West Somerset Railway General Discussion

As has become obvious, it's all about quantity and not quality

 

Mel,
There is absolutely no reason for you to leave us. The Railway may have declined your offer of assistance but you can still make valuable contributions to this forum.

 

Mel, I’m sorry to hear about the reply you received. I have had much the same response, one of the ‘holier than thou’ posters on here has told me not that long ago to “take a year or two off and perhaps you can come back in the future”. And of course my suspension from footplate work for raising concerns about some (not all) of the current managements ethical actions remains firmly in place and with my bullying compliant which was allocated to the PLC Vice-Chairman in January still not dealt with or even started. So like you clearly I’m also not needed in what is now an ‘invitation only’ WSR.

So between your previous efforts and input over the last 10 years and my 100% success rate and £185k of grant funding and project outcomes raised in 2018 alone not being enough to remain in the hobby it seems the bar to entry is now very high.

My efforts included the £97k HPC Community Engagement Project which I developed and secured and is now being touted by others as their good work and a part of the WSR moving forward. I find this an irony given that the Community are not welcome to volunteer now unless the elite pick them whereas a major cornerstone of the project for which the WSR took the money for was inclusion of all elements of the Community to come and be welcomed on the WSR, perhaps they should consider a refund to HPC !!!!.

It is good to hear that the ranks of Volunteers are full and nobody else need apply (unless of course you sign the total loyalty agreement), however that does seem to fly in the face of two WSRA Trustees recent posts on here and much of what I’m hearing from the coal face, but hay-ho they must be mistaken in their views.

Like you, time for me to move on and find another hobby which will welcome my 2 days a week free labour and financial contributions. Over and out.

 

Other railways are available!

 

Not at all. All I was saying was that everyone has a right to follow their own interest, and it is a fascist mentality that scorns people with interests that are other than mainstream. I sincerely hope that that is seen as an attitude of tolerance.

I do apologise to any of our Polish friends, if offended by my post. It certainly wasn't intended, and indeed the lesson of history is that we should not mock people who are different in any way from ourselves.

 

That is very sad. The WSR can't afford to lose people.

 

Sorry to see you go - you obviously did a lot for the WSR.

 

Every passenger gets a ticket not a receipt - the ticket shows the journey, whether single/return/adult/senior etc - no problem if they split up other than a Family (cheap ticket) when they get 1 ticket for 4 people - but no different at all from the Edmundson family ticket.

The new machines have solved a problem for those booking on-line and receiving an e-ticket - they did have problems if they wanted to split up - the new system allows us to scan the e-ticket and issue an individual ticket for everyone on the e-ticket (including the dogs). I can confirm that that the accuracy of the accounting has improved since the introduction of the new system - now a discrepancy is a rarity rather than an everyday occurrence.

One of the major considerations for the introduction is that supplies of the card for Edmundson tickets is under threat - the WSR supplies have been coming from Holland ever since the last UK manufacturer pulled out of the market - the Dutch company have also now ceased (their final major customer, Sri Lankan railways ceased to use the card) as they consider the relatively low demand to be uneconomic. The WSR policy to all Booking Offices is that the card tickets will be offered as a souvenir for so long as the card can be obtained (some of the Dutch companies residual stock was purchased to keep the heritage aspect of these tickets alive for as long as possible)

 

Nice surprise to see a steam hauled freight train at Blue Anchor this morning on a driver experience day.

Cheers

Ben

 

A perfect use for a freight train, well done!
From another freight enthusiast.

 

Middle son & I visited yesterday - Sunday 1st.

We were welcomed aboard the DMU & had a chance to visit the cab before departure.

It is good to hear that the DMU is now in excellent mechanical condition, it can only be hoped that the time & money can be found to do the same to the interior.

Its been a while since I travelled the line in the DMU & on a sunny day, the view was excellent.

Took me back to my mis-spent youth, the one thing I forgot to do though was hide behind the seat to avoid the TTI!!

It was interesting to see how much of the line is laid with concrete sleepers & that there are some steel sleepers between Dunster & Minehead.

Unlike the hauled stock the 'clickety clack' over the jointed track is quite noticeable.

We went straight back behind the 7F from Minehead, it was good to see that all the planters are now filled .

The interior of the leading TSO was in good condition and it was a great shame that the exterior wasnt clean, and didnt look as if it had been cleaned for a while.

As always the staff made us very welcome. Middle Son (10) was amused that the TTI coming back from Minehead wasnt flummoxed by the fact that I was in the buffet car when he came to check tickets.

One thing that does stand out from the trip though is that the DMU is an underutilized asset, when first introduced BR advertised 'Scenic Land Cruises' perhaps if the interior can be updated an idea to be revived?

Oh, & please please clean the exterior of the trains!!

 

Like fast food offers like bus tickets

 

I spent part of the day yesterday at Crowcombe station. Such a wonderful little station located in beautiful surroundings.

The station staff were all very welcoming, polite and the tea and cakes were excellent.

While relaxing at the station it appeared that all the problems of the railway had bypassed Crowcombe.

If in the future and in the worst possible scenario the railway did cease to exist we would all be the poorer for it.

Now is the time to dig deep into our pockets and help the WSR. The railway deserves our help. <BJ>

 

When I used to commute, it irritated the hell out of me to hear "We are now making our final approach to Liverpool Street...." How many approaches do they need?!!
Robin L.

 

Bought or leased, it still represents expenditure.
Robin L.

 

Regarding Tickets...

I am a volunteer (MHR), and will say now that I haven't visited the WSR in at least 10 years and have limited memories of it!

My personal experience of booking office work consists of traditional Edmondson tickets, an LSWR Date-Stamp, a Card Machine and a nice (relatively) easy to follow sheet to fill out at the end of the day. I remember, before Alton was closed in January, that more often than not we at Medstead wouldn't sell any tickets but there's a curious pleasure associated, for me, with setting up the booking office.

I have made a few mistakes when handling sales, admittedly, but I am learning and it has been beneficial, I think, for me to learn basic accounting in this way. I'm young and as such fairly inexperienced in this regard. But it is one of the multiple useful skills I have learned through my volunteering, one which should help me later on. Surely there must be some value in that, however limited?

As for authenticity against a 'Heritage Veneer', I prefer to try and remain authentic. I aim to some day be able to possess a more authentic uniform (and a neater one at that), and when on night work I now try and make use of a paraffin lamp over my BARDIC, hoping to acquire my own LSWR, SR or WD handlamp at some stage. When checking time for departure I prefer to make use of my pocketwatch (regrettably electric and modern. A clockwork, appropriate, replacement is on the wish-list) rather than my phone (though I need to try and not have that on display so often). Even small things like changing the date in the date-stamp bring me a bit of pleasure, a little taste of the past we're trying to represent.

But then sometimes authenticity has to give way to practicality. For me, an example of this are the signal lamps at Medstead which were turned over to Electric in November and December. I personally enjoyed assisting with the lamp duty, servicing them and then walking them out to the signals - It felt like proper 'railway work' and was my only real opportunity to learn safe practice on or about the line. But I only joined last August, and am currently too young to have a PTS qualification (Soon...), so was merely assisting the person who it would seem was almost alone in carrying out this task. One volunteer carrying out such an important, safety-critical task for the majority of the time surely isn't sustainable? Electric lamps have also brought the advantage of better sighting for drivers, and I highly doubt that the general public ever notice.

Anyway, I've gone off on a tangent - With tickets I feel some value in the retention of the Edmondson type, and some members of the public seem to see something in them too (even if it's merely nostalgia from grandparents - they are, after all, so different from modern rail tickets) but ultimately if a railway can no longer justify the cost, or can no longer find a means of supplying the tickets then there will have to be a change. But for me it wouldn't be quite the same.

Apologies if this is irrelevant. (It's not irrelevant, it's a Hippopotamus!)

 

Ah a kindred spirit! I wonder if it is perhaps more common in the younger generation to take more pleasure in arcane processes as a novelty, those older who remember why they got phased out the first time don't really see things in the same way perhaps? Just a theory based on observation, don't jump down my throat! I completely agree with you about using paraffin over electric, it's just more satisfying somehow. As for uniform though, my initial enthusiasm in acquiring a proper GWR hat was somewhat dimmed when I realised it would be of the pillbox design, I don't really like that style!

 

Edmondson card tickets, jointed track, pole routes, oil lamps, uniforms, wheel tappers (does anyone do that?) are, like steam locos, all things of the past. Re-creating that past is necessarily going to be a compromise and I can easily understand why jointed track is not liked by the civil engineer and pole routes by the telecoms engineer. However, Edmondson tickets, uniforms and oil lamps aren't in the same league when it comes to compromising. and, for those railways that are trying to give an air of a past way of life, they ought to be high on the 'should do' list.

 

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