‘K1’2-6-0 No. 62005 gets into its stride on March 21, 2015 with
a train to Leyburn past the dry stone walls that typify the
Wensleydale countryside.DAVE HEWITT
That’s where the railway’s goals lie – to make
itself sustainable.”
Another move which he hopes will help
achieve that is a reduction of timetabled services
this year: “By starting to concentrate on a couple
of services a day and fewer services during the
week you can start making a little bit more
revenue out of those services you are running.
“One of the things that was quite interesting
last year from my point of view was to look at
some of the passenger data during August. I think
everybody had thought Saturdays and Sundays
are when everybody comes, but actually it turns
out Tuesdays and Wednesdays spiked, Thursdays
were very flat and then it went up Friday, Saturday
and then dropped again on Sunday.
“We’ve now dropped Thursday as a running
day because this pattern was continual, you could
see it over three or four years that Thursdays for
whatever reason were very, very poor. There’s
no point trying to run something if you can see
there’s a pattern where people don’t want to
travel that day. If we’re running steam through
that period that will save us the best part of
£5,000 to £6,000 not running on the Thursday.”
The WR has at times in the past run
timetabled services along the whole of the line
which it leases from Network Rail, but for the
past few years it has returned to just operating
regular services along the western section between
Leeming Bar and Redmire.
The 22-mile branch runs from its
connection with the rail network at Castle Hills
in Northallerton to sidings just beyond Redmire
station, where until 1992 trains were loaded with
locally quarried limestone for use in steel-making.
Remarkably, this traffic outlasted freight on the
rest of the line (which had all been lifted by the
late 1960s) by almost 30 years, and its survival
was further prolonged by the Ministry of Defence
who installed facilities at Redmire in order to
transport military vehicles by train.
The most recent of these movements,
operated by GB Railfreight in January and March,were the first since 2015, but more trains of this
type are expected.
At its current level, Richard says the financial
benefit of the traffic isn’t hugely significant: “It
doesn’t bring a lot of money in and I think that’s
one of the things that people maybe don’t quite
understand. We’re obliged by our lease obligation
to ensure that train is fit to run so we have to try
to maintain our infrastructure to accept those
trains. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was four miles,
but 22 miles is a lot of infrastructure to maintain
to keep trains running up and down. If there was
one every day then it would be different. You’d
be able to make some money out of them, but it’s
so sporadic you couldn’t pin your hat on it. It’s a
by-product of the lease rather than anything else.”Upgrading
Leaseholder responsibilities have weighed
heavy on the WR. So far, £100,000 has been
spent on upgrading the line’s automatic crossings
following a collision involving a train and a car
at Yafforth in August 2016. The Rail Accident
Investigation Branch concluded that the crossing
was “almost certainly” operating correctly, but the
decision was taken to fit all three such crossings
on the line with LED warning lights for road
users, which are brighter than the traditional
tungsten bulbs and comply with the latest
standards. Two of the three, Aiskew and Yafforth,
have so far been upgraded. Options for the
complete replacement of the third crossing, Ham
Hall, near Scruton, are being investigated. It is ofan experimental design, which is understood to
date back to the mid-1970s.
The cost of unexpected repairs has also been
substantial. After heavy rainfall in 2013, the
trackbed at Akebar, between Bedale and Leyburn,
was undermined by two major landslips. Repairs
cost around £120,000.
Frustratingly, the second led to the line being
closed for several months and came after remedial
work on the first for which a special fundraising
weekend had been held. The WR had even
appealed via the media for visitors to come along
and support it, offering free train rides over an
unaffected section of the railway.
Richard Brown is in no doubt the WR has
become more widely known since then: “We’re
certainly more visible than we were five or six
years ago. I think if you were to ask any general
manager I’m sure they’d all say we’d rather be
much more visible.
“I would much rather be having 100,000
passengers than 35,000 passengers, but there
again it’s a process of growing the railway. The
more attractive the railway becomes to visit the
more people will come. That again links back to
the Heritage Lottery funding.
“It’s starting to build something of interest to
your stations as well – becoming more than just
a train ride. I don’t think it’s about competing
with any of the other railways. I think actually
there’s probably enough tourists to go round
for all of them one way or another. All railways
have their own distinct character. They all have“In the greater scheme of things, yes, it would be lovely
to extend and yes it’s not a dead ambition by any means
but as operations manager previously I would question
the sanity of adding another four miles of track onto 22
miles of track that requires a lot of work already.”
July 2019 •The Railway Magazine•39