Come on - cough up you lot!

I think Mr Reeder should just be honest and say :- Look I need £1338 for a lads trip to Ibiza, Should be enough to pay for flights, beer, hotel etc !
Money well spent !

 

I was going to say something nice about how he'd picked a smaller and more manageable project ... and then I looked closer at the photo. The list of what is there is probably a lot shorter than the list of what's needed. Oh well, at least he's starting small. (Or is the boiler stored away somewhere?) Oh well, maybe he'll get a step completed; if so, I'll be happy to congratulate him.

Noel

 

The problem with Stuart is that he doesn't have a clue what he is doing. He sees things as "bargains" as other locations are getting fed up of projects that have good intentions but no finance to actually do them. So they come up for sale at £1 and in comes Stuart who thinks great I'll have that. He then also thinks that all you have to do in the preservation world is ask for money and people give, because that's how the P2 do it. He doesn't realise that the project has to be wanted to raise money, and that privately owned projects are often expected to be privately funded. He also lacks any skills to do the work himself to save money. And he lacks the knowledge of what is required to do the job so often buys a £1 project on the hope others will give him money and time and work on the project. The messages you get from him are rediculous. He messaged the LMS Patriot project asking for them to pay for the complete restoration of his sleeping coach to mainline standards for 5 years free use of it (wouldn't you just buy your own coach if you were going to do that .....) And I know he has messaged people at the Churnet valley asking for similar agreements. But unfortunately he won't learn, or get involved in any existing projects as he is another one of these people who always wants to have a title of chairman of the project, or I own this etc etc etc. It's a shame as if he got involved in something and just did the social media help then maybe he could do something useful in preservation. The B17 spirit of Sandringham, LNWR George the fifth etc all have very poor social media and online presence that could do with help.

 

the last time a women wearing stockings stood at the bottom of my bed and woke me up, she wanted to stick a bloody sharp needle in me,

 

deleted

 

All this talk and pictures of Jennifer Lawrence and stockings is most distracting (although I think I would prefer Susannah Reid in a Crystal Palace basque and high heels). I don't think Stuart wants to post here and defend his scheme?

On the faceachebook page he created an event as he wanted people to 'go up and clear the floors and paint up the under-frame' of the sleeper ready for restoration. One person this week put down they were going - Stuart Reeder!!

The event has now, with regret been deleted! Restoration has to wait another day

 

I'm in two minds here.

Stuart quite clearly jumps in at the deep end, with no long term plan, minimal finances, no real support. Not exactly a plan for success. He has been subject to ridicule, sometimes rightly, for comments he has made previously...and yet - he jumps in and tries. He has purchased a coach and a locomotive and is doing something. Will it be successful? No, not as it stands, but one wonders of the good he could do were he to be given the direction he so clearly needs.

I've seen variously that people have offered advice/time/etc but it is of course up to the individual to listen.

It is also up to us all to uphold the best behaviour we can in selling our industry and our mission statement. Are we doing that here, by having a thread discussing what he is doing, I wonder?

We have all been guilty as individuals of saying and doing things we regret. Over promising and under delivering. That is life. Railway preservation is littered with similar examples. Should we be so quick to criticise someone who is at least doing something or trying to do something as opposed sitting back and criticising from the comfort of our armchairs?

I have said this before - I will say it again - as an industry, we compete within it. But without cooperation across it, we may lose it all.

Sometimes all it needs is someone to take another under their wing and educate them. I have been lucky in my life most recently to have people across railways helping me. At the Bluebell, Megan, Terry, Sarah and Izzy in catering. In Network Rail, Bob, Gareth, Jev and Chris. I have friends in various locomotive and preservation groups who have given me encouragement to aim high and join other groups to improve myself and to add value to them. I could have been dismissed as a cocky, arrogant, son of a...! and written off. But they saw potential - something I cannot see in myself - and gave me the support I needed.

I see potential here. Such passion must be channelled in the right way. Stuart isn't channelling it in the right way currently. But he could - in time - with help. It goes both ways of course.

Apologies for the essay. But I have been observing this thread for a couple of days and my thoughts on it all were strong enough to want to write them down.

 

Completely agree. Stuart is not a bad person at all. He clearly wants to do something in preservation, and his variety of projects he gets involved in shows he has no particular obsession with just one section in preservation. He has shown that he knows and is capable of setting up social media sites and just giving etc etc which is more than a lot of loco groups are capable of doing. That in itself shows that Stuart has a place in preservation and to be fair he could do wonders for some of these established groups. He just needs to get involved, and not only that the group's need to be receptive to moving into the 21st century. Maybe he has tried and groups have rejected him as they don't like social media, forums etc etc.

 

The locomotive like the coach was previously at the Swindon and Cricklade. The previous owner has another complete but identical locomotive which is still at the railway and the one which Mr Reeder now has was acquired only to provide donor parts for the other one. I am not aware that any work was done to this one but the wheel sets were swapped between the two, so this is why it has blue wheels as they are originally from the other loco which is painted blue. I don't think there was ever a boiler only some parts such as a newly rolled but rusty piece of steel tube to presumably form a new boiler barrel and a u shaped piece that was probably intended to become a firebox but totally unfinished of course. Where these were made and who made them I have no idea.

I think Stuart would be best advised to concentrate on either progressing the loco or the coach not try and do both. I also acquired a similar derelict coach when I was in my 20s and I did also get a certain amount of stick and snide comments like, Do you want a box of matches etc ?, and sometime even myself I had doubts about ,could I do it ? so he needs to stick at it try and get some visible progress and see if he can get others interested in getting involved, but as a private owner he will have to be prepared to spend his own money not assume that others will pay for everything. If you want that you have to join an existing group.

 

I can think of various loco owning groups, the members of which are mainly over 65 & physically unable to maintain their loco. Perhaps Stuart should join one of these & hopefully aspire to a leading role instead of pursuing lost causes & basket cases.

Bob.

 

Indeed, its all getting beyond a joke now, however....

It is possible that the posters constant requests are schemes have two origins, either he is a simple troll (and thus by people constantly starting threads slating him are just feeding his aspirations) or alternatively there may be personal issues/vulnerabilities behind this (which if this is the case some of the repeated posts and threads on here are borderline bullying).

I know an excuse is oft made that such appeals and 'projects' damage the movement to outsiders who are not aware of the history, the fact is that despite these repeated projects being promoted via various channels (including people starting threads on here to specifically mock them, which in turn brings them to a wider audience) no one is putting any money to them rather suggests that it is doing no damage and possibly we should all just move on and leave the chap to himself and/or stop fueling the fire.

 

What chaos? It would not be anywhere near 'here' is people stopped trawling the net for the latest scheme and then publicised it on here for their own gratification, I bet the vast majority of us would have no idea who he even was if the schemes were not so heavily publicised on here.

 

Doesn't the web page address 'justfunding.com/crowdfunding/eccentrics' just about sum things up?

 

Thanks a lot Big Al! I really appreciate that!

Knut

 

+1

 

I am hence that im after 1,000 and not the full 1338