the NYMR, need to understand that they aren't just simple businesses. I don't retract my point, not at all; but heritage lines have an aspect that are businesses. They just aren't just simple businesses.)

Noel