LMS Patriot Project Updates

Radio silence for quite a long time . . . Does anyone have any recent news about progress with The Warrior?

 

Your reason for quoting something from April is what?

 

The project website is forecasting completion in 2026. Shows an engineering update to August 2022.

https://lms-patriot.org.uk/

 

I wonder how many more millions they will need to raise and spend between now and then?

Tom

 

Accounts for 2021/22 have been posted on the Companies House website. They show total income for the year as being £271K. So if the locomotive is going to take 4 more years to complete, that suggests around a further £1m (or so) cost.

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/06502248/filing-history

I notice that there is no specific mention in the accounts of any compensation being expected from the liquidators of Llangollen Rly plc. The accounts of the Llangollen's administrators had earlier reported that the Patriot Project was claiming £100K compensation, but their latest report ("Move from Administration to Creditors Voluntary Liquidation" - para 5.11) estimates that unsecured creditors will will only get back 16.5p per £.


https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/02716476/filing-history

 

If the company had not gone into liquidation there would presumably have been some negotiation and possibly legal action over whether there was any entitlement to compensation for poor work and if so how much. As things stand, does someone seeking compensation count as a creditor at all?

Edit: changed "receivership" to "liquidation".

 

I am definitely not a legal authority, so judge reliability of this comment appropriately.

I very much doubt someone *claiming* compensation counts as a creditor. Someone legally owed compensation surely would. However if to establish a right to compensation you have to pay your lawyers fees 100p per £1, but your compensation will come back at 16p per £1 then the sums probably don't add up. And I think we can be reasonably confident no law firm would take on such a claim without being paid in full upfront.

 

There is a lesson here, and its to ensure that the firm you contract to do the work, is doing it to the required standard, and to check, and double check the work, don't take reputation for granted, Any firm worth its reputation, would welcome inspection of what they are doing, As ever hind sight is great, but mistakes were made, that should have not been made, those running the Project at the time, are just as culpable as those doing the work, you should never take for granted that your hard earned funds are being spent wisely, Now its money flushed down the drain, and you won't get any of it back, and your back to stage one, plus extra time and money now has to be spent, because it was not done right to start with, and every single bit has to be removed, checked rectified or replaced, If you don't have an competent engineer , then you get one to oversee the work, had that been done from day one, , the mistakes might have been avoided,

 

Instead of repeating what everyone already knows, why don't you say something positive?

 

Appraising what has happened , in a transparent way, isn't necessarily negative. The positive is that the project is moving forwards.

The way in which it is moving forwards, particularly the attention to detail, should give us all confidence.

It may be uncomfortable to read the above regarding having engineering competence acting as oversight, but it's a lesson humans have had to keep re-learning for at least the last 2000 years.

Personally, I'm happy to read and hear it again and again, because no matter how well appraised this engineer may like to think he is on any given day, barely a week goes past where something doesn't surprise me, or make me pause and think....hmmm, could that have been foreseen, been done better, or, will that cause problems going forwards?

Continuous improvement is by definition an uncomfortable process.

We can either embrace that discomfort or ignore it and make the same old mistakes over and over.

 

I was wondering about this project so went looking, a recent engineering report was put up a couple of days ago:

https://www.lms-patriot.org.uk/engineering/2023-07-24/engineering-report-may-2023

Sounds (reads) like steady progress

 

I think the Patriot team are to be congratulated on "keeping the faith" despite all the horrendous difficulties that they have encountered. It is easy with hindsight to see what should/could have been done differently but I'm sure that they were given all sorts of positive information...at the time.

 

Noting that mainline is still the ultimate aspirations of the group. Fortune favours the brave there.

 

Its quite frightening the amount of components they seem to be having to replace or do significant work on.

Chris

 

All been said before, move on...

 

a bit slow aren't you, my remark was posted back in Dec 2022, I have moved on, have you?

 

In the latest Engineering Report they say "The original set of wheels and axle obtained from 8F No. 48518 has now been declared unfit for further main line use as the parts are out of specification for use on a Patriot-design bogie. We are investigating possible short term use of this wheelset for heritage line use whilst a replacement wheelset is manufactured." This may offer a potential route to gradually stepping down from mainline aspirations.

 

Or a stepping stone towards mainline operation at a later date.