I'm not entirely sure to be honest, the rant on facebook was extremely long and attracted a load of replies. I think the supposition was that the NYMR was going to open its coffers and still pay for a large part of the weekend even though it would only benefit the town rather than the railway, and unsurprisingly the NYMR politely declined which made the NYMR managers public enemy number 1 on the site in question, then of course a number of the more verbal reenactors jumped on the bandwagon ranting about a lack of Germans and then a lack of Pickering 40s weekend. The thread was eventually deleted.
Funnily enough a large number of people regard the event as the PICKERING War Weekend rather than the NYMR war weekend and only a small minority actually pay to get on the trains which may also be a final nail in the coffin. The bill for the whole thing was well into 5 figures when I used to be involved in organising it years ago and I wouldn't be surprised if that figure was approaching 6 figures now.
Another issue was the lack of open space physically in Pickering (to benefit the shopkeepers etc) and the only other spot which has a decent open space is the cricket/recreation ground which has a limit of about 150 people on site, again the supposition being the NYMR and the former trout farm site owner would allow them to use their car parks as display space for free/minimal cost.
The event on paper looked outstanding they had provisionally booked some of the better 40s singers and some of the larger and better WW2 reenactment societies, none of which are cheap but they suddenly realised even for a basic event the outlay was to be around £25k and nobody wanted to take the risk and fund the thing. They might have been more successful if they started small and built it up but they wanted big and showy from the beginning and had an unfortunate reality check early this year.