Thirty years ago Nick Simpson was a Grosmont Station Tearoom volunteer at the North Yorkshire Moors Railway (NYMR) in Grosmont \u2013 now he\u2019s its Head of Mechanical Engineering.<\/p>\n
It was partly thanks to his recently acquired first-class degree in Engineering from The Open University, which his forward-thinking former boss decided to sponsor him on throughout.<\/p>\n
It was no mean feat for the married father of two, now 42. He worked full time for the registered charity while he embarked on the course that took him seven years\u2019 part-time study to complete.<\/p>\n
And as a result, he\u2019s had three promotions since. Now he manages 24 paid staff and more than 120 volunteers passionate about preserving the historic engines and track. He\u2019s the first to admit \u201cit\u2019s a mint job\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can’t stress enough how good it is for [someone] if they can get on that ladder and get a degree course under them. I’ve benefited immensely,\u201d he said.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
He\u2019s come a long way since joining as a volunteer \u2013 initially training as an apprentice diesel fitter on site. Now the charity\u2019s investment in him and his degree has paid dividends.<\/p>\n
He said it changed his life and his new knowledge has helped transform the way the yard maintains and manages its magnificent rolling stock.<\/p>\n
He said tackling projects is much more scientific:<\/p>\n
\u201cNow you have to step back and you think, right, what are the risks? What are we going to do and how to finance it. It gives you a better overview of engineering.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
One of those projects involved his dissertation \u2013 saving a massive but crucial aging piece of maintenance kit from the scrap yard.<\/p>\n
The \u201cwheel drop\u201d was built in 1914 and the yard had used it for 15 years, since a generous benefactor donated it. But it was on the cusp of being retired as it needed updating.<\/p>\n
The mechanism is rather like a car ramp but 10ft long and scaled up to take the weight of up to 120 tonne steam engines and rolling stock.<\/p>\n
It allows his team to remove and maintain the wheels on the trains, some of which match Nick\u2019s 6ft 6ins tall frame, by supporting the weight of the engines as they remove them.<\/p>\n
He said it was \u201cquite a challenge\u201d not least because all the steel was built in Imperial measurements but now, of course, it\u2019s metric that dominates today\u2019s world.<\/p>\n
Nick says it\u2019s working on big engineering restorations that gives him great job satisfaction and helps enables NYMR\u2019s many visitors annually to enjoy the trains and rolling countryside.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeeing that steam engine thrashing past with seven coaches absolutely full of families waving at you because of something you’ve mended – now that’s a buzz. That’s brilliant. And also, there’s nowhere around here that I can do the big engineering restorations that I do here,\u201d he said.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
For someone who admits he\u2019s not actually a railway buff, the railway site \u201cstill gets into his skin\u201d.<\/p>\n
So, it was a proud moment for him, wife Alison and teenager daughters Lyla and Grace as they watched him walk across the stage to collect his degree at a recent OU graduation ceremony in London.<\/p>\n
Pictured is Nick Simpson in front of the wheel drop, which was his dissertation subject<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thirty years ago Nick Simpson was a Grosmont Station Tearoom volunteer at the North Yorkshire Moors Railway (NYMR) in Grosmont \u2013 now he\u2019s its Head of Mechanical Engineering. It was partly thanks to his recently acquired first-class degree in Engineering from The Open University, which his forward-thinking former boss decided to sponsor him on throughout. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":28100,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,14,18],"tags":[805,2679,1525,2680,1602,1640,2144],"class_list":["post-28099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engineering-innovation","category-science-mct","category-student-stories","tag-engineering","tag-mechanical-engineering","tag-news-home","tag-north-yorkshire-moors-railway","tag-open-university","tag-ou-home","tag-student-success"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28099"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28102,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28099\/revisions\/28102"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}