West Somerset Railway General Discussion

Well one chap at the WSR has been having a jolly good go at telling everyone else what they can and can't do.

 

Received 28th February. WSR news update. <BJ>

''The second of the monthly Zoom meetings took place last week and the subject was the enhancement to the Safety Management System and the Compliance Management System. The meeting was very well attended and the clear message from volunteers was that we are ready and waiting for the refresher training and competence checks, so bring 'em on !

The WSR Chairman, Jonathan Jones-Pratt, once again stated the intention to restart the WSR with services top-and-tailed between Bishops Lydeard and Watchet, pending re-opening to Minehead when the track improvements have been completed, so we all need to be ready when these moments come. Again, the Zoom meetings are a great initiative by the WSR and they get ten points for doing it''.

 

Good L-rd, did we really just go over a week without a single post to this thread? (The previous one was on the 20th February.) Amazing.

Noel

 

Posts like that usually precede an almighty new source of contention rising up hours later, leading to ten new pages by this time tomorrow. I await with anticipation...

 

There is competition from Llangollen .

 

I just hope those occupants of the boardroom chairs at Minehead, don't think, " It can't happen here" it very easily could,
As regards funding for 53808's overhaul, Am i reading it right, that the PLC want an agreement in place, before they will sign up to any deal to overhaul it? With an organisation they have done their best to marginalise and seek to remove? I can see where that will end, with 53808 being overhauled somewhere else, and with no prospect of it ever returning, not even as a guest.

 

I think the correct term is trepidation...


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

Yes, I certainly didn't mean to imply I look forward to such an occurrence!

 

Rubbish!

 

I always understood that the PLC was to pay for 53808's overhaul in arrears i.e. after they had had the, however many years', work out of the loco. If this is so why are the PLC now wanting some sort of new running agreement if the original one was to return the loco in the condition in which it was when first leased? They can't have "two bites at the cherry" surely. Perhaps someone with more knowledge of the original 'run & repair' agreement would care to comment?
Ray.

 

Surely it is only sensible that the railway will want to secure some form of commitment with regard to the future use of the loco once they have overhauled it. Too many railways in the past have had their fingers burnt through gentleman's agreements that have turned out to be misunderstandings. Given the likely costs of an overhaul of an engine that has been very busy over the last few years you surely would not expect there to be no discussion about the locos future.

It is easy to assume that they could get someone else to carry out the overhaul, but it is not that easy. There is no spare overhaul capacity within the "industry" and if the 7F is to be overhauled then something else, perhaps equally deserving, is going to be left out. So if the Mid-Hants were to take it on, would it join the long queue that they already have, or would it jump the queue and if so at what locos expense?

It could be that a deal with the WSR may in the end be the best way forward if the engine is not to spend 20 years laid up at the end of a siding. Best let the parties involved get on with exploring the best mutually beneficial agreement that can be reached, rather than speculating on what outcomes might be possible with little understanding of the complexities involved.

Peter

 

My understanding is that it was run and overhaul. You can understand the logic and security for both parties under previous WSR management. The WSR gets full use of a really useful engine and no worries about it being taken off to run somewhere else after a couple of years. For the S&DRT, it stays local and its usefulness means the WSR has a strong incentive to overhaul it quickly and get it back out running. A nice secure partnership built up over 40 years which is mutually beneficial to both.

Now, we have a change in management that wants to move the goalposts and move to an overhaul and run deal.

The WSR management is banking on the S&DRT needing a quick turnaround and lack of viable alternatives to overhaul the loco to force the S&DRT to accept a new deal, which is weighted in the WSR's favour.

Of course, whether you'd want to take that offer is debatable given all that has happened in the last 12 months.

 

Is it just me or is there a conspiracy theory at work here. Without going back and finding the actual statements, hasn't the WSR said that it will overhaul the loco when it comes out of service and isn't the reason that it went to the MHR so that it could earn money towards that overhaul duting a period when the WSR was not running. I might be being simplistic but I can't recall seeing anything different from that, other than from people on here

 

Of course, it could be just a coincidence that much of the S&DRT's collection has gone to the MHR, too...

 

Really?
The only item of rolling stock that has gone to he MHR is MV1630, unless you know differently.

 

Err, I presume you are aware of this announcement and others? Rolling stock & artefacts to be relocated from Somerset & Dorset Railway Trust to Watercress Line

 

They also have until 2030 to achieve it, though I can see advantages both sides to getting it done more rapidly than that.

I've made the point before, but worth restating: both parties in a railway / loco owner deal have something to offer that the other can't provide. The general result is that the railway gets a loco at less than the real cash cost, but the owner gets to see it operated on a railway that they don't otherwise have. Whether you see that as weighted in the WSR's favour probably depends on how much value you think the railway company delivers by putting its infrastructure, rolling stock and operational expertise at the disposal of the loco owner. (Or put another way, how much value the loco owner sets on actually seeing their asset run - in my experience, that tends to be high up the priority list of loco owning groups).

That presupposes several things. Not the least of which is how the WSR plc chooses to honour its financial commitment to restore the loco: it would be cheaper to do that in a workshop it owns and manages than contracting it out to another organisation. Of course, if the WSR broke its commitment (either through commercial failure or bad faith), then what you suggest could happen, but there would then be relatively little money available, and you would essentially have flipped a "run and restore" arrangement into a new "restore and run" arrangement - which is detrimental to the loco owner.

Accurate crystal balls are rare commodities, but if you believe that the WSR has an ongoing viable future as a railway, then I still think the most likely outcome is for the loco to be substantially overhauled at Minehead for future use on the WSR.

Tom

 

No. As I recall, the S&DRT were told by the WSR that there was no money for an overhaul when it comes out of service. How else do you read that other than 'won't do the overhaul?'

Do you have a statement from the PLC saying that it will be overhauled as a priority when it comes out of service?

Why should the S&DRT have any trust in the WSR PLC to uphold their end of the deal given how they have behaved over the lease etc?

The S&DRT have certainly been asked to fundraise for a new tender top, if you remember the WSR falsely accused the S&DRT of refusing to do this. The S&DRT in fact said they would even though the funding of the overhaul is entirely their responsibility under the deal.

Edit to add further information.

@Steve

From the Pines Express No.295 (2019) p.3 Chairman's report:

I read this as won't overhaul because they don't have the money to complete their part of the deal - which is as I understand it is that in return for running the loco they have to fund the overhaul.

So this would be two agreements with the S&DRT that the WSR PLC has gone back on.

 

Indeed I am.
press_statement_11-02-21.pdf (sdrt.org)
Given that there are currently 21 items of rolling stock at Washford, my concern is that if these items were to move to the MHR or elsewhere, the identity
of the S&DRT would be totally lost.
There are already some 60 items of freight stock at the Mid Hants Railway so how would the SDRT stock be defined from the MHR stock?
I prefer to see what happens between now and August.