North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

Hang on - I thought you were the great advocate for heritage trains on the NYMR. An electric autocar and trailer at Goathland doesn't get more "heritage" than that. It may not be steam but it is every bit as authentic as rebuilt LNER teak coaches. Surely it ticks all your boxes.

Peter

 

The pricing structure for the SNG trains does nothing to dispel the feeling that the NYMR isn’t particularly bothered about attracting and retaining members. A whopping £3 discount on the adult fare of £30 for a Pickering-Grosmont round trip.

 

I am, and it does! - but with strong caveats. If the visit were later in the year and part of an event with a bit more heritage scope I'd be all in favour, but this is being staged at a time of year when the dice are loaded against it! Loaded with enthusiasts and others with a degree of appreciation even the Autocoach would be a pleasant experience, but I think this visit is at half term week when visitors are more likely to be long families who will be less enamoured with the experience, particularly if it does experience adhesion problems and gets stuck somewhere! Not a well thought out plan imho.

 

I'm sorry you feel disappointed but assume you woul',t quarrel with the idea that the NYMR needs to make money from the event? Realistically what else could it offer? The current membership subscription is £40 per year. Of that roughly half is swallowed by the cost of printing and posting Moor Line magazine plus the per member costs of the AGM (again involving a substantial postage bill). If the usual 50% member discount was available on the £30 SNG fare that would potentially reduce the net benefit to just £5! The NYMR values and wants to retain its members. After all they are the main contributors to appeals and some leave substantial legacies. However it can't be right for membership to be judged on the basis of how much financial benefit can members get rather than how much can they support the NYMR.

 

I find your maths interesting! If there was a 50% members discount on the services in question, the member would already have paid their £40 membership fee, therefore the nett benefit to the NYMR would be £15.00, not the £5.00 you suggest - and they could also gift-aid that £15.00 if they chose to, to further enhance its value. The current cost of membership and the costs incurred are irrelevant!

If you read Facebook you will see a post from some saying they have two friends who have changed their wills to exclude the NYMR because they are dissatisfied with the present management, and you can add me to that list as well,. I hope that the new Grant-securing person is working overtime to replace these - and they are just the ones we know about!

 

Of course I want the railway to make money from the event. It does so by offering an attractive product at a competitive price. I see 60044 has already picked up on the maths involved here in their post so I’ll not go over that ground again other than to say I also don’t think those sums add up. In any case the net benefit to the railway is most severely reduced when the member is put off going completely. No additional ticket revenue, no secondary spend etc.

I actually think that the 50% member discount is a very, possibly too, generous offer. What I’ve noted is fewer opportunities to make use of it and ticketing policy making it disadvantageous to do so. The biggest example of that being the annual pass approach where there is no member discount whatsoever and any member wishing to visit on more than one normal operating day is equally well served by getting the annual pass. Perhaps if application of the discount consistently is so financially prohibitive the level of discount needs an honest review?

I think your assessment of why people take out membership is overly simplistic. Yes there is a clear desire to support the thing in question, but there is often a cost/benefit assessment for the individual too. This is especially the case in the current financially challenging times. I’d love to be able to financially support everything I care about, but unfortunately that’s not possible and I have to consider what my priorities are both in terms of how much I want to support the thing and what the benefit to me (and in my case my family) is. That’s where the member benefits and the quality of experience come into it.

I love the moors dearly but after recent visits I’ve been unable to shift the feeling that it is in decline. Peter mentioned up thread that various locos are “rough” and that TSRs seem to be multiplying on the permanent way and that has been my experience too. The condition and availability of coaching stock has also concerned me. The loss of the teak train to regular service through the railway failing to keep up its end of the maintenance agreement is deeply concerning. In case you feel like this is just a vent on an online forum I’d like to point out that I’ve made these exact same comments via the post visit surveys which the NYMR sends out.

 

Hoping that one of the regular crews could answer this one best.
However Beck Hole and Darnholm near the brick underbridge would be my tips for the stiffest test area.

 

Yes, the member would already have paid the £40 membership fee and as a direct consequence the railway would already have taken on the additional cost of servicing that membership at around 50% of the income received. Of course there are factors such as whether the member would have travelled on an SNG service anyway and whether those services are fully subscribed. What is indisputable is that the net cost/benefit figure against which the effect of any discount has to be assessed is around £20 not £40.

 

Actually, as the OP has pointed out, the potential net loss if he fails to travel on this service is likely to be rather larger, if you include the possibility of him buying a cup of coffee or two and perhaps a sandwich or chocolate bar. You also haven't included the possibility of gift aid on his ticket, a surprising omission from someone normally advocating gift aid! But, if the services are full of full-fare paying customers, I'm sure that as a supporter of the railway he'll be pleased to see the seat sold to a more profitable customer; on the other hand, if the train runs with an empty seat that could have been sold for even half price I'm equally sure that he'd be very disappointed by the lack of entrepreneurism by the railway's management!

 

I would have hoped you'd be more positive about the entrepenurial initiative of an early season money making venture involving the visit of a high profile locomotive. The SNG services are excluded from the Gift Aid facility so there will be no annual pass returnees. Against that background it's disappointing that the attitude of some on here appears to be how little can I pay. It's interesting that the poster suggested that the standard 50% member discount is too high. Anothe railway I'm closely connected with gives its members a one of annual £5 discount card. That's it! Perhaps that's an entrepreneurial precedent the NYMR might follow?

 

According to info Ploughman supplied me with a good few years ago the 15 chains around Darnholm curve are at a gradient of 1 in 42/3; not quite the steepest bit , which is the 1 in 41 pull out of dead man’s bridge but much longer and not straight. The curves add significantly to the TE required.

 

Running at half term suggests a need for good heating. I guess it’s fairly easy with the Autocar but what about the trailer? Or has it got a modern heating system fitted?

 

Didn't 60007 used to live at the NYMR? Why is a visit so special now?

 

The SNG trains are excluded from the annual pass arrangements, but is there any reason why a person travelling on said trains cannot offer to sign up for gift aid on their fare? I partly agree that a 50% member discount is too high, though - in the past members have had reasonably good value in return for their membership subs in return for their quarterly "Moors Line" - but perhaps the 50% discount is now suitable in view of the dreadful advertorial publication it has been turned into? SNG was based for years at the NYMR based there, and ran with no fanfare, so is it a bit surprising to see it flouted now as a prestige visitor, when it seems to visit just about every year! IMHO, the NYMR management are stuck in their thinking - 60103 was a big success when it was the first low season visitor, but subsequent ones seem to have not been as successful. I suggest that it is perhaps time to try changing the formula in some way.

 

A calculation that, to be valid, needs to stand on it's own. On the maths you've used*, that membership will net the railway £20 after servicing costs whether the member travels daily, or just once. Any additional travel made by the member at whatever rate is net additional revenue. There are valid questions about where discounts are pitched and the opportunity cost if members' discounts displace full fare paying customers, but they are about the value of a discount, not whether one should be there.

In the meantime, it is far from clear to me that the NYMR has seriously researched the question of how much business memberships add. I can relate to the views of @Andy2857 from personal experience, the additional income that NYMR made from my family due to the existence of such discounts, and the deterrent effect of removing those discounts (including detachment from the railway that led to reduced input to appeals).

That any other railway has a different structure of benefits (or even none at all) is irrelevant to the perception of value, certainly in comparison to the impact of change to the value of those - especially if (as here) the reductions are a slow chipping away at the value rather than a clear statement to members of a change of policy.

The impression given is that NYMR do not wish to nurture a reliable source of income. Given that a society with 10,000 members contributing a net £20 each would benefit to the tune of £200k net income per year, that is a lot of money to be discounting the value of.

* - an aside, I find it hard to believe that the costs of Moors Line and producing AGM materials is so high, as it doesn't accord with figures discussed on here before from elsewhere.

 

I think this is really key. If you are joining a railway as a member to get a financial benefit - ie pay less than not joining - then you are not helping the railway. (Any railway - the fact this is the NYMR thread is by the by.)

 

On the contrary, my period of membership at NYMR started because I realised there was a financial opportunity. The membership then remained despite not being used in a number of years - a deal that netted the railway considerably more than it "lost".

 

@Lineisclear figures imply it costs about £20 per year to service a member, including the AGM costs and distribution of four issues per year of Moors Line. That is for an organisation at a scale of 10,000 so I understand.

I looked up the BRPS figures - I gather the membership is similarly 10,000 or so. The cost of running the society in 2023 was £80k, or about £8 per member per year. That included Bluebell News (A4, full colour, 4 issues) @ £48k; the AGM costs @ £14,700; and sundry other costs making up the remainder. So the magazine is costing about £1.20 per member per issue and the AGM about £1.50 per member. I should ask for a rise in my writer's fee ...

The figures are here: https://www.bluebell-railway.co.uk/bluebell/soc/notices/combined_report_accounts_booklet_2023.pdf, page 54.

Tom

 

It had occurred to me to wonder about the heating which they have been doing quite a bit about recently, electric fan heaters under the seats certainly on the Autocar itself and I think on the trailer too. If it can't get away and isn't slipping, I would think it fair enough to see if loosing the heating load releases enough power to get it moving off.

It should help having the powered bogie - from a Southern EMU - under the heavy end where the engine and generator are. The Southern Hastings DEMUs and their inspirations for Hampshire and Northern Ireland were arranged the other way round which made one think when they slipped under power. And presumably if the adhesion is marginal there would be some effect that preceding wheels would clean up the rails for the power bogie following so the power car would be best pushing.

 

According to the NYMR accounts Moors Line printing cost in year ending 2024 were £29317 and printing, postage & stationery £45804 which is a tad over £75000 total. Membership is claimed at about 10000. I can’t find a more detailed breakdown of agm costs so guess printing, postage & stationery includes that cost although I’m only looking at them on my phone at the moment. That works out at £7.50/member so I’m at a loss as to where the £20 cost of servicing a member quoted by lineisclear comes from. Perhaps he could give a more detailed breakdown and wheee it occur in the accounts.