Railway Sounds

Hi guys,

Just to let you know I did receive an apology from the NYMR.

Hello Martin,

Having read your posting, I was compelled to respond. The Railway take a great pride in offering an enjoyable day out for everyone, and both our paid staff and volunteers alike are generally delighted to help out in any way they can. I was saddened to read about your experience and would like to offer sincere apologies on behalf of the Railway.

Obviously in this instance we have failed you – and I can assure you that the individuals concerned will be dealt with. With your permission, I would also like to use your posting as a real example of ‘how not to do it’ with the aim of making all staff understand the impact that their behaviour can have.
I do hope that you will have an opportunity to visit the Railway again when hopefully your experience will be much better.

Kind regards,
Helen Webb, Retail and Customer Services Manager

I’m happy to accept fully that apology unconditionally. It’s not been my aim to seek a refund, yes the day cost us in excess of £125 but ultimately the NYMR is a good railway and they deserve our custom and support and I don’t wish to refuse them that in these difficult economic times on the basis of an unpleasant experience with a number of their staff, neither do I wish to blag some free tickets from them (couldn’t afford to get up there again till next year anyway!)

Unfortunately I also received a rather impasdoned comment from one member of the LNER Coach association who accused us of having no respect for his coach. He also went on to say that we refused to cooperate with the Guard. So an apology from the NYMR and accusations of disrespect from the LNER Coach Association?

Needless to say neither is true and we only questioned the rules – we did not purposefully ignore or break them.

You can read all the comments here

Following those comments and Helen Webb’s apology on behalf of the railway I sent her this email:

Dear Helen,

I’m sure we will return in the future. I was a bit rushed earlier so didn’t have the time to respond as best as I could.

However my family and I gratefully and unconditionally accept your kind apology. Please also know that it has never been my intention to seek a refund neither will I accept one if offered – the NYMR is a wonderful railway and deserves our support and custom, especially in these difficult economic times.

Unfortunately Mr Melton of the LNER Coach Association doesn’t seem to be so willing to let the issue die. As well as suggesting that we might have felt the rules did not apply with respect to his coaches (where in fact we simply missed the notices due to the weather and trying to get the girls to warmth and shelter) He’s now also accused me of having no respect for his coaches (Despite one of our family members having donated to his cause in the past)

Additionally he tells me the guard tells a slightly different story in which we refused to cooperate. To this point I must object, yes we may have questioned the rules and even pointed out that it seemed incongruous that wet dogs were permitted where pushchairs were not. However once the guard made his position clear (in a manner that we found rude) we obeyed them, did not proceed into the Gresley Coach and returned to the buffet car.

Mr Melton also tells me the guard is somewhat upset at the whole incident, needless to say so were we, we came to you for a nice day out, not an argument! However I am sorry that he is upset and we do sincerely apologise if we made his job more difficult than it should have been due to our not spotting the notices. I hope that this unfortunate incident can only serve to improve customer relations, not worsen them. Additionally I hope that the guard in question is not reprimanded in any way as I am fully aware he may be a volounteer and hope he continues to support your railway, rather as your earlier comments suggests that some guidance is given on how to deal with similar future incidents.

I really do hope that this will be an end to the matter, if Mr Melton has nothing better to do all day than comment on my blog and accuse your paying customers of having a lack of respect for his coaches i hope I can presume that this is not also the stance of the NYMR.

Yours Faithfully,

Martin Paling,

The irony of all of this is that I very rarely complain, I’m one of those quite British types that will “just let it pass”

Hopefully this will be an end to it now and I can get back to posting sound clips and photos – It was never my intention to hijack this fantastic community to carry out full fledged warfare!

Hi all,

Had some responses on the post I wrote about the unpleasant experience my family and I had at the NYMR. Some very positive response from “Gary” a volounteer/employee of the railway and from Helen Webb the NYMR’s Retail and Customer Services Manager Helen Webb.

Unfortunately this was all tainted somewhat by what I believe to be a rather arrogant reply from Roger Melton of the LNER Coach Association who seemed to miss completely that the issue was not with the rules but the manner in which they were enforced.

You can read all of the comments (including my rather impulsive reply to Roger) and an update to the original post here.

I stumbled across this video of the new Class 70 that Freightliner are buying.

Ugly and noisy, just the way I like them!

UPDATE: Since I made this post there have been a number of replies from both volunteers and employee’s of the railway both on this site, through email and on other forums. There has also been a very positive and polite comment made by NYMR’s Retail and Customer Services Manager Helen Webb who also apologised on behalf of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway and I’m happy to say that I’ve accepted her apology and have assured her that we will visit this wonderful railway again. I also received a less positive comment from Roger Melton of the LNER Coach Association. In the light of all those comments I would like to make clear a number of issues that may not have been made as well as they could have been in my original post (Which remains below for reference)

1. First of all (and I believe I did make this clear in my original post) we did not so much have an issue with the rules, rather than in the way they were enforced: which we felt to be both unhelpful, aggressive and rude.
2. This unfortunate experience was the fault of two employees/volunteers of the NYMR. My family and I except that the majority of employees are friendly, polite and helpful. Its only fair that in the interest of balance I mark out two such employees from this particular visit. First the guard who allowed my nieces to “Inspect his tickets.” Second the staff at the Grosmont Station Gift shop who were especially helpful in helping my mother find a number of gifts.
3. Over the years my family and I have made many visits to the North Yorkshire Moors and it’s only fair to point out that this was the first and only unpleasant experience we’ve had over a period of over two decades. All in all that’s not a record the NYMR should  be ashamed of. It is a very nice railway, staffed by (a majority) of very nice, friendly and helpful staff.
4. Finally, this is a wonderful Railway doing some wonderful work and I encourage you to visit it (Though please do take care to read the notices about pushchairs even if you are caught in a thunderstorm)

I don’t like to be negative about any heritage railway, especially one with a great track record like the North Yorkshire Moors – but the experience my family and I had their last friday has put me off visiting them for some time.

North Yorkshire Moors Railway

My Brothers John, Stephen, his two daughters (aged 2 and 4) his partner and my parents (Grandma and Grandpa) visited the railway last friday (21st, August 2009) and bought day runabout tickets for us all (£125.00). The trip got away to a good start and the kids we’re entertained looking out of the window and playing “Ticket Inspector” We got off at Pickering for lunch and while there the heavens opened, hail and thunder and lightning – the lot! So we made our way back to the station to get the next train out, being in a rush we dived in the first carriage we could find and we’re heading for the nicely preserved teak Gresley coaches when a figure in an oil stained orange hi-vis clothes came storming through the carriage, put his arm across the passage way to block us and abruptly declared “You can’t go in there”

Obviously we we’re a bit taken aback by this… apparently it turns out you can’t take pushchairs through the Gresley coaches because of the risk of damage… ok we understand that these are priceless heritage coaches but his manner was just downright rude. “you’ll have to take it outside to the guard’s van, these chairs cost £10,000 each I can’t have you damaging them” (Please note there’s still a massive rain storm outside) Had he been nice about it, explained it in a better manner he may not have got our backs up… at that very moment a guy walks two wet dogs into the carriage followed by a photographer carrying a tripod on his back that clattering against the coaches walls.

“We can’t take a pushchair through, but wet dogs are ok?” my brother asked. “I can carry it through for you” he relents. “What if you damage the seats?” I ask, “I won’t” he replies.

Its not the reasoning that annoyed us, we understand that the coaches are priceless (though it’s somewhat annoying that the NYMR and the LNER Coach Association can’t trust us) and need to be treated with care. It was his rudeness that aggravated us… like he was on a one man mission to save the coaches from a gang of vandals. His whole manner was aggressive and as we sat down a number of other customers commented on his behaviour too.

We decided to get off at Grosmont and have a look around the shed, I went to the guards van to pick up the pushchair and met a young woman looking after a young boy sleeping in a push chair. “Are you traveling in here?” I asked, “yes!” she replied. I soon discover that because she was unwilling to wake her child up and dismantle the pushchair the same Jobsworth that had caused us offence had relegated this poor mother and child to the guard’s van… despite the fact that there were a number of mark 1 coaches in the trainset.

It only takes one idiot to spoil a day out. It takes two to completely ruin it!

After walking around the shops and sheds at Grosmont we headed back to the station. It’s started raining again now and Anna, the 2yr old, is fast asleep in the pushchair. The walk has cleared our tempers and we’d almost let the “Pushchair” incident drop. We have 30mins to wait for the next train back to Whitby and so decide to take refuge from the rain in the Grosmont Station Cafe…

“You can’t bring that in here!”

I kid you not!

“Why?”

“Fire regulations, they cause an obstruction”

We look around the empty Cafe, observing the total lack of any other customers

“But there is no-one else in here!”

“Fire regulations. You’ll have to sit outside”

“It’s raining”

Blank look from the Cafe staff

We march out of the Cafe, into the rain and down the road to the Hazelwood House Cafe who are only too happy to welcome us, our dangerous pushchairs and our custom.

There are a great many good and friendly staff at the North Yorkshire Moors Railway… but it only takes two socially inept, rude and discourteous jobs-worths to ruin a day. My brother his partner and his children will not be visiting any time in the future and based upon that particular day I don’t think I could recommend the North Yorkshire Moors Railway to any other parents either.

10001 at Bletchley © Roger Gurney

Just a quick heads up. BBC East Midlands Today are showing some footage of the D16/1 (1000, 10001) launch at the Derby Loco Works on their 6pm show tonight. If you are outside of the east midlands and have sky you can also find this in your regional BBC listings.

Image published under the licence found here > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:10001_at_bletchley.jpg

When does railway audio recording go wrong? Nearly always!

One thing that I’ve learned over the last two years is that a good day is when you and your kit survives in one piece and you get a recording that will be worth listening to once you’ve spent a few hours editing it. A “perfect” recording session is when… well i’ll let you know when I have one.

“That’s easy isn’t it… sitting in a field with a picnic recording trains?” is what one photographer said to me at the GCR last year. How wrong he is! Take my visit to the Mail by Rail event at the Great Central last weekend. I made 17 recordings, only two of which are worth keeping. The rest were made useless by four helicopters (Two of which flew directly over me) around six aircraft (%^*ing Ryan Air!) a couple of tractors, a large group of sexagenarian ramblers (whose enthusiasim for my hobby blinded them to the fact they they had just ruined a great recording of Sir Lamiel pulling a TPO ) and a sodding microlight who decided to brighten my day with a 15 minute aerobatic display.

To top it all off the second to last TPO was running late on saturday and by the time the double headed diesel special passed by me i’d run out of card space on my recorder… at which point I was past caring as I was well into my  ”John Cleese beats up a mini metro with a shrub act”… where were those ramblers when I really needed them?

So here I am looking at 3gb’s of Tractors, Planes, Ramblers, Helicopters and sodding microlights… and about 30mb of me screaming “who the bloody hell would want to strap themselves to a lawn-mower engine and jump off of a cliff with a plastic wing?” wondering if somewhere in their I can edit together at least one good railway recording.

Oh yes… taking photos is so much harder! Point, focus, click – done.

I may not get a recording of  TPO from 2009 GCR online (unless your a microlight fan) but I do have one from 2007

Alternatively you can look at Ron Chaplin’s fantastic pictures here

&*^%ing Microlights!

Hi all,

I’ve just created the Great Central Railway Group… I’m just someone who likes visiting and thought it might be good to have a group on here. If you have a bigger involvement with the GCR than me and would like admin access to edit news etc let me know!

Anyone going to “Mail by Rail” this weekend?

Ah.. you clicked onto this page because you thought it was an in-depth post about how to lay ballast or something? Sorry, it’s nothing of the sort – I just thought it would be a good title for my first post. I can’t promise to not mislead you again, after-all if inspiration strikes I have to follow it!

So here it is my first post. Let me introduce myself: I’m Martin, a theatre designer based on the Notts/Leics border –  My hobby is audio recording, especially railway audio recording I started doing it to collect sound effects for my fathers ‘O’ Gauge Model Railway but it’s long since become a personal pursuit. Railways and railway engines and trains make great subjects producing all manner of sounds from almighty whooshs of steam to gentle “ticking” and simmering sounds. Environmental recordings of railways is something I really enjoy… to be in the idyllic calm of the countryside and then to hear the majestic sounds of a Steam Train whistling by, or the gentle “Clackety-clack” of the a train of coaches slowly passing through a sleepy village.

Railways run in my family – although I’m not too up on the technical side of it. My great grandfather was a station master for the GCR/LNER and spent some time at Nottingham Victoria, my great Uncle was a driver for the LMS and drove the Royal Train at least once. My grandfather was a Vicar and a passionate O Gauge model maker and along with my father was one of the very early members of the Gauge O Guild, my father serving on the Committee for some time. He’s also a charted engineer and has worked as project engineer on a number of Locos in his time including things like the HST, Class 50 (a few others I can’t remember) and no end of DMU’s… he now works as a consultant and advises companies/countries on the construction of new railways. Needless to say his blog would probably be a lot more interesting than mine!

I think I caught the railway bug when I spent a lot of my youth working on “Palmerston” at both the Ffestiniog and in Staffordshire and am probably the only person in the world who can lay claim to having crawled around inside its saddle tank – something I definitely wouldn’t be able to do now i’m all grown up!