009 micro modeller

20 hours ago, RJS1977 said:

My real concern though with regards to VAT is for those railways who sell a booked ticket where you have to return immediately on the same train you travelled out on - often with insufficient time between arrival and departure to step outside the confines of the station. To my mind, that no longer constitutes "public transport".

What about the ones where you can generally get on and off at all the stations, but an extension beyond the last station simply takes you to a run round loop where you cannot get off, before returning back the way you came? This is what Brecon Mountain was like before the extension was fully open, and I think Nene Valley similarly at one stage - in both cases it was clearly possible to do some sort of point-to-point journey on the rest of the line though.

8 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

That scenario would just about ice the NYMR's cake.

• HMRC threaten to prosecute NYMR PLC for tax evasion (note, not avoidance);
• Charity Commission protest that NYMRT is not behaving in the spirit of a charity;
• Large number of volunteers barred from NYMR property, many others voluntarily staying away;
• Steam Railway and Heritage Railway magazines with double-page reports of how wonderful the latest gala weekends were, with particular excitement reserved for the first time a particular visiting loco has operated on the NYMR in BR green livery on a Wednesday.

I particularly enjoyed the last bullet point… 😅. On the rest of it though, as @Chris M suggested earlier, even if other aspects of the NYMR are allegedly not being run well I sort of doubt that they’d do something like this without taking proper advice, especially if they have (or used to have) people working for them who come from charity or museum backgrounds, and who should know how Gift Aid works. I’m not sure that a structure involving a PLC and a charity, rather than two charities, is the most logical way to do it, but as before I think the main issue is the operational/capacity implications of a system where people are able to ride again at no additional cost, as well as the high initial price putting some people off. I can’t remember which railways or how they do it, but as I recall there are other heritage lines besides the NYMR which collect Gift Aid on fares.

8 hours ago, melmoth said:

But it wasn't designed as a means for people to spend a day on the Swanage. It was intended to help relieve road congestion between Wareham and Swanage during peak holiday times.

Does that mean though that it was still more focused on tourism than public transport for those living locally? I thought there was also the idea/hope at one stage that it might actually be used by local people travelling in and out of Swanage.

8 hours ago, woodenhead said:

And not to mention the Government bus subsidisation at £2 per journey, a lot lot cheaper than the cost of the train.

 

It could not compete on equal terms and in a time of high inflationary pressures, the bus would always win out.

A good point but how reliable/punctual are the buses between Wareham and Swanage? I’m not familiar with them but in my own local area they tend to be vastly slower and less dependable than the trains (but these are National Rail trains, so possibly not a relevant comparison to Swanage).

7 hours ago, Captain Slough said:

Not a Nellie-bash but thought it might interest: This is a bodyshell for the freelance 0-4-0 steam locomotive which Hornby-Dublo introduced in 1963 to compete with Nellie/Polly/Connie

 

Nowhere near as common though. Was only sold in train sets and probably to be played with hard rather than treated nicely....  Pics from eBay. For disclosure, I'm the seller. Never managed to find a matching chassis for it so hoping it's of use to someone who has one 

Same body shape as the metal Dinky one?

2 hours ago, HExpressD said:

I prefer LMS Cheese and Pickle

LNER ham salad for me.

7 hours ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

Not that I am aware of. I expect different railways adopt different structures to suit their own needs.

 

I have been closely involved with only one railway which had a "commercial" operating company majority owned by a charitable trust, and one of the main purposes of the trust was to attract donations free of tax and use them to help support the railway. The trust had no staff and did not directly engage in heritage/preservation activities. The operating company was expected to balance its books as well as possible, but it was not expected to generate profits as such. However, there were also commercial offshoots, set up as subsidiary companies, that were expected to generate profits (which went back into the railway).

I thought in some cases there had been issues complying with charitable objectives if giving money to a PLC company. Though unlike the WSR/S&D Washford situation (where this point was specifically brought up, though I think there were plenty of other contentious aspects), if it’s the supporting charity for a heritage line’s operating company then a clear case should be able to be made that such a grant is in support of said objectives (assuming that the charity does actually have control over the operating company).

One of the museums I currently work for has two charitable trusts, one of which similarly has no staff etc. and whose function is simply to own the collection, thus safeguarding the collection in the event that the other trust (responsible for the everyday operational side, ticketing, maintenance, paying staff etc.) gets into debt. There are one or two subsidiary companies (not charities) to carry out specific functions. I understand that a similar structure is used in other heritage organisations, the reason being that previously there have been cases of museums that did not split their organisational structure in this way having to sell collection objects to repay debt incurred by the operational side. There are also what used to be local authority-run museums that have now been spun off to independent charitable trusts, but the collections continue to be owned by the local authority (I think York works like this). One of the differences with some heritage railways (probably due to the way they were originally set up) seems to be the use of PLC companies (which may imply shareholders who may disagree with what the supporting charity wants).

3 hours ago, Cwmtwrch said:

It may be the former Pullman Works at Preston Park, Brighton, which was used as temporary secure storage for a while some time after closure in the mid-1960s. If I remember correctly [which I don't guarantee!] it was open to the public occasionally on Sundays. The only available public access was by train from Brighton because of the location.

So a rather unique situation then, as the train ride part was British Rail, rather than a heritage railway. Not that that affects the overall point being made.

4 hours ago, Chris M said:

It seems odd that there is so much discussion as to whether what the NYMR is doing is within the government rules or not. We can be certain that the NYMR will have taken professional advice on all of this and everything will be within the rules.

Exactly, and I wasn’t suggesting they hadn’t, just pointing out that elsewhere there are other structures that can also be used to legitimately collect Gift Aid.

7 hours ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

Wine and dine trains get a specific mention because on many short railways the train stands still for a lot of the time, and so doesn't qualify for VAT exemption.

I wonder where they draw the line though? Could they get away with it by continuously running the train up and down the line until the meal service has concluded?

6 hours ago, adb968008 said:

7 line shed suitable for 4 tender engines on each road… which railway is that ?

 

I can’t find the original quote to respond directly (or is it from elsewhere, rather than this thread?) but am unclear what specific difference registering with the Museums and Galleries Commission would make (and in any case it was wound up in 2000). Similarly for the small number of heritage railways where the entire line is an Accredited Museum (which is a distinction largely to do with collections management and other professional standards and not really relevant here) it doesn’t really mean that their trains operate entirely within a ‘place of entertainment’.

11 minutes ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

Since VAT guidelines (https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/vat-transport/vtrans021400) specifically list Santa Specials as being VAT exempt, I don't think this is an issue. "Public transport" is not the test criterion.

Wasn’t there a similar discussion about cruise ships or similar, which are also ‘excursions’ but not exactly public transport. Santa Specials seem an oddly specific thing to list.

12 minutes ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

I presume that as a result, NYMR PLC are operating at a considerable loss, but this is offset by grants from the North Yorkshire Moors Railway Trust.

Isn’t it more usual, on heritage railways, for it to be the trading/operating company that gives grants to the charitable trust? Obviously that way round wouldn’t work in this case because of the Gift Aid angle but I’d just observe that some other museums have two charitable trusts (one operations and one collections, or similar), so both are charities and can claim Gift Aid, rather than the more convoluted arrangement here.

41 minutes ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

If annual pass holders then decide to make use of their free travel for a year, the railway will have additional journeys and additional passenger miles for no increase in revenue. Is there really spare capacity to absorb this extra demand?

Picking up on this again, I suppose another consideration is that not everyone will visit again within a year of their original visit, even if they are an annual pass holder. You could even look at what percentage of people visit again, how many times, from what demographics or areas of the country etc. etc. and what effect this has overall. But that’s the sort of visitor data you probably only get if you’ve already been running the annual pass scheme for a few years.

25 minutes ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

No, that's not allowed. From https://www.visitengland.com/sites/default/files/rules_on_gift_aid_for_charitable_attractions_updated_version_jan_15.pdf:

(bold as per the original)

That’s what I thought. And now that I think about it the only places that I’ve visited (and nowhere I’ve ever worked) that did something like this were selling the annual pass at a slightly higher price than the day one (probably by an amount equivalent to the 10% donation, and eligible for Gift Aid, but not actually requiring Gift Aid to be used), which is different from Gift Aid where the actual price paid by the visitor is the same as a day ticket, as we’ve been discussing.

27 minutes ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

If annual pass holders then decide to make use of their free travel for a year, the railway will have additional journeys and additional passenger miles for no increase in revenue. Is there really spare capacity to absorb this extra demand?

As above, this is the main issue that I had with it as well. If it was on a small, fairly short railway that had relatively low visitor numbers and plenty of unused capacity (such that most trains run half empty, perhaps) and felt that it would benefit substantially from secondary spend etc. from returning visitors then it would make sense, but I was under the impression that the NYMR isn’t really like that and that capacity is sometimes quite tight.

I’m also reminded (by analogy) of a Nat Pres discussion about people who bought shares in heritage railway companies ages ago, really as a form of donation, but where the cost of servicing the shareholders/donors now substantially outweighs the value of the original donation.

27 minutes ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

If ordinary day tickets aren't available, and annual passes are priced too high, ordinary day visitors may elect not to travel (and will most likely be annoyed about it), or they may travel anyway but be annoyed by the excessive fare. Annoying customers and potential customers when your product is very much a discretionary spend does not seem to me to be the way to success.

As a heritage charity (where community engagement, education etc. is important as well making money - indeed in a lot of cases it should be the reason why they need the money, not the other way round), the cost is also one more barrier to entry for a lot of potential visitors (as similarly discussed elsewhere within several museum organisations that have to charge for admission because they need the funding from admission charges, but still dislike the way that this prices people out). On the other hand, if the organisation really needs the money there may have to be a point where it is calculated that selling to a smaller number of people who can and will pay the higher price is more financially viable than selling to more people at a lower price.

The annual pass system is used in other museums and tourist attractions so I don’t really have a problem with it from that perspective, it’s just that in the NYMR’s operation the cost of providing extra capacity can be directly attributed to the visitors who then use that capacity (some of whom will now be repeat visitors with annual passes riding “for free”, so to speak), whereas in other kinds of museum operation adding in more visitors and needing to serve them will not particularly create capacity issues or obviously and immediately increase costs in the same way.

37 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

A regular through service provided by SWR is much more likely to be successful.  Introducing changes of trains appeals to almost no-one except enthusiasts, who aren't the primary market for this anyway.

In fairness, I’m not sure changing trains particularly appealed to enthusiasts either in this instance. Is there a particular reason why they didn’t go for the ‘through service provided by a TOC’ option (whether SWR or someone else)? The focus so far seems to have been on the SR doing it all itself with its own stock.

1 minute ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

Gift aid can never be compulsory.

Indeed (and it should hopefully be fairly obvious that it can’t be compulsory), but the question was about whether they were requiring people to Gift Aid in order to make what would have been a day pass into an annual one, for the same price. I’ve seen some places that have done this in some form but the organisation I work for doesn’t - we simply sell either day tickets (to people who are unlikely to return within the year, e.g. tourists, and who don’t want to leave any personal details) or annual ones (which are the same price, but you obviously need to leave some details so that the annual ticket can be traceable for future visits, if the physical ticket is lost, to check expiry date etc. - you only need to give a postal address if Gift Aiding though).

5 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

My thinking was the annual pass becomes an admission ticket to an attraction, in the same way as a theme park, like a Merlin annual pass.

 

The annual pass is not like annual railcard as its not for traveling between two set points like a regular or annual railcard ticket is. It is offering unlimited admission to anywhere in the attraction for year.

 

I would imagine it could be complicated further, if the railway has a museum or other attraction that is giving admission inclusive in the annual ticket price.

Possibly overthinking this a bit. I find the annual ticket idea easier to understand by comparing it to other museums that have the same kind of annual ticketing. The NYMR is the museum in this instance and it has multiple entry and exit points, i.e. stations in this case (plenty of museums have multiple entrances - at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich for instance I’ve sometimes walked in one side, around and through it and out the other side, arriving by train into Greenwich but then walking through the park and leaving from Maze Hill). The fact that you get around the NYMR “museum” by train rather than walking (or whatever) isn’t particularly relevant from that point of view. The odd bit for me (as covered earlier in the thread) is that many museums that include some sort of train or ride do not allow people to have endless repeat rides on it at no additional cost, even when they are otherwise free admission or have annual tickets. Some do, e.g. the DVLR at Murton Park, but presumably they wouldn’t if it was presenting capacity problems.

I’m also thinking back to my (imagined, completely theoretical, though I quite fancy a model railway based on the concept) example of an old mineral railway restored as a heritage line, where you get on at a park and ride station (where the only car park and visitor entrance is) and ride along the line to the museum, built into old industrial buildings in a remote location and only publicly accessible by train (and these are the only two stations). In this example it would seem sensible to sell an annual ticket that gives access to the museum for a year, assuming that it’s the museum that makes up the main part of the visit, and the railway could be said to be within the museum (as opposed to the other way round, with a relatively small museum attached to a heritage railway). But it would equally make sense for that annual ticket to include unlimited train travel, since it would be literally impossible to visit the museum without going on the train. But there are several key differences between this theoretical setup and the NYMR.

3 hours ago, SR71 said:

Rather than start a new thread I'll post this here. Wareham connection a commercial failure.

https://www.railadvent.co.uk/2024/03/swanage-railway-withdraws-plans-for-wareham-train-service.html

 

Have to say I'm not surprised. First train wasn't until 11 and it was diesel all the way to Swanage. When I looked last year there wasn't time to get a ride behind steam if you were a day visitor, unless that's all you did, and for those of us with authorities to satisfy that wasn't going to wash. Shame as I really wanted it to succeed but it didn't seem to have a strategy behind it.

 

I was looking to see if there was a better option for 2024 but alas no. As the number 1 thing to do in Swanage on trip advisor (2 is the castle and 3 is a rock) you would think they could get some marketing support from tourist information. Hopefully next year...

A shame but an interesting read. I’m still left wondering whether it’s the basic concept of a service to Wareham that’s the problem, or more that in the form that it’s currently practical to run the service ends up not being particularly convenient or easy to use. While it doesn’t really provide quite the same public transport function as originally intended, would a more organised and frequent programme of visiting railtours (perhaps on summer Sundays or similar, when there’s hopefully a bit more capacity on NR for them but also people are more likely to visit Swanage) work well as an alternative to the trial of a regular scheduled service?

2 minutes ago, rodent279 said:

What I don't understand is how come the NYMR plc can claim gift aid for selling tickets dressed up as annual passes? The NYMR is not a charity, it is a commercial organisation. Surely the gift aid should go to the NYMHRT?

The only explanation I can think of is that plenty of charities/museums that do something similar technically sell their tickets through a ‘trading company’, but in the example I’m most familiar with the organisation responsible for the operational side is itself also a charity (just separate from the collections-owning charity, for fairly obvious reasons) rather than a plc, so that issue wouldn’t apply in the same way.

1 minute ago, adb968008 said:

Are day passes not subject to VAT ?

Why would they be, if tickets aren’t? It’s arguably either a form of season ticket or a form of rover ticket (but valid for a year rather than, as more traditionally, a shorter period). For Gift Aid I gather that it needs to be made into an annual pass (or some similar benefit) in order to be considered a form of donation and qualify for Gift Aid.

I can’t remember if charities can reclaim VAT in this specific sort of context (I know they can for some things obviously) so not sure if that would be relevant. I find it unlikely that they’d have gone down this route (not to mention the multiple other museums with similar annual ticketing systems) if it did just cancel it out.

Had another go with this yesterday (no photos though as they don’t particularly show anything new). The pickups work better on the Kato-based design but the springing is causing a bit of an issue, in that it gets pushed down a lot under the weight of the standard gauge wagon. It’s also a bit top-heavy and I wonder if I’d be better off going back to and improving my original design? The issue there was lack of precision and the axle design meaning that not all wheels were used for pickup. Are there any 009 or N gauge wheels with the insulators in the middle of the axle rather than on one side? Or even completely uninsulated, which I could work with as well?

3 minutes ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

I wonder how many will complain that the Countess set doesn't look at all like the Welshpool and Llanfair.

Yes. Though that would require people to know that that is the name of one of their locos. But that’s arguably a less obscure point of reference than slate sizes.

On 04/05/2024 at 13:36, Bomp said:

I like how the starter packs are named for slate sizes.

Ah yes, didn’t spot that at first but a nice touch. I wonder how many people will notice though?

2 hours ago, Ravenser said:

And the demographic there does seem to lean strongly to people new to the hobby.

Why is this a bad thing? It does suggest that TT120 is bringing in people who for whatever reason (probably lack of space, given the comparison with 00, though that assumes they don’t want to do N gauge for some reason) haven’t been ‘in’ the hobby before (though they might follow it and have a small amount of stock in a larger scale but not have anything actually running yet). As a narrow gauge modeller I find 009 to be a good size, with the presence and detail of 00 but N gauge track geometry so it takes up less space. Whenever I’ve looked into doing even a tiny layout in standard gauge 00 it has quickly become apparent that the space required for an equivalent track layout is substantially larger than 009, even if really simple, small radius and only designed for short 4-wheeled locos and stock. So TT could be an option for me in future (and even more so for those strange people who only like standard gauge and therefore don’t see 009 as an option 😜). 

But anyway, with the number of people melodramatically predicting ‘the death of the hobby’ (or perhaps it’s just the death of traditional RTR, which isn’t really the same thing), surely it’s good to see more newcomers?

6 hours ago, Captain Slough said:

 

there are photos in a related thread in RailUK forums showing one proceeding very slowly on the outer radius of a street corner curve

 

Edit: Were. And I can't find them now.

Also there are the Docklands Light Railway engineering locos - seemingly fairly normal industrial shunters but I’m not sure if they’ve had their wheels re-profiled to match that of the passenger stock (which is more steeply coned to run on the sharp curves, though obviously they don’t have any street running).

1 hour ago, papagolfjuliet said:

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/

 

 

Another line that I hadn’t heard about before. Also good to see that there are some 2’ gauge miniature lines still in operation (as opposed to smaller gauges, which seem to be more popular for theme park lines these days, and as distinct from ‘proper’ narrow gauge heritage railways). Although I can’t work out why so many of them seem to be in Scotland.

1 hour ago, 5944 said:

Single tickets are available, but not advertised on the website.

Is this because (rather like the Snowdon Mountain Railway, which iirc only sells single tickets on a stand-by, walk-up basis) they ideally need that capacity to be available for people to make full-line return trips, and then they can sell walk-up single tickets around that based on what space is left?

1 hour ago, 5944 said:

Apparently revenue was up 23% last year - funnily enough, a very similar amount to the gift aid claimed back from £49 entry passes rather than travel ticket sales. Passenger numbers have stayed the same.

If (as has been suggested elsewhere) the trains are full to capacity at busy times then, in some ways, this seems quite sensible from the point of view of increasing income (if they can’t increase capacity). Do you have to gift aid in order to make your ticket into an annual pass or are they all annual passes anyway now?

15 hours ago, stewartingram said:

Blackpool did indeed work railway coal wagons from the mainline at Fleetwood (behind behind the tram depot), along the reserved track

Was it only on unpaved track then? That might explain why they didn’t need the gauge difference.

1 hour ago, Captain Slough said:

 

yes - British Rail 350bhp diesel shunters have actually worked through the street running sections of Metrolink into the city centre during engineering possessions for track relaying

Interesting - I knew they’d worked on the outer, ex-railway sections but didn’t realise they’d made it to the city centre.

51 minutes ago, melmerby said:

These days modern trams and railway wheels seem to use the same track profile

Sheffield Supertram Tram/Trains run on both street track & railway track.

I’m not sure about this, or that it applies to all the modern tram networks. I thought Sheffield Supertram used a compromise profile on the tram-trains and a tramway one for the other trams (a horse tram from the old Sheffield system has run on Supertram, as has a works tram from Berlin iirc). I think Manchester Metrolink uses a more railway-like profile because of how much of it is on converted heavy rail lines (not all relaid initially), but they’ve also had stock from the ELR running on parts of it.

The issue of the wheel profiles being incompatible also doesn’t seem to apply globally - e.g. as covered elsewhere on RMWeb there are some trolley/interurban museums in the US that also operate some very heavy electric railway locomotives, all DC overhead obviously but sometimes running off a lower voltage than the one they were designed for (a bit like if Crich operated an EM1, which obviously they don’t/can’t).

18 hours ago, pH said:

There was another instance of wagons being worked over tram tracks into a shipyard not too far west of Fairfield’s along Govan Road/Renfrew Road. Alexander Stephen’s yard at Linthouse was served from Shieldhall Goods, using steam engines running on the tram tracks.
 

Smith and Anderson’s “An Illustrated History of Glasgow’s Railways” has a picture of a Barclay saddle tank passing a tram on this stretch of track. The caption confirms what “cctransuk” says above - railway vehicles travelled on their flanges in the shallow grooves in the tram track. It also says that the Vale of Clyde Tramways Act of 1871 specified that railway vehicles had to be able to travel on tram tracks. That led to the adoption of the 4ft 7 3/4in gauge for the trams to allow the arrangement described.

 

The section of track was retained to service the yard after the trams were withdrawn in 1958 till the yard itself closed in 1968.

 

Here’s a picture of a pug and a tram together on that stretch of road (not the one from the Smith and Anderson book):

 

https://transportsofdelight.smugmug.com/RAILWAYS/BRITISH-INDUSTRIAL-LOCOMOTIVES/SHIPYARDS-SHIPBUILDERS/i-gf4Mhgf

 

Didn’t Portsmouth use a similar tram gauge? I don’t know if this was for the same reason though. Blackpool seems to have worked main line coal wagons over the tramway with no such adjustment (as the tramway there is standard gauge).

I was under the impression that it was to do with the different wheel profiles and possibly the shallower flangeway provided by grooved tram rail. Hence my question about what gauge the loco itself would be as it’s not clear whether it would need to have tramway or railway-spec wheels (presumably dependent on what type of track it spent more of its time on, though having a powered vehicle, as opposed to an unpowered wagon, running on its flanges doesn’t seem like a great idea).

Of course, in model form we could largely ignore this minor detail and have a very interesting layout.

45 minutes ago, Ian Smeeton said:

Over the tram network AFAIK

 

https://maps.nls.uk/view/82891749

 

See here

 

Regards

 

Ian

I had a look, apparently they did run over the tram network (and continued to do so on a retained section of track after the passenger trams stopped running, with the electric loco modified to run off the replacement trolleybus twin-wire overhead). Given that Glasgow trams were 4’ 7 3/4” gauge to accommodate standard gauge railway wagons (with their different, railway rather than tramway wheel profile) running in the flangeways, I can’t work out what gauge would have been used for the shipyard’s internal sidings or the loco itself. It would make an interesting and unusual prototype for a micro layout though.

5 hours ago, Ian Smeeton said:

A visit to Glasgow with a Quid Pro Quo for taking the wicked stepmother to the garden centre meant a visit to Fairfields at Govan.

 

The Shipyard is still in use by BAE Systems building ships for the Navy, but the offices have been turned into a rather good Museum, well worth a visit.

 

 

 

All that remains (on public view, there is probably more in the yard.

 

 

And what it used to be like (stolen from facebook)

 

Regards

 

Ian

Interesting. Were the wagons for the shipyard hauled over the tram network (as I think they did elsewhere in Glasgow) or are the two tracks in the old photo just coincidentally parallel at this point?