Five volunteers SUSPENDED from NYMR

[MarkC]

6 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

 

My dad said when the RAF sent him to Canada for aircrew training during WW2, the Lavvies on the improvised troop ship he was on had too much of an outside view .... he said you perched on a horizontal telegraph pole with sea water rushing past below you.

AKA (very) basic "Chittagong thunderboxes" 😁

 

Mark

[rogerzilla]

Since we've found the level, the story of U-1206, no doubt embellished through the decades, is always good for a laugh https://navalhistoria.com/u-1206/

[JeremyC]

A problem with the original subject for this thread is that we are only getting one side of the story and that is from people who are unhappy with a situation (and possibly have an axe to grind).

On the issue of the attitude of some managers when handling volunteers, yes there are bad or arrogant managers no doubt of it, but nowadays some things have to happen because the regularity authorities require it. Unfortunately there are those who, no matter how nicely they are managed, simply take the attitude that "nobody's telling me what to do" (an attitude that is sadly becoming more and more common)  or it's "health and safety gone mad", so in the end management has to crack down and take the attitude of 'do it or else'.

[Michael Hodgson]

2 hours ago, JeremyC said:

 

On the issue of the attitude of some managers when handling volunteers, yes there are bad or arrogant managers no doubt of it, but nowadays some things have to happen because the regularity authorities require it.

 

The regularity authorities are the people who make the trains run on time, aren't they?    Like this Italian gentleman ...

 

[rogerzilla]

Apparently Il Duce made the trains run on time by cancelling loads and massively slackening the timetable, something still going on in the UK today!

 

The problem with a mainly volunteer workforce is that people can just walk out at any time if they feel hard done by.   It's rather more difficult than motivating paid employees, who will take a lot of grief before they look for a different job, because they need the money. So you can't just get someone into a railway who used to run a department in a typical plc, and expect them to get the same results out of a volunteer workforce.

[jamie92208]

Managing volunteers is recognised as a distinct skill.  The Ozu have a module in the MBA course called 'Managi g in the voluntary Sector.' 

 

However I saw one museum go pear shaped as the number of paid staff grew and the volunteers were sidelined. 

 

Jamie

[009 micro modeller]

2 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

Managing volunteers is recognised as a distinct skill.

It is a distinct skill and an important role, and some organisations are seemingly only just realising this. Possibly they can’t get past the idea of having a paid volunteer coordinator, which sounds oxymoronic at first but has actually worked well in a lot of cases. The alternatives that I’ve seen or heard about seem to leave themselves open to various issues: either for the volunteer group to be sort of self-managing to an extent (which seems like it would work best in a very small organisation with minimal factionalism), or for them to be managed by someone who works in the department they volunteer with, inevitably on top of all their other responsibilities and not necessarily as a very high priority.

 

3 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

However I saw one museum go pear shaped as the number of paid staff grew and the volunteers were sidelined. 

Was it a museum that was originally set up and run by volunteers, or one that traditionally used mostly paid staff? I ask because it does make a difference. There was a tendency with some museums a few years ago to do the opposite, directly replacing paid staff with volunteers due to budget cuts etc., in some cases with fairly long-serving staff in quite specialist roles (as you might imagine, this also meant that the skills and knowledge required of prospective volunteers was a bit over the top). It still happens in some places but there has been some pushback. On the other hand, I can understand how annoying it is when paid staff are brought into a situation that has previously worked well using almost exclusively volunteers, and why those volunteers might resent this.

[papagolfjuliet]

19 hours ago, JeremyC said:

A problem with the original subject for this thread is that we are only getting one side of the story and that is from people who are unhappy with a situation (and possibly have an axe to grind).

 

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?

[Boris]

Papagoldjuliet pretty much summed it up, although the Farthwath Rolling Stock Group is having problems with the NYMR who have placed all of their vehicles up for sale despite not being owned by the NYMR, NELPG have had a row with the Moors over the Deviation shed, the LNERCA have had their set withdrawn because of tyre wear and many of their volunteers have stopped coming because of no volunteer accommodation at Pickering. 

 

Let's not forget the celebrity shed master who offered 29 to the GCR for their gala provided the GCR paid a fee to the NYMR without talking to the owning group or offering them the money.... 

[papagolfjuliet]

23 minutes ago, Boris said:

Papagoldjuliet pretty much summed it up, although the Farthwath Rolling Stock Group is having problems with the NYMR who have placed all of their vehicles up for sale despite not being owned by the NYMR

 

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...

 

Edited April 6 by papagolfjuliet

[BoD]

12 minutes ago, papagolfjuliet said:

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.

Do they own the stock?  On their website they say that they raise funds for the purchase of stock for the NYMR.  No stock appears as assets in their accounts.

[papagolfjuliet]

6 minutes ago, BoD said:

Do they own the stock?  On their website they say that they raise funds for the purchase of stock for the NYMR.  No stock appears as assets in their accounts.

 

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. 

Edited April 6 by papagolfjuliet

[Northmoor]

1 hour ago, Boris said:

the Farthwath Rolling Stock Group is having problems with the NYMR who have placed all of their vehicles up for sale despite not being owned by the NYMR,

When I was a kid a neighbour tried to sell a van he didn't own (knowingly, it was hired).  He went to jail.  The NYMR management might want to consider that.

[john new]

Sadly in my impression of it since first getting involved as a volunteer in 1973 the NYMR has a history of running things into the ground. They then get another item, repeat and the original asset just slumbers on. Love the line, am a life member and a former volunteer in the 13 years I lived close enough. I just hope the new head honcho is able to turn things round. The new marketing magazine style Moorsline does not give me confidence that the upper echelons know how to keep the membership sweet.

[Railpassion]

The new Moorsline is a lesson in how not to do it. 

By all means have a new title with a brochure style, but to wipe out the entire existing format was stupidity. 

 

Has the Arts Council grant paid for the new Moorsline? 

[papagolfjuliet]

On 03/04/2024 at 22:45, Northmoor said:

Years ago my mother volunteered at an Oxfam shop in West Wales.  She eventually lost patience - as I think several other volunteers did - at being told by the Area Manager, turning up in his company car, what must be prioritised for sale (and what donations should be discouraged) even though the experience in the shop was that they should do the direct opposite.  It was the early days of Oxfam becoming a Big Charity; these behave like Big Business in every way except for actually pocketing the profit.

 

 

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.

[MarkC]

7 hours ago, papagolfjuliet said:

 

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.

I'm suspecting that she failed, spectacularly?

 

🤔

 

Mark

[009 micro modeller]

22 hours ago, Railpassion said:

Has the Arts Council grant paid for the new Moorsline? 

Would it? Given that funding bodies usually specify what such funding should be spent on - though admittedly not so specifically with ACE now, as since the pandemic I gather that they’ve been giving more money to heritage organisations, and more to fund or improve existing programmes rather than create new ones. Nevertheless I would find it odd if it was being spent on a magazine that’s largely for internal communication.

[009 micro modeller]

8 hours ago, papagolfjuliet said:

 

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.

That just sounds rather pointless, and needlessly confrontational. And why alienate people who might otherwise have supported a charity?

[SteveM666]

43 minutes ago, MarkC said:

I'm suspecting that she failed, spectacularly?

 

🤔

 

Mark

Judging by the proliferation of charity shops across the Medway Towns, yes she failed. In fact they are mainly the only shops still open.

[keefer]

On 07/04/2024 at 13:18, papagolfjuliet said:

Years ago my mother volunteered at an Oxfam shop in West Wales.  She eventually lost patience - as I think several other volunteers did - at being told by the Area Manager, turning up in his company car, what must be prioritised for sale (and what donations should be discouraged) even though the experience in the shop was that they should do the direct opposite.  It was the early days of Oxfam becoming a Big Charity; these behave like Big Business in every way except for actually pocketing the profit

Or local Oxfam shop was closed down a few years ago by Oxfam - not because it wasn't paying its way or clearing a profit (it was) but because it wasn't enough profit.

ISTR comment from Oxfam at the time that any shops making under 20% profit were to be closed.

[jjb1970]

As a general rule I try to support local organisations in which I have some confidence rather than big national charities. It's easier to see what a local charity is actually doing and generally there is greater accountability if distance between organization and supporters is short.

[RJS1977]

On 06/04/2024 at 20:12, BoD said:

Do they own the stock?  On their website they say that they raise funds for the purchase of stock for the NYMR.  No stock appears as assets in their accounts.

 

It's quite common for heritage railways to be split into an operating company (whose accounts are published on Companies House) and a Trust/Charity who hold the assets. That way, should the operating company get into financial difficulties, the assets are safe, avoiding the scenario that happened at Llangollen a few years back.

[papagolfjuliet]

4 hours ago, RJS1977 said:

 

It's quite common for heritage railways to be split into an operating company (whose accounts are published on Companies House) and a Trust/Charity who hold the assets. That way, should the operating company get into financial difficulties, the assets are safe, avoiding the scenario that happened at Llangollen a few years back.

 

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

[009 micro modeller]

6 hours ago, RJS1977 said:

 

It's quite common for heritage railways to be split into an operating company (whose accounts are published on Companies House) and a Trust/Charity who hold the assets. That way, should the operating company get into financial difficulties, the assets are safe, avoiding the scenario that happened at Llangollen a few years back.

It’s quite common for a lot of museums to be structured like this, though sometimes with two charitable trusts.