Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

The last sentence I absolutely concur with: as with the lapsed planning consents & the absence of the TWAO needed to explore one of said consents. Responsibility means accountability, admitting mistakes instead of trying to blame others (ENPA, keyboard warriors...), welcoming challenge (ie not storming out of AGMs). There was a very good letter from a KC in the Times yesterday, in relation to the dreadful Letby case. It emphasises the need for management to be "Open, trusted, self critical....". That could equally apply here. Whistleblowing & leaks suggest excessive centralised control & unnecessary secrecy. A guy with whom I was in business said that there were 2 reasons why people were secretive. Either they had something very clever or valuable or they were trying to cover their incompetence. The latter being far more common...

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It was once suggested that the definition of a good manager is someone who's right more often than they're wrong. Mistakes will be made. That's the price paid for giving directors/trustees (as Company Articles invariably do) the discretion to exercise their skill and judgement in the organisation's best interests. They have to be accountable for their judgement but it also needs a degree of tolerance on the part of members/shareholders accepting that, as often as not in the heritage railway world, directors and trustees are "working volunteers" just as much as those that get their hands dirty ( and sometimes both). Expectations of perfection are unrealistic and would deter volunteers from taking on the responsibilities.

 

@Isambard! - when did you offer to fund a shelter for the carriages and what sort of structure did you have in mind?

 

From a position in a different, also volunteer based, governance structure, I completely agree. But there's an important aspect to this - which is that there's a clear line of sight between membership, volunteering, and governance, where the boundaries are highly permeable. That permeability won't be total, but the limits need to be the barest minimum. Otherwise, the effects will be that the flow of new volunteers will stall as qualifications are required, while closed governance bodies will tend to embed groupthink - especially in response to setbacks to major projects that have been pursued over many years. And, IMHO, much of what we're debating at the L&B results from what has been relatively closed governance structure, where external challenge has been actively discouraged (see trustee elections 2021, 2023).

 

2014 ish.
Open minded, but a polytunnel or similar would bear investigation. The key is to keep the rain off, farmers on Exmoor & elsewhere try to protect hay & straw similarly.

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Can you point out where perfection has been demanded? We all make mistakes, however acknowledging them is the first step to learning. I tried to foster a very open culture where anyone could put their hand up & ask for help, and it would be forthcoming without judgement. People working as a team can punch well above their weight.

As to tolerance, I would submit that a great deal has been offered in this case. The pot is not bottomless however, and when behaviours start to grate it is in danger of becoming exhausted.

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No excuse for lack of response obviously, but AIUI (largely from the point being repeatedly made in this thread by the builder of the carriages, tbh) it has been investigated and the best option short of building a proper carriage shed remains for them to be outside in the elements.

The key is to keep the rain off yes, but not at the expense of poaching them. The problem at Woody Bay is humidity and damp as much as what is actually falling from the sky.

Polytunnels in particular (and this I do know from personal agricultural experience) will cause the external surfaces to sweat. Which is fine if we're talking hay, less good if we're talking carriages.

Regardless of the failings or otherwise of the trust, and however much the solution appears obvious on the face of it, in this one area I really am persuaded that no one is leaving the carriages outside in all weathers negligently. I'm less persuaded that it's a complete 'no' to look at transporting them off the Rowley Moor every winter (although it would be at least two trips each way because of Christmas services) but the people that actually know about this stuff reckon it is, and I'm content to let them get on with it on that basis!

 

I agree that polytunnels as such are not ideal buildings for carriage storage (despite knowing someone who nevertheless restored a Gresley teak coach in one!) but there are other temporary structures available that would do a perfectly good job. Anyone familiar with the Romney shed that was at Carnforth for many years, for example, would know that, and such buildings are not necessarily expensive.

 

Agree, but the building is only half the story isn't it? The other half of the story is location. And the location for any temporary building would have to be the bottom of a spectacularly damp cutting which is simultaneously at high altitude - where mitigation might be possible through an appalling electricity bill for multiple dehumidifiers running permanently.

Again, there's a lot wrong on the governance side of the railway, and it's not a happy ship, but this stuff on the carriages really has been looked into by people that know what they're doing. That's not to say that someone won't come up with something that no one else has, and you can't close your mind to suggestions, but...

 

I will say thank you personally here and now for thinking of the care of what we build. It has been something many of us have thought and discussed over and over for many years now.

I will just say this, we are always looking for solutions and have been for a long time ever since No 7 and No 17 were delivered to Woody Bay.

If your very kind offer is still on the table, please do let the Trust know. We never know when a viable solution may come along and as I understand it from the website report on the Carriage 7 overhaul recently completed that the viability is being looked into once again.

"......... the L&BR planning team is investigating the feasibility of a temporary carriage shed at Woody Bay to serve until Blackmoor depot is constructed. We look forward to the results of this in due course."

https://www.lynton-rail.co.uk/news/view/coach-7

 

Whether this offers a solution in the L & BRs case I don't know, but here goes. I have a steel 20 foot shipping container for vehicle parts storage. The contents suffered from condensation in the winter months so I installed a de-humidifier that was in operation all the time during that period of the year. After some years the roof suffered from corrosion, holes appeared and it started leaking so these areas were attended to by cleaning, priming and covering the holes with fibreglass patches to make it water-tight. To protect the roof in the future I decided to add a false roof by way of a light framework of 50 x 50 mm steel angle to which were fastened curved corrugated iron sheet overhanging the sides of the container by 6", and the ends by 18" or so. There was an unexpected bonus and side-effect though, in that the gap between the curved corrugated iron and the flat roof acted as a barrier and prevented the formation of condensation inside, so much so that I was able to completely dispense with the dehumidifier.

 

Dave - I have huge respect for what you have achieved with the carriages (we met once at Alexandra Palace). They are a delight. My wife was very smitten with the first class. You should be very proud.

Having grown up working on farms before entering engineering & business, I know the effect of the weather on perishable things. Take for example my firewood. Were I to leave seasoned stock uncovered over winter it would become unusable that season. Simply by keeping the rain off it remains dry. Roof plus ventilation. I can do the sums on humidity & wood moisture content if anyone wants...

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It seems that other heritage railways have used an insulated roof with three-quarter covered sides leaving a gap for ventilation at the bottom. Apart from actual location on site though, I assume there may be a problem that is all too familar - planning permission.

 

My experience with firewood is much the same. If stocked under a roof but with partially open sides for ventilation the bulk of the stock remains dry. Extending that principle to carriages surely the cheapest but effective answer is the standard farm open sided barn with screening or walls down to the halfway-mark. This would keep the bulk of rain off whilst allowing a through draught to reduce hmidity and prevent mould.

Edit : Talyllyn just beat me to it !

 

The NYMR has just built a huge carriage shed on more or less those principles. I'm not a huge fan of it because of the lack of security, but weldmesh walls would deal with that issue. As long as there is a good level of airflow through the building it should be fine.

 

I once worked out how much a carriage can expand in moving it from Essex (dry almost semi desert at times) to North Devon (often wet and very damp in winter), the calculations meant that a carriage could expand in length by up to 25mm with the differences in humidity.

The body of the carriages are in many ways a living thing, they are continuously changing shape. There is no glue in any joint, if it was it would break.

If you watch the carriages going over the points and down out of Woody Bay the carriages almost seem to "flow" over the hump as the underframe twists and follows the line.

The best shed doesn't have heat, which can cause other problems especially if you dry them out too much. The timber needs to be at ambient moisture but obviously not drenched.

As such usually you have sheds with gaps at the bottom of a foot or so to allow air flow, or maybe hit and miss boarding similar to a cattle shed which allows maximum air flow but shelter from direct rainfall.

 

That sounds rather similar to what I remember of a WSR proposal some years ago for carriage sheds at Bishops Lydeard to store the 'heritage carriages' (once restored) - still waiting for it/them AFAIK :-(

 

I think that's a rather limiting view of what good management involves, since apart from anything else, it removes context both of how difficult the situation is that they find themself in, and how they arrive at their decisions. Not to mention who is the arbiter of whether those decisions were "right"!

My own view is that the role of directors on a heritage railway (and I'd see the Trustees as functionally directors, not managers) should be much more about acting as enablers of work, within a framework of ensuring that the right work is done according to an overall vision.

So let's take the recent discussion about a carriage shed. The 20 thousand foot view is:

1. The railway has a problem (expensive assets are left outside in all weathers)
2. The solution to that problem is non-obvious. (The discussion so far has thrown up steel sheds, shipping containers, tarpaulins, poly tunnels, slatted sheds, and carting the carriages away to secure off-site storage each winter; and that's before you get into locations for any of those facilities. None of those solutions is ideal).

So what do you do from there?

One option is you try to internalise it within the board. But very rapidly you run up against two problems: firstly a lack of bandwidth, and secondly it is unreasonable to expect that within a group of a handful of people, they will have experience on all the issues in play. (Even the discussion above has got into such arcana as prevailing weather, moisture absorption, humidity control and its relation to building design etc. - enough to realise that this is a complex problem in design, long before you ever stick a spade in the ground or write a fundraising proposal, which are themselves specific skills). But if you have internalised it to the board, the likelihood is the complexity and lack of bandwidth will just result on the solution to the problem going on the "too hard" pile. That's not because the board members are evil; it's not because they don't care, it's just that no-one can be fully across every conceivable problem in running a heritage railway.

So the other option is you externalise the requirement. It's highly unlikely that the board have the necessary arcane knowledge to design a suitable building - but is reasonably likely that someone within the membership does. So you go external for help, but within a framework of control from the board. Essentially, you change the outlook from "we have a problem but don't have the capacity or knowledge to solve it" to "we have a problem and will empower a dedicated team to propose a solution". That team may morph over time; it's likely that at various points you'll need skills as diverse as building design, planning, fundraising and construction. The board role is then the points that are absolutely germane for management: firstly ensuring that that group remains focused on the problem and doesn't drift off or allow scope to creep; and monitoring spend (when it occurs) within budget.

All of which is a waffly way of saying that good management isn't about doing things; it is about enabling the right things to happen. In a membership organisation, it is always good to remember that you potentially have hundreds or thousands of people who have led diverse lives and can potentially add value and be knowledgeable about all sorts of niche problems; the skill is therefore enabling those talents to work in a way that supports the wider railway.

Tom

 

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An excellent post, @Jamessquared - and the other germane point is that volunteers are prepared to provide this expertise for nothing, if only you ask.

And this highlights another major issue with the current L&BRT set-up: the overlap in personnel at the leadership level between the different elements of L&B family:


At best this leads to confusion, but in practice it immediately blurs the lines of accountability.