The Douglas Bay Horse Tramway

I don't disagree, the seaside Borough I live in faces very similar issues, especially now that the 2012 sailing bandwagon has rolled on to Rio-de-J. Tourism related facilities are expensive. The two key phrases that you include are "loss-making operation" and "valuable stables for sale". IoM public financing (as it isn't directly part of the U.K.) will differ from the mainland but there will be similarities; in the current climate X (the trams) is seen as a lower priority in the pecking order and is being cut, just as parks and gardens, toilet facilities etc are being cut on the mainland and car park charges etc., being raised despite those actions being unhelpful to the tourist trade.

Someone (hoteliers consortium?) has to pay for operating it or arrange for volunteer operation. Weymouth Pavilion Theatre was shut and has reopened on that model after a hard fought fight to avoid demolition. There is a model to follow, it just needs organising outside the Council control. (Just of course being the hard part)


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If the local council really wanted to they could they could employ accountants to look at every visitor attraction on the Island and probably deduce that none of them are paying their way. Then they could shut them all down and I'm sure everybody would feel so much the richer for it. Unfortunately less people would want to go there. I know a successful company that shuts their accountant out of new product meetings as it involves committing funds before a guarantee of income, but that is what brings the money in. Accountants and their like are uncreative by nature and only look at the bottom line and not the whole picture.

 

I regret being blunt but this is pure "wouldn't it be nice" stuff expressed in a slightly different way. It ill behoves people from Lincolnshire, Hampshire or wherever to tell the Manx population how to spend their money. Unless a solution as proposed by Johnnew can be made to work then the tramway either closes or receives subsidy. Railway enthusiasts are notoriously airy-fairy about financial matters and it seems tramway people are similarly prone.

PH

 

To echo Mr Hitch (becoming a nasty habit) someone has to pay. If the council, they have to get the money from somewhere (taxes). So if you want to save it (and I think it would be a tragic loss) then you have to persuade some local people to fund it somehow, or that it is worth raising taxes for.

 

The trouble is you're sounding like a robot and believing everything you're told ( perhaps you are quite young?) but we've heard of these 'saving money arguments' before and I don't believe the cost of running the horse trams quoted. Todays supposed saving is tomorrows soon forgotten story. No doubt when they closed a lot of the lines in Lincolnshire I'm sure the argument was that there are buses but now there is barely that.It's just what you choose to pick on and whatever your agenda is. I seem to recall that the IOM is a tax saving haven?

 

What did I say about railway enthusiasts tending to be airy-fairy about money, especially other peoples? If the horse tramway made any money the local authority would want to keep it.

PH

 

It doesn't have to make money! Its part of the visitor attraction. How can you not see that! Its a holiday resort. The horse tramway is not the reason for the lack of money its just got picked on by some councillors, if you start destroying heritage you really have to look at those in control and their credentials, why do you hold them in such high esteem? Once the tramway is out of way they will have turn their attention to something else to get rid of in the name of saving money. It just goes on and on and in the end nothing is left and nobody is any the richer. I've lived in countries where heritage is not valued and got rid of and they are dead boring to live in too.

 

This is mere placard waving. Any transport undertaking has to have its costs met either through income generated or subsidy. I understand that horses are particularly expensive to keep but I have no direct experience of this. I suspect you are much the same.

PH

 

Its a good job you weren't involved in the Talyllyns rescue, It would be a mere overgrown scar on the hillside now.

 

Oh for heavens sake! The T.R. has been subsidised in one way or another from the moment of rescue. For example the Hunslet Engine Company re-fireboxed No. 4 and made a new saddle tank both free of charge. This was as much a gift as a cash subsidy would be.

PH

 

Then same can be done for the horse trams. I end my case.

 

Now that is a great improvement from merely waxing indignant from afar.

PH

 

Perhaps you should take time to read posts rather than be contrary for the sake of it, I didn't just give a one liner 'Oh it should be subsidised' without making a case for its value in the environment it now finds itself.

 

More likely they'd privatise it.

 

Gricers need a reality check:- regularly.

PH

 

Agreed, but you assumed that the taxpayer should fund this for the benefit of the private owners of the various attractions that benefit from visitors.

I would like the horse trams to survive, and I would be especially disappointed if they were to be lost as collateral damage to a debate between councils. That does not mean that I see them as a "must save", or that the costs automatically justify their retention.

 

Put a sock in it Paul. If "gricers" had taken reality checks from day 1, virtually nothing would have been saved. Where would your beloved WLLR and IoWR be without the dreams of the early pioneers?

 

Actually another thought on this, perhaps those that actually make the decision to get rid of heritage, should for posterity be made to actually do the dirty work personally. Lets see their faces and names and film them taking the horses to the knackers yard, burning the coach bodies and cutting up the chassis etc. I wonder how keen they would be then?

 

Realism is this costs £X in things like horse feed and requires Y hours in labour to run. It doesn't matter where the resources to fill X & Y come from provided they do. At the moment the current funder wants to stop. There is a long established model to overcome that but it needs motivated people to kick it off. Is anyone coming forward to do that?


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See comments from 35B and Johnnew. Proof that not every enthusiast needs a reality check but a high proportion do.

PH