West Somerset Railway General Discussion

I did have full access to the Patients notes having completed a full internal audit on both the PLC’s & WSRA’s finances and working directly with both organisations Boards just prior to the current Chairman’s arrival. When HPC Awarded the WSRA the £96k HPC Community Engagement Project money their auditors as a part of their due diligence process went through the finances of both the PLC & WSRA closely going back three years and looking forward to ensure they didn’t just give money to a failing organisation (another can of worms I won’t open here) and I and others met them regarding this and some governance concerns they had a number of times before they confirmed the award. I, as somebody who knows his way around a set of accounts and more importantly they as outside investors were happy for them to invest knowing the PLC (& WSRA) were not on the verge of collapse as was claimed a month or so later..

Therefore I’m going to respectfully disagree with your comment: “The bottom line is that without this hard medicine the patient would have died” and say “Whilst the patient was poorly and needed some treatment to keep the illness in check its recovery was straight forward and just needed the continuing care it was receiving”.

Just because it was said “Either back me or the WSR folds” and “I’m the only one who can save the WSR” and “We are only a few days from insolvency” it doesn’t necessarily make it true and this comes back to “cuckoos in the nest” not being very accurate either.

Note: Happy to share with you the written hard evidence, credit rating information and borrowing abilities for the WSR and also how the 2019 recovery was in some parts ‘automatic’ due to some extraordinary one off costs in 2018, if that helps another person on here who may feel I’m “misleading” people again. Public Interest Disclosure Act applies to this post.

 

Huh???

I have worked with various grant givers over the years and can confirm that their due diligence processes are bloody painful and conservative to say the least. What the hell happened in the intervening period?

 

I think that's the point, and if I read @Andy Norman right, nothing substantive changed about the finances. How the condition of the railway was understood, and how the state of the railway was portrayed, on the other hand...

 

To quote Seymour Cray, "I think you've answered your own question."

Noel

 

And think about the extra leeway you have if you present the situation as an existential threat to the survival of the object. All those things you have to do in order to save the line because if you don't the line will die. Extra-ordinary times call for extra-ordinary measures, of course, assuming that there really is an existential threat.

 

What tangible benefit did the WSR get from the grant ? Cold hard cash?
I am curious.

 

I'm too lazy/busy to go back and look at how the current Chairman came to be associated with the WSR. Can someone who knows the details enlighten me? I am fairly sure that he didn't have a prior extensive association. As @Big Al said, the WSR is suffering from a lack of good top management - which seems to be a problem of long standing, given that the personnel of the freehold saga era seem to be all largely gone. One of the most key tasks for good top management is ensuring that they have good successors, but this seems to be an area where the WSR has had consistent issues. Hence my curiosity about how the current Chairman was selected.

Noel

 

One would assume they are going to get clobbered by claw back proviso's if they are not delivering what the bid and grant was based upon?

 

A little complicated to go into here. However I would comment that whilst I have not always been complementary about the WSRA fence sitting I would say they worked very hard in order to try and ensure the project continued, for which as the person who's baby this project was I will be eternally grateful (even thought I'm not there now).

As clearly you know about these things you will know a grant funder doesn't just give you money to use as you wish, there are a set of KPI's to perform against and review meetings. This is another rock which I won't lift here as its not fair but I think the HPC Contact (who I got to know well) is also a very professional and understanding person who would and could if the environment was right help the WSR more in the future. Sorry to be cryptic!

 

JJP has been a volunteer loco fireman for several years prior to his becoming chairman, and his loco Kinlet Hall was a regular on the WSR until it was withdrawn following the end of its 10 year ticket. His father, Chris Pratt, was signalling superintendent when I first joined as a volunteer, he subsequently resigned over safety concerns, but I believe he now holds that position again.
JJP was co-opted to the board in 2018, when board members were coming and going at frequent intervals, and after Ian Coleby ceased to be Chairman JJP took over, after only being a board member a short while.

Sent from my SM-T590 using Tapatalk

 

Just looked at the webcam again. I see that the spilled ballast is still lying across the main line rails a day afterwards, albeit cleared from the wagon. Someone still has to roll up their sleeves and grab the blister end of a shovel.
Pat

 

Perhaps they are still arguing whose fault it was, to decide who clears it up.

 

Give them time, there's no scheduled traffic and Minehead control will/should be aware.

 

No disrespect, 35B, but your second sentence - like so much on this site in the last few weeks - is just plain wrong. The HRA played a very important and supportive behind the scenes role during the transition to new trustees. I'm not going to go into detail but I was in the midst of that. The implication from other contributors on this forum that the present PLC Board are in any way comparable to the pre-transition WSRA trustees is, frankly, laughable. The Board's PR capability could probably do with some enhancement, but otherwise they have been doing the best one might reasonably expect of a small group of (experienced) volunteer individuals in extraordinarily challenging circumstances. The coming season, for all heritage railways, is - with the coronavirus crisis - going to be one of further unprecedented challenge, including in West Somerset.

It is interesting, though, that this forum has attracted various vociferous new members in the last few weeks. One can speculate (which I am not going to) on why these people find it interesting to spend their time here...

Frank

 

It is the West Somerset Railway. Many options will have to be considered.

 

Absolutely right!

 

There has been a lot of vitreol aimed at the plc chairman on here. However, the chairman is not the WSR nor is he the entire controlling element. According to Companies House, there are presently just four directors. Besides JJP, two of the others are some of the most respected people in the heritage railway movement, namely Bob Meanley & Mark Smith. I have no knowledge of the fourth person (Martin Hughes Brown) or his credentials but I would suggest that both Bob and Mark are not the sort of people to sit on the sidelines and let one person dictate events. This does lead me to wonder whether there is something far deeper behind what is happening. I don't know what, though, and I could be totally wrong.

 

That sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory. I thought the only people who did those were those critical of WSR senior management.

 

And how many ACTUALLY do that? - Galas aside.

My own observation from weekly volunteering visits when the service is running is that the numbers are vanishingly small.

 

It seems to me that a number of people posting on here are those who have never felt the urge to post re-matters West Somerset and rather hoped the railway would secure a better future both financially and without so much of the internal politics of recent years. No hidden agendas, no axes to grind.

Any organisation where reputation management is held to have any value will surely look at the last few weeks and recognise that it's got this one wrong.

Jon