Boris

Sound advice for volunteering there, I've walked away from volunteering on preserved railways because it just became a pain in the backside, plus it lost a lot of the appeal doing for free what you get paid to do at work. My local model railway club is a bit of a handful now with an influx of new members (4 regular to 11) and I'm spending a lot of time organising group activities for the new layout - we had 3 ladies working on a OO gauge layout last week and it was ace, my plan is to create a range of activities on offer at the club and let people choose from those on offer. I'm also heavily involved in historical reenactment and staying legally compliant with that is a nightmare!

Is that a J39/3? I'm guessing from the chalking on the buffers someone has been measuring buffer heights with the plough fitted?

Save the date, Saturday 13th May D9009 booked Kings Cross to Scarbados on a tour. I'll be looking forward to seeing that. It'll be some interesting workings at Scarborough that day with the depot in use and TPE regularly storing units in the station, at one point on Sunday every platform was full.

Ditto for a couple of places down the Esk Valley Line. interestingly enough the last stationmaster at Grosmont Richard Cana left the railway and started a coal business which is still going today, his son sold the business fairly recently, but its roots are in the coal cells that used to be at Grosmont station

That parcels consist is interesting, looks like a Southern BY, a fish van (ex) and a Thompson suburban brake. Any advances?

Considering the rapidly expanding number of managers I think the electricity bill is they least of their problems.

Unless they were on another job or engineering work?

Seen this time and again, buy a house next to a working railway some highlights include: 1) The station lights are only off for 3 hours a night at keep us awake - the station only sees no trains 3 hours a night 2) The whole Depot saga at Scarborough 3) Buy a house next to a steam railway and realise that steam trains are noisy and dirty 4) Build a house within 15 feet of a siding, complain stored vehicles block the light - they've been there for years and probably wouldn't move, but apparently only appeared once the house was built

Couple of snippets on the WSR facebook page today with them having to rearrange and cancel services due to infrastructure damage caused by heavy rain/snow melt/Flooding. A video on their page shows deep silt, track at a jaunty angle and some really nasty embankment movement, hope its easy enough to recover. https://fb.watch/hxGmnA66LN/

I think its the mounting point for a DA valve (near a vac cylinder).

A couple of random photos from the past few weeks, the first is Lealholm one day last week walking down to collect the car from the garage which has been built on the old goods yard. The second one is a random Sunday at Seamer in November when we had a full house after a couple of random things. From left to right, the Road Railer and trailer were collecting scrap from a recent possession where the track between Seamer West and Seamer South Junctions is gradually being relayed on the Down, the Stoneblower was really at Driffield (!) or it was supposed to be for a different possession but there was an issue at Driffield meaning is sat at Seamer for a few days. I think the 170 on the Up is about 10 minutes late which is why its passing the 158 at Seamer (usually they pass between Hunmanby and Royal Oak Monday to Saturday and at Filey on a Sunday) so the 158 was dropped down the hill first.

Luton does not seem to be a logical destination from Scarbados

Aged, but surprisingly modern, I like those.

Love the details in this photo, and the wagon porn on offer. I'll also show this to the next person who tells me that goods yards weren't allowed to be overgrown!

I mean there's the whole war thing between the Allies and Japan formally ending too....

I took over Seamer at 1850 and trust me when I say it got worse before it got better! We ended up with the Hunmany-Filey double track section seeing 3 trains in each direction within an hour, it was like Filey Holiday camp was still there!

I fancy getting those under the roof tomorrow....

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.

They've had to hire in diesels instead of steam this year which has been ace for the diesel neds, not so much for the travelling public. Diesel gala is always a marginal one anyway, unless you get the right diesels people don't come and those diesels are generally from outside the 150 mile radius of the hosting railway. Pickering aren't hosting a 40s weekend because they've seen how much it actually costs to run and realised what a hit the NYMR takes on it every year. The organisers then blamed the inability to finance the weekend on the NYMR?!?!?!

It's the artificial ovoids I've been using on my open fire at home for years, they're great on my fire but the results are very variable on steam locos, it's a totally different firing technique that some have struggled to adapt to. It's not just passengers who are struggling with rising living costs, volunteers are in the same boat, I can think of a number who have cut their turns from 4 a month to 2 a month because of fuel costs and it may yet get worse. The Wensleydale has had to cancel some days operation this year because of a lack of volunteers (sourced from their official facebook page) and I think some other railways have had to scale back things like shop opening or booking office hours for similar reasons. It still blows my mind though that some preserved railways still can't get the basics right though, clean and warm trains aren't a big ask most of the time, getting the whole customer experience (yes I hate the term too) right is more important than ever now and too many places still haven't realised it!

The NYMR has a cracking junior volunteer program that has produced good results but its taken 15 years to get up and running properly, but its something other preserved railways could learn from.

Absolutely, bearing in mind that it's potentially hitting the train at 70mph+ suddenly you get quite a bit of kinetic energy to dispose of.

Anyone who gives a small child that much sugar deserves everything they get!

There is a cafe in the Engine Shed which has decent food at a sensible prices and I think a baby change place in there too