Summer holiday day three

July 25 - NYMR

Sunday afternoon, it had been decided that on Monday we would take a ride on the NYMR. No, not the New York Metropolitan Railway, the North Yorkshire Moors Railway.  This private line runs from Pickering to Whitby over a part of the North Yorkshire Moors and on Monday we got up early and arrived at the station ready to go to Whitby.   TSIL has recently become less able to walk far owing to a fall, so for the duration of the holiday, so that he would not get left out too much, he hired a small disability buggy to ride and save himself from unnecessary pain.

On our train trip, the buggy had to be driven into the parcels van via a special ramp that the railway staff had to hand for just this kind of situation.  This also meant that we needed to be at the station about thirty minutes prior to the train leaving to get it on board and find our seats.

Passengers waiting to board the train at Pickering

One of the stations we passed through

The trains on the NYMR are made up from a number of different eras of British railway history and some of the rolling stock is very ancient.  Some carriages we saw were almost like the old Victorian carriages used by Queen Vic herself and equipped with chairs and tables.  The carriage we rode in was a bit more recent, at least having been built in the middle of the 20^th century.  It was one of those old fashioned corridor types divided into small compartments, each with two bench seats facing each other with a sliding door to the corridor you can close if you want to.  The kind of carriages used in the Harry Potter movies, in fact they could well have been the same carriages because parts of the various movies were filmed on the NYMR.  Hogwarts station, in at least one movie, being in reality Goathland station.

In these carriages, the seats are wide enough that we were all able to sit comfortably in one compartment and keep together.

The train runs through a part of the North Yorkshire Moors passing some picturesque scenery on the route.  It runs through a number of small North Yorkshire towns and the line finishes at Whitby by the sea. 

Whitby is one of my favourite seaside towns and the number one priority when we arrived, (after finding the loos) was to find a fish bar where we could have Whitby Fish and Chips.  This was achieved with ease, since there are more chip shops in Whitby than you can shake a stick at, but we knew of a particularly good one that we had patronised before and so headed there.  We were not disappointed.

This notice was on the wall in the restaurant.  Nice idea. 

Not the place we ate at, just a picturesque building in Whitby

In almost all Seaside resorts it seems to be a trend now to have a mock pirate ship for trips around the bay.  Whatever happened to the old Skylark for trips around the bay?

This is a lane according to the sign on the wall

After lunch, we were able to wander around until it was decided that the more ambitious ones amongst us should climb the steps to the Abbey and so off we went.  There are reckoned to be 199 steps, but both on my way up and on my way down, I did not come to this number exactly.  I can only assume that I lost count when I stopped for the necessary check of the view and photo shoot.   OK.  If you insist on honesty, to catch my breath.

Half way up

At the top

Once up there we wandered around admiring the architecture and the views and traced out the contours of the older building that had been marked out in the grass.  We looked around the visitor centre and read the various posters telling you its history and then went outside into the abbey itself.  Even in ruins, it is still impressive and we lingered for a while before returning to the harbour level. 

After a short aimless wander around Whitby, we returned to the station and boarded our train for the return to Pickering.

Our train home with the steam engine Eric Treacy pulling it

Soon be 80 years old

On the return trip the guard’s van was right behind the engine and so, sat in the carriage immediately behind, the sounds of the steam loco were loud and clear.   The younger members of the family who had not often, or maybe never, been on a steam drawn train were fascinated by the the different sounds it made as it pulled the carriages. Something us oldies remembered from our past, although modern rails do not make the sounds they used to before tracks were welded together to give a quieter ride.  Before that, they were joined by clamps and every join made a noise and you got a regular beat as your carriage went over the joins, giving a tiddly-dum, tiddly-da, tiddly-dum, tiddly-da, rhythm that went faster and slower as the train altered speed but when you went across the points, it changed to tiddly, tiddly, tiddly and then back to the regular rhythm.   OK so that looks daft written down.  It is easier to say it than write it down.
Exits left muttering: tiddly-dum, tiddly-da, tiddly-dum, tiddly-da tiddly-dum...
.

At Goathland they took away our nice steam loco and replaced it with a diesel, which is just normal and so less interesting to the passengers.  It also had a very off key horn which sounded most unpleasant.

An ordinary diesel engine called Sybilla