North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

I timed the token faff and think there's a around 9.5 minutes saved in each direction.

This improvement is long overdue. Lobbying and political pressure ought to be able to secure derogations for Whitby running. After all, lobbying by various vested interests has seen the dismantling of most of HS2 by politicians.
Other effective lobbying has seen the trains restored to Okehampton and Ashington.
North Yorkshire is not so good at this, witness Haxby, now £25m and unlikely to be built any time soon.

 

What sort of derogations?

 

So to me the situation appears to be:

1. Whitby trains are frequently full
2. The Whitby traffic is very tidal (out in the morning, back in the afternoon)
3. Despite the full trains, the railway is losing money

That says to me that you can't get out of the financial hole just by "doing more Whitby". The problem is the empty return trains, not the full Whitby ones. So the focus has to be on "how do we fill seats going in the 'wrong' (counter-tidal) direction morning and afternoon, since we are running those trains anyway?"

Is the answer to have discounted fares, but only available on certain trains? How about a £10 Whitby - Goathland or £5 Grosmont - Goathland return journey, but only available out and back on the "counter-tidals"? The trains are running anyway, so the difference is between someone paying something, or carrying an empty seat. Sometimes the argument about discount fares is that they extract traffic from people who would otherwise pay full fare, but if the primary demand is to Whitby and return, then developing anything from Whitby and return shouldn't eat into that traffic.

Tom

 

I have considerable sympathy with 60044's assessement . I'd even be prepared to contemplate that extending to Whitby might have been a strategic error. The originally anticipated financial benefits have been absorbed by far higher than anticipated costs especially those inposed by regulatory compliance requirements. There was a good deal of sentiment invoved in the members' decision .....re-creating the original Whitby and Pickering Railway is a persuasive argument.
However, there is almost certainly no viable way back. The NYMR has changed radically and, in particular. the product on which its finances now depend is end to end services to the seaside. A primary duty of charity trustees is to ensure, as best they can, the financial viability of the charity. It's been apparent for some time , reflecting the experince of other long heritage railways such as in the US , that a limited timetable of full length of the line services is the optimum business model. The best financial return is from satisfying the demand that has been created for those services. The problem is that, by and large, volunteers (and members) are not motivated by sustaining a business, charity or otherwise. They want to be part of a community that preserves and operates a busy exciting railway which they can enjoy and take pride in. Consequently the challenge facing the trustees is how to transform the ideal Whitby centric financial model, which they are duty bound to protect, into one that also satisfies members and volunteers AND that improves the charity's financial viability. There have been numerous welcome ideas and suggestions on here and elsewhere which to succeed will have to attract additional paying visitors. Trying to persuade those who currently underpin viability that they should switch to alternatives would be a huge gamble. It's probably safe to assume that more frequent intermediate services, hop on hop short or single journeys and station based attractions must target new audiences not try to persuade existing ones to switch.

 

The Ffestiniog & Welsh Highland has one huge advantage over the NYMR in this respect in that Paul Lewin is without doubt a railway enthusiast and time served volunteer with a passion for the railway. If only that could be said for those running the NYMR where virtually everyone in senior management doesn't tick any of those attributes. Fun for volunteers, enjoyable; what on earth are you talking about?

 

All fair comments, though I've heard differing views on the financial costs of operation past Grosmont.

From personal experience, one of those "new" audiences worth appealing to are repeat visitors. When staying in Pickering, a day out in Whitby was fine. Once. But at the right price, using the train as the basis for a walk ticked a number of boxes.

 

There are lots who are understandably very passionate about the NYMR, and yes it does have a "uniqueness" that we understand with the issue of running on NR metals.
Personally though taking @Jamessquared points from post #4203
:

1. Whitby trains are frequently full
2. The Whitby traffic is very tidal (out in the morning, back in the afternoon)
3. Despite the full trains, the railway is losing money

These do not seem to be particularly unique to the NYMR. The Whitby train understandably the first one out of Pickering but a similar flow pattern exists with the first train from Norden or Bishops Lydeard and I assume (due to the fact that the first train from Bridgnorth was quite late) Kidderminster.
SVR and Swanage may not be losing money now but both were post Covid.

Some railways have created a connection to NR, Bluebell, MHR for example although I have always been unconvinced that the results met expectations. NYMR had a connection at Grosmont but who could realistically "market" a connection to an already infrequent Northern service as a serious Whitby "add on" to the old NYMR route.

Lots say the fare is high at £49.50 and I would agree, but at a cost per mile it is £1.03, against as an example £ 0.96 at the SVR £1.22 at the Bluebell £2 at Swanage or £1.28 at the WSR based on a daily walk up fare (some of which may double as a rover).

The big shift to me this year is how you justify to last years travellers where the years worth of repeat visits has gone, and how some voucher to spend in the cafe or shop (I assume is a substitute) and the lack of single fares.
I accept no two lines are the same, and the longer the line the bigger your infrastructure costs. I also have no idea how many staff are needed to undertake the daily service, forgetting for the moment if these are paid or volunteers. But if not all loco crews or guards want to go to Whitby and if the lack of CDL means you end up having to have window bars rather than just restricted opening, who is going to shut and open all those doors at every station or are you just going to make folks wait until someone as walked the length of the train and increase dwell times or force people to walk to predetermined points at each station. I have seen how "well" that works on railtours with a short platform, however many PA and steward passes you make beforehand. To me it seems a large number of volunteers are needed each day.
That is before you get to senior company positions where the modern British "sue someone (everyone)" culture means there is no way I would undertake senior tasks for no remuneration.

Bottom line I have no idea if the NYMR has too many paid staff, but it appears to me they may well need quite a few.

 

I’m surprised by the assertion that there is almost certainly no viable way back from operating to Whitby. That’s seems an overly rigid thought, but perhaps the figures have been done?

Prior to opening to Whitby the railway carried over 200k passengers did it not? I would be interested to assess what the visitor numbers might reduce to v the saved costs.

Operating to Whitby must add considerable management burdens well in excess of just running on own infrastructure. Cutting that operation might yield more savings than the costs you think you added because of the simplification. For example carriage FTRs not having to be done daily and therefore able to be taken on by volunteers rather than having to have x FTE to cover the operation?

 

I would think it is more relevant to look at Whitby numbers pre and post Covid before any comparison of like to like numbers with Grosmont.

 

Quite possibly but it's not just a cost reduction v income forfeit calculation. There's the small matter of the Coastal Communities Fund Grant to partially rebuild Whitby station, the Yorkshire's Magnificent Journey grant the justification for which was strongly influenced by "Moors and Coast" opportunities and the current National Portfolio Organisation Award where the deliverables are predicated on such services. While the risk of repayment may be low the damage to credibility and potential future grant support would be huge.

 

I'd be interested in numbers, but my sense is that the decision to operate to Whitby was one of those that is very hard to pull back from. It ticked a lot of boxes around the railway, and the problems of demand demonstrate that the public demand is there - more so than to the Pickering-Grosmont section. That's despite the end to end journey being significantly longer and more expensive than driving to Whitby.

I've always been under the impression that the marginal costs of operating to Whitby are relatively low, though the operational demands are obviously not trivial. I think the more interesting question, which I think @60044 is right to ask even if I differ in my conclusions, is around the impact on the nature of the NYMR as a heritage railway. The P&R element is significant, and the constraints of timetabling and NR operating conditions do undoubtedly impact the focus on heritage.

If there were to be a reversion to the previous status quo, I believe that would be a significant change that would need to be handled with great care. Setting aside the relationships with grant givers for a moment, the last nearly 20 years have seen NYMR integrated into the Whitby tourist economy and it's propositions. To step back will need careful surgery, and I am not convinced how well the patient would survive such surgery.

 

It's often stated that running to Whitby is expensive but is it? There is a first cost in terms of locos requiring GSMR, TPWS & AWS but for most locos likely to be used, this is now done. FTR's of both locos and coaches are more complex and time consuming but have to be done in any case, admittedly at a less onerous level. Locos have 7 year 'tickets' rather than 10 years. There has to be a Control but most railways have this in any case and, Whitby or not, the Railway wouldn't be without one. There are track and station access charges but I can't think of much else. Any further costs I've forgotten? Against this, there's the fact that there is no responsibility for infrastructure, which has to be a major plus. There are operating constraints in terms of crew, locos and stock but the Railway has managed quite successfully with these and they don't provide a major problem.
What is needed more than anything is the ability to run trains on the line at times to suit them and not be constrained by the requirements of other operators.

 

Fair play to Lineisclear for actively engaging on here despite an often uphill battle against those who believe they know better. But he has not yet responded to Tom's suggestion (#4203) of offering discounted fares to attract new custom from the Whitby end. Is there any reason whatsoever not to do that?

 

There must be extra costs incurred by having a mixture of Whitby and non-Whitby rolling stock, and I have yet to be convinced that the NYMR would need quite so many safety managers etc. if it didn't operate to Whitby. It rather begs the question, though, that if there aren't so many charges, and the railway is providing a popular service, why then is it losing so much money??!! I am also not convinced by the argument that grant opportunities are at risk if Whitby operations were to be discontinued - would they be lost if traffic on the EVL grew to a point where the NYMR was squeezed out, for example? Is the NYMR only worthy of support if it doesn't run into Whitby? I'd like to think that wouldn't be the case, but the continuing lack of attention to the rest of the line runs the risk of creating that impression.

 

Clearly you think he knows better, but what is your evidence for that - or vice versa??

 

I think the questions are valid, but presume that the costs of those additional roles are disproportionate to the additional revenue - and that if those additional costs didn't exist, passenger numbers (and income) would have held up as much as they have.

My perception is that too many people see operation to Whitby as a cure-all, whether running as essential or not running as the thing that would unlock the value in the rest of the railway. My sense is that Whitby is now a necessary part of the NYMR's operation, and that the challenges for NYMR lie in how it builds the non-Whitby part of it's business.

 

My hunch is that the answer to that is in the tidal nature of the service - i.e. the railway is giving a service that in perceived value to the user is a 45 mile round trip, but it has to run 90 miles to deliver it. Hence my thought that the answer isn't to throw the baby out with the bathwater by withdrawing from Whitby, but to consider how to take some fare revenue on the otherwise empty return services. The cost to process a card transaction and issue a ticket is probably less than a pound, so almost anything above that level is worth having if the seat is otherwise vacant.

It would be interesting to know if the NYMR was a significantly tidal railway before it went to Whitby. If not, and it has become total over the last 15 years, that might be one of the hidden costs of the Whitby operation, but it is also one that is capable of being solved by a bit of lateral thinking about prices.

Tom

 

'Numbers' seem to be impossible for us mere mortals to be able to obtain and, without them, making any reasonable comment has got to be difficult. Passenger numbers are a case in point. Back in 2009 the General manager said in Moors Line that these were around 300,000 and this figure has continued to be trotted out ever since. The recent advert for a Chief Civil Engineer goes further and says: ' The North Yorkshire Moors Railway is one of the UK’s premier heritage railways carrying over 350,000 passengers per year.' That does sound to be good. However, in a recent conversation with a senior staff member, when I raised the subject of passenger numbers, I was told that passenger numbers have never been near 300,000, that was just put about as part of the PR of justifying Whitby. Both Tom & I have recently tried to back calculate actual figures from published accounts and I'm becoming convinced that actual figures fall a long way short of 300,000 and talk of 350,000 is just pie in the sky. If you take the traffic receipts published in the latest accounts of £3,925,425 and divide this by 300,000 that works out at just over £13/head.

 

I must have missed that. Apologies. Various initiatives have been tried including co-operation with local businesses but there are two main hurdles:
(1) Local businesses' attitude (not unreasonably) is that they're suspicious of an attraction that takes people out of the town to spend their money elsewhere.
(2) Although some visitors stay overnight in or near Whitby it's primarily a successful day trip destination. Quite simply if you've just day tripped in why would you want to day trip out?
Discounted fares might improve aqssymetric traffic flows, esepcially to Goathland, but the potential market for Whitby originating traffic may not be that great.

 

I recall 10-12 years ago activities being run for kids which combined travel with play, running off energy at Goathland and Levisham. Quiet "internal" trains were used, and the draw was to get parents and siblings along too. There were some additional costs, but offset by the additional demand.

They disappeared the next year, and I don't see much promotion of that kind which generates marginal traffic.