West Somerset Railway General Discussion

Nick

I have sent you a private message.

Regards, Frank

 

I see the relevant statement is now on the relevant websites.

Robin

 

Looking forward to another home fleet loco onboard in May.

Is 9351 the former tank now tender loco?

 

Robin, out of curiosity is there enough full time staff and volunteers at Williton to get 9351 back together in time for the main 2019 season? If I have got this right (from looking on this forum, other forms of social media and the webcam) there is also a rake of coaches at williton for repaint and the QB set for servicing/maintenance which will need to be done by the beginning of the season. That's without looking at the outside work such as the Westonzoyland stationary engine. It seems like a lot of work to get done in a very short space of time. Have the WSRA Trustees agreed to all this work for the purpose of 'one railway' but inadvertently overloaded the capacity of Williton?

I note the WSR PLC chairman has put on facebook one of the reasons to send 9351 to Williton was due to the space and staff availability at Williton, It appears there is very little space left there and I don't believe there is that many full time staff there either.

Sometimes it is best to say No to offering help than to promise the world and failing to deliver. It can cause more damage than its worth. It concerns me this may have just happened.

 

Read this link.

http://www.wsr.org.uk/9351-jan-2019.pdf

 

Sensible questions.

We would not have taken on the work if we did not think we had the capacity. The QB coaches have to be back in service when the Railway reopens in late March.

That being said, volunteers at all levels of skills would be welcome to work with the staff at Williton on 9351.

Robin

 

Serious question here. you seem to have plenty of ideas as to where comms are falling down at the WSR / WSRA, why not contact them directly and offer your services as a volunteer Comms / PR rep?

I'm sure that both areas would be grateful for additional volunteer assistance.

 

Would love to but like Steve Edge I am too far from the railway not to have to rely on the supply of information from others. Steve's brilliant forum is only as effective as the flow of information allows it to be. An effective PR officer must be in the thick of it and whilst I get to hear a lot here in Swindon it is always out of date information.

 

The press release states that the work on 9351 will be done at WSRA’s expense. Will this impact the funding available for them to buy 4110? Any updates on their fund raising progress for 4110?

 

Reading between the lines here and there they will be doing a fair bit of spending shortly. Repay their loan to the company before they can sell their trading arm, fund the mogul, buy 4110 plus whatever else on top of the grant for the loading area at BL. It seems to me as if they took it for granted that the pledges for 4110 ltd, that had exceeded the 120k apparently, would be taken over by them so there was no cost involved in obtaining possession of the loco.

 

Finishing 9351 at Williton makes sense. It will give the folks hands on experience that can be carried into 4110 when it starts.

Perhaps we are seeing a new dawn on the WSR with the association working as it should.

 

Let’s hope so. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though. It’s not yet been confirmed if WSRA has raised enough money to buy 4110.

 

Not everyone is obsessed with social media, if it goes to far it puts people off, I have seen people walk because of this obsession with it, having a camera shoved in your face every five minutes just to have something to put on a blog winds me and others up after all we come to get away from this sort of thing.

I hope WSRA will turn the engine back into a tank engine rather than the Frankenstein it currently is.

 

Is 31st January still the target date? If so, we are half way through from the point at which the PLC/WSRA press release went out, and there are only ten days to go. I would have thought that a progress announcement should have been made by now, even if only to keep the appeal current.

 

I don't think anyone was suggesting an 'obsession' with social media. The GWSR does an excellent job of communicating to its supporters about the work of the various departments through its blogs. These are interspersed with a few photos to show what is being described. I don't believe anyone has walked from the GWSR as a result of the blogs or having their photo taken. In fact in most photos it would be hard to identify the individuals doing the work as it usually just shows a pair of hands or a distant figure.
The point being, that even those people who have never visited the GWSR or who now live far away, still feel a connection to what is happening on the railway and this support can therefore be tapped when it comes to financial help.


Keith

 

[QUOTE="Chuffington, post: 2356180, member: 28183"

I hope WSRA will turn the engine back into a tank engine rather than the Frankenstein it currently is.[/QUOTE]

Why do that? - unless of course you are offering the necessary 6 figure sum to cover the cost?

9351 is actually to a Swindon design - but one which until recent years got no further than the drawing board. In its present form it is a useful loco as will be 4110 unmodified.

 

You're right that not everyone is obsessed with social media, I have several friends who want nothing whatever to do with Facebook or Twitter etc, some neither own nor want a computer. But social media is now a fact of life and the fact is that for a large percentage of people today social media is the way they get their news and keep in touch with their friends and organisations can't really afford to ignore it, it is after all free publicity.
If you don't like having a camera shoved in your face every five minutes have a quiet word with the photographer and you'll usually find they're happy to respect your wishes and leave you alone.

Why would they do that? Apart from the effort and cost of turning it back into a tank engine. I always believed that 9351 was a more useful loco than it would be as 5193, besides which, I rather like 9351 and look forward to seeing her in action again.

 

Let’s remember that NatPres is social media


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Or, on occasion, anti-social media.

Robin

 

You should try the BTL comments on YouTube ...

With regard communications, particularly with stakeholders and external. Some railways do it well, some less so, but what is underestimated is the effort required from many people to do it well. No-one can know everything that happens on a railway, so if you are the co-ordinator/editor of such comms, you are reliant on others to send you news, and ultimately what you produce is only as good as what you get. Whereas for those providing updates, if you’ve just spent ten hours in the cold and wet rebuilding a drainage culvert, or have got in at 11pm after a committee meeting, maybe writing a blow-by-blow account for public consumption isn’t uppermost on your mind at that point.

As such, I think the recent criticism of the WSRA for not publicising a new Director on one particular news website within about two days of it actually happening was decidedly harsh. In board minutes, the combination of a public synopsis within a day or two followed by full minutes is decidedly more open and prompt than many railways would be with such papers. The board deserve to be cut a bit of slack.

(I speak incidentally from a viewpoint of producing an internal volunteer newsletter elsewhere; having a clear idea of what I think is important, but ultimately being reliant on others, also hard working volunteers, to provide).

Tom