West Somerset Railway General Discussion

Oops. I am obviously way out of my depth on this thread. From now on I will confine my posts to the Picture Puzzle thread and What’s Going On where I feel a bit more at home

 

I thought everybody ignored this site, and just treated as a bit of light entertainment when there was nothing on the tv.....

 

Many do but, for some unfathomable reason, some people seem to hold it responsible for the WSR’s poor public image. They’re wrong.

 

Absolutely. Within the volunteer circles on my railway, not too many people have heard of NatPres, but everyone knows that there's "trouble at 'mill" on the WSR, even if they don't understand the ins and outs of it all.

 

Several people I know on various other railways have said something similar.

 

The problem, with posting pictures and details events about the WSR on NP seems to stem from the fear by many of the WSR supporters of being castigated for participating on NP. It seems only the bold - those able to stand up for themselves - make positive posts.
Yes the bus got all the publicity here on NP, but whose fault was that, no one from the WSR, or their supporters, attempted to show other photos of the days events.

 

One thing that is interesting is the way in which liminality (when you are on the border between two states: survival or going out of business) impacts upon the choices actors make. It seems to make many more risk adverse in the short term, or to perceive the costs as being excessively high and so they do nothing, hoping that next year will be better and will enable them make any changes. But the problem is that next year they are still in this position of being between two states. They remain perpetually liminal

Let me give an example, a friend of mine is a small scale farmer. He inherited the farm from his dad who inherited it from his grandfather. So there is a deep emotional attachment to the land. Every year, he has to mortgage the land to pay for the seed for his one crop. He knows that he will make enough to pay the mortgage and survive the winter (just). I asked him why he didn’t grow another crop that had the potential to be more profitable, the response was ‘too much risk, too much time, no guarantees of success, better to stick with his one crop.’ So he is stuck and of course a disaster could ruin him.

There is a point to this. That is to say that the psychology of actors and how they understand their position profoundly influences their business choices. So I would argue that the WSR’s decision is more a reflection of a mindset and worldview.

What I do find interesting is the contrast with the Llangollen which was in trouble and appears to have taken the decision to take on extra short term costs in order to survive long term (in short to try to move away from being liminal).

We’ll leave the contrast between the radical approach to managing the WSR vs the conservative (with a small c) approach to reopening for another day

NP Schrödinger’s forum, simultaneously both not influential and read by no one, and also influential and destroying the WSR.

 

I did watch the MD station webcam last weekend on several occasions, but really it is too far away from the station to see very much. I've also seen quite a few pix which have appeared on the web since then - what struck me was that very few of them showed anything more than the odd handful of visitors, although clearly from the official reports the numbers were quite good. But it did give the impression IMHO that, if Minehead indeed is bursting with tourists, there were disproportionally few of them on the station. Hopefully this weekend will be better.

 

It would be a shame if the WSR went under through mis-management by the PLC board & the WSSRT/WSRA stood by & let it happen, but never mind there are plenty of other railways not too distant.

DJB.

 

Here is a link to the "Living History" event at Minehead today. https://www.west-somerset-railway.co.uk/events/detail/minehead-station-railway-living-museum-days
We are going this afternoon and will try and post some pictures later.

 

Yes, the arrival and departure was noticed, however apart from saying how easily he got into the WSR restricted facebook group and how much more information was provided there and how it "Isn't all about NP", I didn't see a great deal of engagement or actual information provided - and when this was pointed out he fled.

Sadly Mr Bailey didn't just deal with the problems he was originally asked to, he also took it upon himself to consider the overall picture and what he considered to be the route to take. Hardly surprising that some disagreed with him - at least with his short term view of backing the only horse he saw in town.

And that may well be the crux of the problem - if there really isn't enough money coming in to run a line of that length in the manner it has been run, what can be done?
Either find the money and effort from more volunteers, donors, grant providers etc, or cut the railway down to a size (operationally or physically) that is financially viable, by one means or another. I wonder which the Plc favour at the moment....

 

Twitter post from the railway on Friday (31st July). My highlighting:-

West Somerset Railway@WSomRailway· 31 Jul
This weekend will be the last chance to see some #webcam action via @railcamlive
live on #YouTube Our 03 shunter and 9351 will be viewable throughout Sat & Sun. Almost 300 likes ! How many can it get...? Could we hit 12k #followers too? https://youtu.be/EYMnQnoFWeo

Does this mean the webcams are being shut down? Does it cost the railway anything to have them? If so it might explain why...