S&D Railway Trust

That would be an honourable act and the first step would be to advise the S&D in writing that the contract will be fulfilled. It should take no more than a week to do this simple task.

 

A very odd press release. What point are they making - "we need money to survive" or "we have made a bumper profit"? Generally in a press release you aim to make one clear point, not two contradictory ones. The casual view would I suspect for many people be "So why are you running an appeal for the very survival of the railway?" My detailed view is "if you are having to appeal to repair the track and are making noises you can't afford to overhaul a locomotive you are contractually committed to, then you aren't making a profit".

Tom

 

I bet, that the money some how will not be forthcoming , se when you don't want to overhaul an engine , there are always ways round it, Given the light now being shone on past Plc. statements, and the inaccuracies found in them, and confirmed by others, Its very hard to believe anything the Plc. comes out with.

 

Indeed - exactly the sort of puzzlement that I felt as I started to read it.

 

I share the puzzlement over the purpose of this release, and also look forward to seeing the actual numbers once the acounts are submitted to Companies House. (Hopefully with commentary from someone like the much missed @beancounter to make proper sense of them)

I'm sure most realise that my comment earlier today was rather tongue in cheek, given what we have seen thus far.

And given the rather ambiguous (misleading?) statements issued over the past months, I'd love to know if similar liberties with reality might have been employed to make the 'then and now' numbers so starkly different.

Removing future contractual liabilities from the accounts are surely not the sort of thing a reputable business would do, but it's quite possible to restate things and many items such as valuations and future liabilities are, to a degree, matters of opinion rather than fact.

 

It does seem an odd thing to announce, proclaiming the amount of profit you've made by simply not actually spending money on anything you need to spend it on. If anyone has been keeping half an eye on things they wouldn't be inclined to donate. Likewise, if you're looking at it completely independently without knowing all the ins and outs, why would you want to donate to a company that's making a stonking great profit?

 

Don't forget, the statement mentions a new accounting system. That might explain a few things.

 

Creative accounting?

 

Now using an Abacus perhaps.

 

Humm.... £800,000 loss to £311,000 profit in one year? Really??

Especially when income for the year was restricted, in their own words "The 2019/20 year started slowly, but not according to plan as trains were unable to operate fully over the whole line until May due to vital infrastructure works. This delay to full line trains also had a knock-on effect to both retail and catering activities as well..."

So, all other things being equal, are we to believe that the changes brought in by the 'new' Board have resulted either in savings or in an increase in revenue or a combination of both of over £1.1 million per anum? Are they suggesting that the changes made will continue to show at least this benefit in future years?

The full accounts will be an interesting read and we shall see.

Personally, I have serious doubts.

 

Wasn't the delay to starting mainly due to something about satisfying the ORR that certain matters, that had been found to be lacking, had been properly addressed?

 

One of the main items is that last year wasn’t a year but 15 months to 31/3/19 so including 6 winter months of costs and no income ,31/3/20 only has three such months .Let’s say the winter closedown costs are £400k a year ,that’s £800k cost last not year v £400k cost this year ,a £400k reduction ,haven’t we done well at reducing costs .

 

Indeed.
A very simple re-stating of the accounts could be that they've gone from a £400k loss to £311k profit.

There is also that later operating date; possibly a months saving of running costs (?) & a move of some revenue to a later month where it would be more profitable.

 

for an company to turn around a £400k loss in such a short time span, does indicate that something clearly is wrong with the accounts, and it might only be a paper exercise, off setting future expenditure etc, and massaging things to give a false outlook that looks good to the un informed reader, but when forensically examined, the long term outlook is anything but rosy, Basically its to shut out concerned voices and to try to make the membership think all's well, that those voices of concern are over reacting,

 

Nobody in business knows what will happen in the years to come so cannot commit to this.

 

They could however withdraw, in public, their declaration of intent to breach the locomotive operating agreement (as the Trust put it) or they can’t [in the future] fund the locomotive’s [future] overhaul (as the PLC has said).

Patrick

 

That is unduly harsh - we just don't have the details to understand what this dramatic turnaround is based on. I'm quite prepared to believe that the previous accounts took a big hit as previously unrecognised liabilities were recognised, the improvement was enhanced by not having to carry them forward, and that the WSR has come out in better state. But, and coming back to what this thread is about, the behaviours of the plc undermines my ability to believe that; the emphasis on ways to make cash suggests things are much tighter than the headline numbers would suggest.

 

One might say that this is always the case, however the plc committed to the overhaul as part of the contract they signed for the use of the loco. If they couldn't know what would happen in the future they shouldn't have made the commitment then. It rather suggests that if the future is so opaque, all loco hire agreements should be for steaming fees only.

 

This agreement was financially back loaded to suit WSR.