papagolfjuliet

Three more items from Collection X are now on display at the VoR: https://www.rheidolrailway.co.uk/2024/04/18/new-exhibits-in-the-museum/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR3SKmmOsjiGtah1nafbmuqcITG-yPu0lATVB3af0nVwAuQko4JB15UoxN4_aem_AdO-1qMvbz8-ymmQwBNzpDqd4lkiF6IJ6ojLtS3Vk8PzBUU_GrcoHolIR5hFYF5m2kTi6LcnXeVoQEJCSo0FPzLz

Three problems there. The first is that getting the Plasser crane working cost more than the ropes for the steam crane would have, the second is that I would not like to try to get a large road crane round the back lanes and down the long 1 in 3 Esk Valley Bank to Grosmont MPD, and the third is that there are many locations on the NYMR where there is no road access at all (which is why the second steam crane was purchased from BR in the first place, to enable bridge deck replacement work deep in Newtondale) which means that without both 45T cranes available the NYMR has had to spend a fortune hiring in a Volker Rail Kirov crane when replacing Bridge 30 and the Goathland bridges. And of course they do have the competent personnel necessary to run a large steam crane; the Grosmont crane is in service and the NYMR has been using such things continuously since it borrowed the NER 25T steam crane from the NRM in the mid-70s.

It was withrawn a few years ago because it needed a new set of ropes. The P-Way dept - or rather the York Area Group - also has a Plasser 12T self-propelled crane, a 20T Coles crane, and a 15T Coles crane, but there is nothing at that end of the line with the lifting capacity of the crane being disposed of and, as has been stated, nothing bar a second Coles fifteen tonner which belongs to the NYMR itself. If the MPD 45T crane is withdrawn for whatever reason then there will be no backup for it capable of large loco lifts.

Re: an earlier post the NYMR has now puy the New Bridge steam craen up for sale. That should keep certain people in the manner to which they are accustomed for a while longer. Page 10 here. "Buyer to remove from railway" of course means "You may not keep that thing on my train set." https://www.tractionads.co.uk/TRACTION_-_ROLLING_No_151.pdf

The NYMR York Area Group is distinct from the North York Moors Historical Railway Trust though.

It lives!

I am aware of a new manager of the Oxfam shop in Rochester a decade or so ago who on her first day went around all the antique, junk, and second hand book shops in the area, introduced herself, and announced that she considered it her job to put them out of business.

The NYMR's own official stock list says that they're owned by the YAG: https://www.nymr.co.uk/carriages Of the civils fleet, the NYMR's own documentation says that it owns all but one of the plate wagons, the borail, the sturgeon, the (out of service) New Bridge steam crane, one of the Coles cranes, a weltrol, two flatrols, and two brake vans.

Well that's just plain disgusting. As to Deviation Shed, the land on which it sits is on a 99 year lease which if memory serves has another 54 years left to run and the building itself (ex-Longmoor Military Railway) is owned by NELPG. The LNERCA already has stock at Embsay and Kirkby Stephen which is much more appreciated than the already denuded NYMR teak set. And how long before the York Area Group gives up and takes its unrivalled collection of civils rolling stock elsewhere? Most lines would kill for the civils fleet the YAG has built up over the past fifty years. The NYMR wouldn't be able to function without it. How long before the Lambton Locomotives Trust bugs out to Tanfield? As to the Clifford Brown Estate, it's worth noting that the Schools and the WD were not given to the NYMR but placed in trust with a stipulation that if the Moors wasn't looking after them properly they would be transferred to another 'Historic railroad' (American lawyers) so neither Repton nor Vera can be counted on. And then there's the privately owned Hartland, whose overhaul has so far taken twenty-odd years. But let's prioritise an Austerity tank instead even though it can't manage peak season trains...

Frankly I do have an axe to grind. Something I have loved since I was a toddler has been wrecked in a very short space of time by a tiny self-serving clique. The 'celebrity' Shedmaster ponces around on telly while the operating fleet is down to five steam engines of which one is a useless Belgian tram and another two can't handle peak season loads. There's only one NR registered steam loco and only one NR registered diesel. A fortune was spent on Car 79 and yet work now appears to have stalled, D5032's overhaul has no end in sight and the man who was pretty well single-handedly doing it has been sacked, the LNERCA has been mistreated, the planned modifications to the Mk.1s will ruin them, the fare pricing structure is guaranteed to turn away casual visitors and the Mk.2s will turn away everybody else, the new workshop at Kirkby Misperton was arbitrarily closed just as it was building a name for itself, Moors Line has been turned into a condescending waste of paper, and as to the sheer brass neck of setting up a movie trail when one of the line's major filming locations is inaccessible and the other is deserted... words fail me. Polite words anyhow. I'm not the anonymous gentleman from the NYMR forum, but every word he said goes for me too. The NYMR currently makes the West Somerset and the Teifi Valley look like exemplars of competent management. It will be interesting to see which major rolling stock owner decides to take its toys elsewhere first. LNERCA? NELPG? The Farwath Rolling Stock Group? The Clifford Brown Estate?

Photos circulating online of the Collection X IoM "pairs" coach No. F68 now fully restored and on display in the new VoR museum. Interestingly, it's now air braked and shod with 2' bogies for service on the VoR itself so there's one for Prototype For Everything Corner.

Reminds me very strongly of those 'retro' tinplate clockwork cars they sell in the more old-fashioned toy shops.

Am madly in love with this Porsche locomotive on a German miniature railway. https://badeninfo.de/retro-zauber-im-schlossgarten-highlight-start-mit-restaurierter-porsche-lok-der-karlsruher-schlossgartenbahn/?fbclid=IwAR37HD_nkbxkmORSaH_hqF92GJgc4VIJDPO-6Bf4pEASmUgqvstFnq3Fark#fb

Newtondale Box was demolished, or rather dismantled as I think I'm right in saying that the bricks etc were saved and the base was stabilised (it's still there), in the late 90s when Roger Heath was Chairman.

Not really, or nothing that a passing loop wouldn't cure. The big capacity problem is on the Levisham - Pickering stretch (singled during WW1) which could theoretically be ameliorated by having one train leave Pickering just after another arrives, but that in turn would necessitate an extra carriage set and also create the problem of people turning straight round without any secondary spend on the station or in the town. Doubling the whole lot between Goathland and Levisham would entail moving Newtondale Halt, redoubling a lot of bridges which have been singled since preservation, realigning the track in places where curves have been eased meaning that you'd be back to a curvature so tight in that during BR days the stretch was subject to a 35mph speed restriction and which would not be kind to LNER pacifics or 9Fs, losing the up loop at Goathland, and losing the sections of trackbed currently used by firefighting vehicles. And apparently it to took quite a lot of money for Mr Scott et al to find that out for themselves.

Incidentally I know about the Rochester Avenue one because I nearly fell into it when replacing some decking! It is barely a foot below the surface right behind the back doors of the houses.

One runs parallel to Rochester Avenue just below the surface linking an underground barracks on Delce Road (now a garage) and Fort Clarence, and another links the garage to Fort Pitt. There are tunnel entrances behind the billboards at the bottom of Chatham Hill leading goodness knows where. A large area of the cliff on the Rochester bank of the Medway inland of the bridges was hollowed out during WW2 to create an underground Short Sunderland factory - basically everything under St. Margaret's Street. And so on.

That 'adit' you can see in the bank of the Murk Esk under the old school isn't an adit. It's one end of a horizontal drift.

One of my favourite things to do if I had a couple of hours to kill used to be to buy a Grosmont-Goathland single and then walk back along the 1836 route with a pint at the Birch Hall midway. Can't do that now. Nobody can. Not that I would give the NYMR a penny piece now anyway.

All of Grosmont village is seriously undermined. Estate agents tend not to mention that fact (just as they don't mention the network of Napoleonic and WW2 tunnels which undermine most of the Medway Towns, or the fact that the the pretty bit of Robin Hood's Bay is built on top of boulder clay which could go walkies any second.)

Before binning the new sales prospectus - sorry, Moors Line - I glanced at the Price interview and noted the bit where he said "We are the envy of every other heritage railway" and, er, no. The envy of the Teifi Valley and the West Somerset, maybe.

Yes. As to the rebranding, I am referring to the new look Moors Line which in addition to the cost of rebranding costs more to produce and distribute, and is effectively nothing more than a series of articles on how brilliant the management team are with the boring stuff about trains relegated to a few paragraphs at the back.

From the YP article: "It was stated by the accountants that trustee and finance director Garry Mumford’s consultancy firm, Insight Associates Ltd, has received over £6,600 in fees from the railway, and almost £93,000 the previous year." Righto.

It's ridiculous in another way too: that's £45 for an entire year, which means seats on trains are pretty well being given away to anybody who can afford regular repeat visits while casual walk up visitors are being priced out. So the seats which are filled aren't being paid for. You'd think they were actively trying to shut the place down.

And now they're handing round the begging bowl again because they've spent so much money on themselves and on their pointless and offensive rebranding exercise that they can't even afford to cover what should be core competencies such as keeping the access to their most popular station open. https://www.darlingtonandstocktontimes.co.uk/news/24183959.bid-save-harry-potter-bridge-goathland-station/