North Yorkshire Moors Railway to rely more on volunteers as financial challenges revealed

Yorkshire Post

North Yorkshire Moors Railway is planning to rely more on volunteers and less on paid staff as it faces ongoing financial challenges amidst falling visitor numbers.  The steam railway visitor attraction which runs along an 18-mile line through the Moors is also seeking to “change the demographic” of its existing volunteer base to make its helpers “more varied in age and more diverse”.  Details have been revealed in recently-published accounts from the North Yorkshire Moors Railway Trust covering the year to February which said the organisation has been through a “perfect storm of post Covid impacts, cost increases, the cost of living crisis and one-off events on and off the railway conspiring to test staff and volunteers”.

Transcript

00:00So can a diverse volunteer workforce help save an iconic steam railway? The North Yorkshire

00:06Moors Railway is on a mission to weather some tough economic times. Visitor numbers have dropped,

00:12running costs are up, so they've basically announced a plan in their accounts to rely

00:16more on volunteers and less on paid staff. They've already got over 1,100 volunteers,

00:22but say they need more diversity and younger people to join their ranks. Part of the goal

00:27is to better reflect the communities they serve. This comes on the back of a £400,000 cost saving

00:32plan which has seen some job cuts already happen and the trust who runs the railway is redefining

00:40volunteer roles and looking at where appropriate replacing paid staff who've left with volunteers.

00:46The aim is to create a sustainable future, keep the steam railway alive after some difficult times.

00:53Unrestricted income was down last year, turnover was down last year, visitor numbers were down last

00:58year. So the aim is to become financially stable, the question is will a shift to a more diverse

01:03volunteer base. Steer them back on track.

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