North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

How do you fill and empty an ISO container? I’ve yet to see one with an open top and a means of tipping the contents. Having said that, I’d be happy to be told that they exist.
The coal landed at Immingham will come in something like 30,000 ton bulk carriers and be offloaded onto the dockside. From there it will be loaded into lorry’s for onward transport to the buyer.

 

I don’t think any record is kept of people walking away when they discover a diesel on the front end. However, anecdotal evidence from booking offices says it is not insignificant.

 

I don't know about the emptying, but I've been stood on the platform as a trainload of opentopped containers sped by, leaving a trail of dust in their wake.

 

Seems there is equipment out there that’s not dissimilar.

 

It's not just those walking away- it will be the disappointing experience for a number who do travel, including people with advance bookings, leading to people not returning, negative word-of-mouth or reviews etc


Jon

 

Why will it necessarily be a disappointment? 15 years ago I would have agreed, but not so much now. Indeed some non-enthusiasts will comment positively on the use of vintage diesels, and the reaction of the general public to the 150 on the MHR has been amazingly positive. For more and more there is less and less expectation of steam haulage, and I would suggest that outside of the enthusiast provided the visitor sees a steam engine at some point in the visit, they go home happy. Now, granted that might not be true of a railway promoting itself as 100% or nearly steam hauled, but….

 

We (as a family) have certainly not bothered travelling on a day at the NYMR when steam has been substituted by a diesel due to a lack of Steam availability as opposed to weather related restrictions.

 

The coal containers have a tarpaulin covered top and a front discharge door just like a lorry. The 20ft containers take 28 metric tonnes. Not sure how many there are in the UK but they do exist.
https://cargostore.com/coal-carrier-container/

 

I was looking at some reviews for another railway last night and the recent negative reviews were from people who had been expecting steam but got diesel.

Yes the balance may be shifting but for many steam is still the expectation

Jon

 

With the MHR (and a lot of other lines), the journeys are shorter and passengers have the opportunity to swap between trains so can experience steam and diesel. By prioritising the longer journey to Whitby so much the NYMR have got themselves into a pickle - partly through lack of locos but mainly due to "operational convenience", meaning steam on the most popular services (09.20 Pickering - Whitby and 17.10 return) seems to be a very rare occurrence. The only chance of being almost certain to get steam at some point is to reduce your time in Whitby to 3 hours by either arriving later or leaving early. If you do want to spend the whole day at Whitby, the only time passengers will see steam is passing it at Grosmont.

 

I think that's a flawed argument. Its not hard to see that the more successful heritage railways in terms of passenger numbers are the ones running steam. The NYMR now completely relies on Whitby for its 'draw'.

The NYMR used to pull people in because it ran a lot of steam engines and created 'theatre'. Now it pulls a lot of people in to go to Whitby, essentially an expensive park and ride through fantastic scenery (IMO). If you took Whitby away, and ran the amount of diesels they do, I am certain they would go bust.

During the Bridge 42 closure passenger numbers tanked. They were still a long heritage line compared to many, but they lost Whitby. If they had committed to running a lot of steam during that period (and advertised that fact) I suspect they would have been far better off, but no, top and tailed diesels for the majority of it (even when steam was run it was only on one end of the train and facing the wrong way in most cases). Result, very few passengers! Even with shorter trains lots of empty seats were clearly visible.