papagolfjuliet

This doesn't always work. A few years back I was having a ride on the Ffestiniog and couple of coaches ahead of me two teenage boys - accompanied by their parents - were not only sticking thier heads out of the windows but leaning their entire bodies out and trying to touch the pole route despite the guard repeatedly telling them not to. They did this all the way from Blaenau to Porthmadog. I'd have dumped the whole imbecile lot of them at Dduallt.

There hasn't been a relevant one. In the 80s a man on a BBC charter diner got drunk, climbed on to the roof, and was decapitated by the bridge at Green End. In the 90s a woman was injured when Lambton No.5 struck the Grosmont crossing gate, and a motorist decided to ignore the flashing lights on one of the occupation crossings at Pickering and drove straight into the S15, and a woman was caught trying to crawl under a Class 25 to get from one side of Pickering station to the other! About a decade ago a guard was killed in a shunting accident. There has been no incident on the NYMR - not one - which justifies this bizarre decision.

I note also the NYMR's responses to the negative reviews, which boil down to "It's your own stupid fault for coming in half term, pleb." Also the response to one complaint about the train being cold: "Not all our carriages can be heated by the engines." Translation: "We think we can get away with towing steam heat only coaches behind ETH only diesels in December because we genuinely don't care about our customers."

It's been that way on and off since the days of Brian Horner. It was a damn fool idea then and it's damn fool idea now. The NYMR cannot survive without the volunteers it plainly loathes.

There are places on the Ffestiniog - Garnedd Tunnel, Pont Rhiw Plas - which could easily decapitate the unwary and yet no restriction is placed on the opening of droplights and some coaches are completely open sided. The NYMR management is operating on the assumption that opening droplights are prima facie lethal. The ORR has said no such thing, the Judicial Review said no such thing, and 175 years of history tell us no such thing.

There has long been a school of 'thought' in the upper echelons of the NYMR that the railway should be run like the Paignton & Dartmouth, even though the Paignton line is only able to operate as a volunteer-free profit oriented business because the company also owns the Kingswear ferry and a river and coastal cruise outfit and a local bus company and because the line has no open intermediate stations (all the intermediate stations were closed in 2020 and have never reopened). The NYMR is simply incapable of sustaining itself without the volunteers and enthusiasts which the management do not want.

Quite a few people won't find their galas half as enjoyable when they can't stick their heads out of the windows.

A man was beheaded by a bridge during a BBC Leeds Xmas party aboard the NYMR diner set in the 80s. He was however running along the roof of the carriage at the time.

The wagon under the tarp is IIRC an LMS 3 plank which survived in SatLink service into the 90s.

The brilliant plan is that volunteers (what volunteers?) will unlock and lock all the doors at stations like they do on the Ffestiniog, or on the Spa Valley beyond Groombridge, and there'll be a 21 key in a glass case next to every door for use in emergencies. This will not affect the teaks but the teaks will only be used as a 'premium' set at a higher ticket price. This is supposedly an ORR requirement for running to Whitby which the management in their infinite wisdom have decided needs to be enforced between Pickering and Grosmont too, so no more heads out of windows. Good luck selling diesel galas on that basis. It will be noted that the Ffestiniog locks carriage doors because quite a few of them open outwards and that the Spa Valley locks them beyond Groombridge because for the last few hundreds yards at Eridge it runs alongside a 60mph main line, and that neither of those outfits prevents the opening of droplights. As for the weighbridge... words fail me. I'm quite fond of that building because for years some friends of my Nan lived in the flat over Falsgrave Lloyds in Scarborough and that hut was in their back garden, and to think of it being wasted like that after all the hard work the Wombles put in to save and restore it is disgusting. They'll probably turn it into a glamping pod.

See also the absolute cobblers Bailey is currently talking on Nat Pres about the necessity of jamming shut all the droplights on carriages on 25mph preserved railways.

Put it this way: the Levisham report in the latest Moors Line was by a member of the management team and not by the station group, because there isn't one.

It's a laudable intention, but seriously, why shackle yourself to a corpse?

Some of the Thorpe Park stock including one of the 4-4-0DHs has been acquired for a new 2' gauge line at Blair Drummond Safari Park, due to open this coming Autumn. The picture here is a Photoshop job. https://blairdrummond.com/things-to-do/train/

And latterley the former coal merchant's outside Chertsey station. That's in the Thames series and after he finishes his probation in Brighton. In the ABC series he's initially based in London and then moves to Birmingham before going to prison.