West Somerset Railway General Discussion

Wouldn't most of the wages be covered by the furlough scheme, £400k seems an awful lot bearing in mind 1) most other railways furloughed a great percentage of theirs staff, only keeping those on to keep the business ticking over and 2)that the overall wage bill had been dramatically reduced by the previous redundancies?

 

Better that staff get paid to do essential work for the railway (i.e. the activities funded by the grant) rather than be forced, under the furlough rules, to do nothing for their employer.

 

Even so, £400k seems a massive amount for the winter wage bill of essential staff,

 

Heritage railways staff aren’t well paid so let’s say £3000/month/person including NI, pension, etc. Let’s also say 33 staff -I’ve no idea of true numbers - so that’s £99K/month. That’ll soon rack up £400K. Put some more exact figures in if you wish but £400K won’t go far.

 

My point being that 33 essential staff seems a lot for a closed railway.

 

You are either furloughed, or you are working - you can't do both. If you want the railway to start running when planned, there is a lot of work to do in advance. Not all of it is amendable to being done by volunteers, even if they were allowed to travel.

Tom

 

Railways do most of their work when they are not running trains - it's easier that way! (You can't relay track, or repaint a carriage, while it is in use ...)

Certainly that applies to the engineering, and to an extent the sales / marketing functions. Catering is probably the one major area of activity where the demand is closely aligned to the operating season. So being closed does not mean low demand for staff. It's one reason why heritage railway finances are so sketchy - because they tend to burn cash for periods when there is very little income.

Tom

 

Indeed, but 33 ish seems very high compared to the number of paid staff that other railways have used to prepare for reopening. Many don’t employ that number even in normal times.

I guess it just comes to the structure of the railway and its heavier reliance on paid staff in general.

 

It's rather a lot of railway and bound to cost a deal

 

So a panel of people secure the largest grant the railway has ever received (excellent work!) then the majority of that panel are not utilised to help with the second, it would seem, unsuccessful bid???

Why change a winning formula.

Bizzare

 

Er, that link was to Steve Edge's website and the page was the latest available information where it was hoped that the last £86,000 would be secured. There is no further information and certainly no "We've got it all spent by the deadline, well done everyone" announcement on either the Plc website or Steve's.

 

The WSR wasn't just "a closed railway", it had a lot to get done and the money to do it, so that would mean a lot of people to do the work.

 

My point was about the sharing of information on the project in general, not the specifics of the question asked. Apologies for any confusion.


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Indeed. Tom made the same point above and I responded to it.

 

An entirely unscientific survey - in the 2019/20 company accounts, the WSR plc says they had 43 staff (plus five in the shop - 48 in total). They don't say whether that is FTE or not.

In comparison, the Swanage Railway in their accounts for 2019 say they had - 43 FTE staff. And, the IoWSR say they had - 52 staff (not all FTE, but conceivably about 35 - 40 FTE given the mix of full time, part time and seasonal that they declare). Of the three, the Swanage Railway had the highest staff costs; the WSR was in the middle.

OK, that's not exactly a comprehensive survey, and there is no breakdown as to the precise roles those staff do. There is also a big elephant in the room, often discussed, that a railway that contracts out a lot of maintenance work might appear to have low staff numbers, but only because they choose to outsource functions other railways do in house. But at a macro level - the WSR seems to have staff numbers that are at least broadly comparable with other railways, including ones much shorter. If you are ramping up from a long close down period, I would expect a lot of activity to be taking place.

Tom

 

Such as your own post, Your Grace? (to channel Sir Thomas More from "Man for All Seasons")

Noel

 

I think so, I have former colleagues at BA who tell me they work 2 weeks on & weeks off on furlough

 

My bold lettering.

As a married man, I'm grateful for the warning of this hazard!