Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

So, if the figures arent out yet, how did you expect anyone to publicise/congratulate the railway on them as you suggested in post 11568 on Thursday?

 

If you mean Chris Duffell left a meeting that was illegal under the Trust's own rules, @Small Prairie , then perhaps you'd like to rethink why he left? If anyone "spat his dummy out", it was Ian Cowling swearing at the Membership and storming out, with Tony Nicholson's intemperate outburst coming second.

I don't know why the M&A Review has been delayed. But as @21B notes, if it proposes a check/filter/endorsement by the incumbent Trustees over who gets onto the ballot, that's a straight power grab which I trust the Membership will reject. After all, when the Membership wre actually allowed to vote on the full slate of candidates, they - knowingly - elected someone Peter Miles and Mr Nicholson had illegally conspired to keep off the ballot.... seems like the current system works just fine, thanks.

 

So Chris spat his dummy out did he, to put things on a par then, Tony Nicholson spat his out and ripped up his teddy bear but Ian Cowling threw all of his toys out of his pram, smashed his pram up and stormed out of the nursery claiming he had ' better places to be'

 

Dave, all it would take is a little bit of planning and the Magazine, Raffle tickets return date and Newsletter could have been arranged to all be put in one mailshot but we all know that planning isn't a strong point with the Trust and neither is how much they spend on postal fee's, after all its not their money

 

As an otusider reading all of this it's pathetic and deeply saddening. The heritage railway world seems to be deeply toxic and is not a nice place to be, how can we facew the futire confidently with all of this gonig on?

 

I can think of at least one railway that 21B might be referring to which changed its M&As a couple of years ago to give existing Trustees complete control of the selection of new Trustees. One would assume that the justification for this would be to prevent a hostile takeover, which is fine if you've got a decent and competent Board. If you haven't, then a hostile takeover might be exactly what's needed. As a general point and without taking sides in the L&B debacle, any attempt to restrict the appointment of alternative candidates should be firmly thrown out by heritage railway members no matter what the HRA or CC guidelines might say.

 

With respect, as a generalised statement, the heritage railway world is NOT deeply toxic, in my humble perception. It's just that a percentage of the population is beyond civilised behaviour. As is proved by the blatant criminality that has been going on in the Post Office for years. And, in a personal case, a 250-page L & B book stolen and published in someone else's name. In the case of this railway it has led to a candidate legitimately nominated for election being intentionally excluded by one or more of the Trustees from a ballot to members, and (to take one more example) a statement by the majority Trustees (on page 19 of the missive sent to members roughly a month ago) that the financial exposure to the Trust in respect of a heavily indebted pub company - a subsidiary it owns - is only £300,000, when the Trust bought shares of £253,000 and made an unsecured 5% loan of £250,000 in respect of that company.

 

@Michael B explains the context well. I will just add that, where there are problems with incumbent leaders who are determined to cling on, the process of change is likely to be abrasive.

What matters is not that abrasiveness, grim though it is, but the focus on what a positive environment would be like.

Until a couple of years ago, there was a fairly toxic environment around Peak Rail and it's internal politics. That's vanished now, because (sadly due to death) one key individual is no longer able to enforce their particular vision*, and different attitudes are able to come in.

* - sadly, this is due to her death - this is not a resolution that I would ever recommend.

 

To be fair, they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. One of the big issues mentioned here and elsewhere is the lack of communications from the Trust. If they hadn't posted Newsletter 82, that would have been wrong too, in some eyes...

 

Of course, they could have e-mailed it to many members and/or put it on the (long-awaited) members-only section of the website for all to see. OK, so it may not have reached ALL the members, but at least it would have been a start.....

 

Like so many other charities, the newsletter is a perk/benefit/inticement of being a member. Post it online and it's no longer exclusive.

 

I am a member of the Branch Line Society, and receive my copy of Branch Line News in electronic format. To access it, I must log in to the BLS website. That maintains exclusivity, bearing in mind that it would take me moments to make a scanned copy of the Newsletter if I wanted to share it. As it is, protecting exclusivity for some means that others (e.g. foreign members) cannot have access in any kind of timely way.

 

And I belong to a number of other charities who don't and only have periodical mail dropped newsletters. Some do, some don't, there is no right or wrong way. Just because one does doesn't mean we have to.

 

I agree. But given the potential advantages in terms of cost and reach, it is surely worth serious examination? Especially when we know that mailing the entire membership is far from cheap.

 

The key should be to make the Trust activities as open and accessible to the Members as possible, including those abroad. This should include an option to email out the newsletter and magazines (which will presumably need to be in an electronic format for the printers anyway), and I'd be happy to opt for electronic only in the UK if it would save the Trust some money in printing and postage.

 

Not if it is put in a members-only section of the site available only to registered Trust members.

 

If you do that, you still have to decide whether to make it downloadable (by members, once logged in) or only readable on line. The former allows a member to pass it on if they choose, and the latter can sometimes be a pain, with limited scope for adjusting the size and a silly button to click to turn the virtual page.

Sometimes there is no right answer.

 

Pedant mode… there’s no such thing.

If you can see it online, you can share it. Screen grab, ‘Save as…’, ‘Print to PDF’, copy pasta, there’s no way of securing something that can be displayed on someone’s screen.

Only a small thing, but worth being clear why, if you don’t want people to read stuff, keeping it offline is more secure than putting it online, even with a barrage of logins and passwords.

Simon

 

I do wonder how many heritage railways actually have a genuinely secure, members’ only authenticated web portal?

It’s a non-trivial undertaking in technical, cost, admin and management terms and to my mind hardly seems worth it relative to the value of the information you might choose to distribute.

Sample question: I’m a member, register on the portal, then let my membership lapse. What process do you have in place to remove my access?

Another sample question: I’m a member of long standing and currently you have my home address for mailings. I then want to register for online access - what process do you have to ensure that the person giving you log in credentials for an online system is the same person as the one you currently hold a snail mail address for?

There are solutions to those, but they are non-trivial if you choose to roll your own; and costly (and still non-trivial) if you buy an off-the-shelf solution. At which point, I question the value.

Why not just make the newsletters public and get widespread visibility! There are other benefits that can be arranged for members, not least travel discounts and that intangible sense of feeling you are supporting a worthwhile cause.

Tom

 

We're talking here of a newsletter consisting of a single sheet of A4, presented as folded A5 so as 4 pages. I have Microsoft OneDrive on my phone; I could take pictures and have a clean copy of that as a document in moments. I'm sure Google, Dropbox, etc. all have similar options readily to hand. There are no secrets here.

I used the example of the BLS. Membership renewals are annual, and tied to website access so that the login dies with the membership (there is a grace period applied). It was built by a volunteer, but working in the industry.

@DaveE makes a good point about members getting first sight of the information; the point should be not that the information is kept secure but that the distribution is done in such a way that members have the first opportunity to find out the news. Just the same as my copy of Branch Line News (a PDF) can be downloaded and circulated if I then so choose. That deserves respect, even if I'd personally choose to have a more frequent email distribution and reserve mailings for the magazine.

The irony is that this information is the sort of stuff that trustees of an organisation like the L&B should be circulating to members, and that the attempt to maintain tight control of distribution is distracting from the timely distribution of news - for example the seasonal figures that @Small Prairie rightly wants us to note.