North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

The factual answer is appreciated, and it's understood that you can't give commitments. However, terms like "I hope..." would go a long way to signalling where you would wish things to go.

 

There's nothing wrong with my senses when they can identify that an AGM is an event for current members which quite a few posters on here are not. However, there might be merit in a wider public meeting, such as the one held recently at Grosmont.

 

Members and Shareholders will have already been sent the AGM information by post or email but please see below for the Agenda, PLC and Trust Accounts and supporting information.

We have yet to see anything in email or postal format about the AGM

 

I guess it all comes down to your view of the world Tom.
To me the first answer you gave is accurate statement of what happens.
To second is just shrouding things in weasel words to try to keep folks happy.

But of course if you spend your working life writing and managing contracts of one form or another you spend your life looking for things that may go wrong, and how to protect from it how ever unlikely, rather than the good. I guess I am more of a glass quarter full person. With no knowledge of the background of @Lineisclear maybe I see fare less inflammatory than most on here do.

 

To circle back to this revelation from the PLC's financial statement (with that £500,000 labelled "Other operating income"; which gives a somewhat misleading perception of what actually happened, when it was actually a grant from the Trust), I was wondering if the Trust's financial statement said anything about where that £500,000 actually came from. (Frankly, I was wondering if they had quietly sold some major asset, to raise the money.) I mean, I doubt the Trust just happened to have it lying around, forgotten, in some dormant account.

So, I set out to read through the financial statements, to see if I could find it. I'm not sure if I did (below), but towards the end of my reading, I was frankly just skimming - I must confess I didn't have the patience to read them both carefully and slowly, which would require wading through masses of accounting/legal/marketing verbiage. They may meet the statutory/etc requirements, but they didn't give (me, at least) a crisp and clear picture of what the financial situation is. (Although, perhaps that's just how these particular accountants roll; maybe all the financial statements they prepare for various entities are this unclear.)

On the way through, in addition to the points raised by others (e.g. provisions for liabilities related to the condition of track and civil infrastructure), I ran across some other interesting statements; e.g. "The company has taken advantage of the exemption from disclosure of transactions with its ultimate parent undertaking, North Yorkshire Moors Railway Trust". In other words, they are apparently hiding things when the rules allow them to do so (to give the plain reading of that assertion).

Also, I noticed that "Hire of rolling stock" had jumped from £382,030, the year before, to £708,010; had they managed to avoid that great increase, their operating loss (before the grant from the Trust) would have pretty much gone away. Like hiring staff (although I see that they apparently managed to avoid doing that this year; "Administration" staff only went from 17 to 19; 'better late than never'), it astonishes me that this has apparently slipped by. I was under the impression that the NYMR was fairly well supplied with engines and coaches - but there has been a lot of discussion here about engine issues.

"Creditors: Amounts falling due within one year" showed "Bank overdrafts" going from £189,200 the year before, to £997,672. (Confirmed by "a £1,800,000 overdraft facility, which was in use at the year end to the extent of £997,672 (2025: £189,200)".) So while bank loans were touted as being paid down, the overdraft showed a massive increase.


Anyway, back to 'where did the Trust find £500,000'. I found this footnote: "A Trustee, Mr {name redacted by me; I am uncomfortable repeating it publicly, here - JNC} and his wife previously made an interest free loan to North Yorkshire Moors Railway Trust totalling £300,000", Not quite the whole £500,000, but most of it. Elsewhere I found "Creditors: Amounts falling due .. Over five years [--] Other loans 300,000" - although the original note did say "an interest free loan".

So the 'profit' that was touted in the NYMR PLC's financial statement was down to a loan from a Trustee. (There is no facial statement directly to that effect, but money is fungible.) But accounting rules allowed the combined organizations a way to turn a loan into a profit - which they took.

I've recently been reading "Anatomy of a Merger: A History of G.E.C., A.E.I. and English Electric", and it talks about how, as a result of some of the fast book-keeping moves engaged in by some of the people there, accounting rules were changed some years later. It looks to me like those changes did not go far enough.

Well, I can't devote more time to poking through the accounts; I'll leave further examination to others.

Noel

 

.Sorry for transgressing! Only trying to add a little bit of wry humour to an otherwise depressing and dire thread. I like to think on these lines:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

 

As someone also involved in the writing and operation of contracts, I find your comment about "looking for things that may go wrong" revealing. My experience is that, while it's essential to look for what may go wrong and protect from it, good contracts go far further and focus on how to make sure they go right. My experience is that 90% of that is about getting people to be aligned on what they're trying to achieve, and letting the contract document that agreement.

That's relevant here, where the issue is not so much with the substance as with the tone. I respect the knowledge of process of @Lineisclear and generally strongly agree with him on the bare facts of governance - while disagreeing strongly on their implications. But the fundamental issue being discussed here is not whether NYMR is being "properly" governed but the relationship between very poor financial results, weak customer demand, and worsening relationships between railway leadership and many "on the ground".

As a Bluebell member, it's noticeable that many of the same issues provoke much less heat, and progress towards organisational change is significantly more advanced.

 

The first is perhaps an answer that would be given to someone enquiring about the AGM of Big Company PLC.

The second is an answer given to someone enquiring about a heritage railway that is not only reliant on a group of volunteers giving up their spare time to run the railway, but is also reliant on those same people (and others from outside the railway) to give substantial sums to keep the railway running.

Weasel words doesn't come into it.
If the volunteers are not kept happy, they will walk.
If they walk, the railway ceases to operate and will end up liquidated.
It's that simple.

 

All of this stems from the fact the products aren't good enough and they are too expensive (or indeed sometimes not expensive enough).
I've had a fascinating three days talking to members of the public attending the gala, while showing them around ECJS 189.
Firstly many of the public are concerned about the future of that railway. Also there is a lot of dedication from the public. I spoke to one woman whose son fly's back from Canada to attend galas.
People who want to use it more but can't justify it with the current fare structure. Someone who was unable to renew their membership at the booking office (which used to be possible). A proposal for earning tens of thousands of pounds from a single trip with 189 when it's finished, several times a year.
The energy and love for the railway and in particular for steam is as strong as it was sixty years ago.
It is just that the NYMR is no longer connecting with that. What is most heartening was there were so many young families and young people as well as people from different backgrounds there.

Sawdust.

 

Maybe bringing humour to this particular thread is not the best of ideas as the written word can be read differently from how it was written

 

To be honest I'm not so sure about locomotive overhauls. If there is an exceptional unexpected cost (such as a loco smashing its cylinders or something) then yes, possibly. And likewise for a first restoration, of a newly acquired machine, possibly. But the routine 10-yearly overhaul should be paid from by either steaming/running fees or an equivalent ringfenced maintenance fund accrued through the operating cycle. Anything else is just subsidising the operating costs in another way.
Likewise infrastructure works; if your bridge falls down in an earthquake, maybe have a whip round. But if you have 30 bridges you should be bringing in enough income to rebuild one every year or two on a planned cycle.
Personally, when I donate to a charity, I like it to be for something in the 'nice to have' category, which otherwise wouldn't have happened. I don't want to be donating to, essentially, pay the coal/water/diesel/electricity/wage bill. I expect the minimum level of management to be one which is able to maintain the status quo. That gives me reassurance that my donation will make an actual difference.

Nothing about the NYMR in this post; just making a general point.

 

Nothing about the NYMR in this post either, sorry, but I could not agree more with pmh's comment. As another "overhaul" appeal was launched at a railway I used to be involved with I suggested that this could be avoided - in part at least - by putting £1 in a pot for every mile the loco ran in traffic. Over ten years with the loco concerned a big chunk of the overhaul costs would have been covered, maybe all. BUT, I was told that this was not necessary as the money would be raised by appeal (such was their confidence) and there was no need to diminish the railway's income by actually paying for repairs to their main attractions. Meanwhile, a different nice-to-have loco on said railway was utilised in such a way that it paid for its own new boiler.

 

You need to look at cash generation, not profits.
The jump in the overdraft doesn't sound good...

 

I'm not convinced, for two reasons. First is that, especially for infrastructure, there will be major expenditure required that relates to the pre-existing asset life. Second is that, in this sector, donations are an important part of the income stream and may supplement the steaming fees - as we've seen with various loco owning groups.

But that capital expenditure needs to be understood completely separately from normal operational expenditure like, for example, the fuel and pay bills.

 

A boiler overhaul, for example; is the type of capital project that’s cost could be written down over 10 years.

Equally, a grant from Trust to Company to fund renewal of bridge beams, could be written down over 25 years.

Railways which hire steam locomotives from owning groups, usually have the benefit of fundraising by the loco owners reflected in hire fees being lower than if the hire fees had do cover the full cost of restoration and overhauls.

 

I suppose the distinction to be made is between expecting everything including once in a generation bridge renewals to be covered from the fare box - extremely unrealistic I would say - and having a rough idea of what your extra average income might be.

For example you might know what your income from legacies are over the last 10 years and can project that for the next 10 years to give a rough idea of how many bridges you can afford to renew in that time scale, and if that works. Or you might have a regular supporters' club income for a particular locomotive to support with overhaul costs. All in a different category to a sudden panic "We're in the sh1t" fundraising campaign.

 

This is where accounting conventions and reality run up against each other. You can and should write capital projects down over a period, but that doesn't always mean that the cold hard cash is available at the time that it's needed for the next piece of work (and let's not consider what happens when the accounting period and reality misalign).

But I've lost count of the number of appeals by locomotive groups for funds to pay for the next overhaul - whether that's a small tank or Clan Line. Altruistic donations are a feature of the sector, not a bug.

 

Absolutely - though I'd like to see the discussion at a board where they realise they need an appeal because too few people have died lately! More seriously, and with experience of benefitting from legacies, they are very unreliable as a source of income as they tend to be very random, both in terms of how many you get and how much. I know one church near me got a £1m legacy a few years ago; I'd be surprised if my (much larger) church had received even half that across a much larger number of legacies in the last 20 years.

More seriously, budgeting is a black art and it's too easy to be critical of organisations that are being caught short by rapidly increasing costs - both directly, and by the impact on how many tickets people will buy. While the detail will differ from place to place, my expectation would be that, over a rolling two or three years, an organisation like a heritage railway should be able to break even on ordinary operational income and expenditure*

* - to note that, where there is a supporting charity structure, "ordinary operational income and expenditure" may include a routine level of grant giving.

 

Reading through the Trust's accounts, I see they're now saying the repairs to Bridge 42 are expected to be over £1m. Would certainly explain why the programme has been paused.

 

Scientists have sophisticated mathematical tools to pick out 'trends' from 'random noise'. I wonder if anyone has ever applied them to legacies?

The NYMR could certainly use such a tool; from the recent financial statement, there was this (which I forgot to include in the last message): "our bequest income dramatically declined from £515,953 in 2024/25 to just £229,695 in 2025". And as to the future, there have been several statements from people who have removed the NYMR from their wills.

Not, I should emphasize, purely because they don't like the people running the NYMR now; rather, apparently because, given the general financial direction, they are worried that it will be nothing more than 'good money after bad'.

Exactly; one has to trim one's sails closely.

Noel