Llangollen Railway

Llangollen Railway closed again after tomorrow until at least 14th October. New lockdown rules in Denbighshire are the reason.

 

Sorry but you are factually wrong. Directors are permitted to resign if it leaves a company with less than the minimum stated in the Articles or even with no directors.- no matter what you say

A director may resign from office even if their action will leave a company with less than the minimum number stated in the Articles. The director will not be in breach of his fiduciary duties to the company by resigning and only has a couple of ongoing responsibilities to the company. Essentially these are to avoid a conflict of interest by say using any information gained whilst a director to get a benefit from elsewhere. The above assumes there is no other separate legal contract that the director may have entered into which prohibits resignation in such circumstances. Responsibilities stop on the resignation even if that leaves the company inquorate and they would only have a potential liability if the company was liquidated and matters came to light from prior to the resignation

Depending on the Articles then the remaining directors may be able to appoint a replacement or the members could. As an alternative the members could amend the Articles and reduce the quorum etc. Even if it the resignations leave the company with no directors causing the company to be in breach of the Companies Act rather than just the Articles it is the company that is in breach not the resigning director. In such cases Companies House would notify the company of the breach and what it must do to remedy and the consequences if it does not. Generally it would be a requirement that the members appoint a director and that the company was at risk of being struck off if it did not.

There is plenty of legal commentary on this and there is a certain amount of logic about this. If it was not the case a director could in effect be forced to remain as a director by the shareholders and to carry out their responsibilities to
the company and shareholders. All it would take is the shareholders to refuse to appoint another and ensure that the director has no power to appoint and there is nothing they can do, It would be a very good way of preventing the director from leaving to go to a competitor.

This I agree with and it is more so if you a trustee

 

With the "local" lockdowns that seem to becoming ever more national this could be a problem for other railways as even if a railway may be outside a lockdown area a good proportion of volunteers and passengers may not be. Could be a real headache for those railways who have put a lot of effort into finding ways of running Santa trains.

 

It would appear that the Welsh area lockdowns are more severe than the English, especially with regards to movement.

 

https://www.leaderlive.co.uk/news/18790491.police-appeal-train-vandalised-llangollen/

 

A very unfortunate occurrence for them given that they are planning to re-start services on Saturday week.
It maybe that quite a few 'dabs' have been left behind and culprits soon apprehended.

 

The main damage was to TSO 3950, which is out of service at the moment. The other coach had one window broken. Police forensics were there this morning. Coaches will be in carriage works tomorrow for repairs to start.

Bob.

 

Helpful

 

The Daily Telegraph website has an article titled 'Wales to nationalise railways' with a photograph of Llangollen Station attached. Is there something they haven't told us ?

Bob.

 

A novel approach - re-opening a closed line from the middle

Sent from my SM-A105FN using Tapatalk

 

Remember, those are politicians you're talking about ....

 

I see from Facebook an appeal. Has been put out to repair the dee Bridge again, replacement timbers sought with a target. Of 15k

 

So now an additional £15k required, despite selling 3802 / the £125k appeal early this year / COVID appeal / lottery grant. Are the finances really that bad?

 

Who or which railway has 3802 been sold to?

 

I believe it was sold to a private buyer and is remaining on the Llangollen railway.

Keith

 

The railway didn't own 3802 in the first place, so we obviously didn't sell it. Like every other railway we have been badly affected by Coronavirus .

Bob.

 

The railway did have a large proportion of shares in it though

 

It could be the case that the other owners wanted to sell and the railway didn't have the funds to buy them out (or weren't bothered about retaining the loco) , so had to go along with the sale, though

 

3802 was owned by a group based in Plymouth and trading as Great Western 3802 Ltd. You may well ask why it went to Llangollen but that is another story. From the information on the Companies House website the Llangollen Trust held about 17% of the voting shares and 80% of the non voting. ( GW 3802 Ltd had an unusual share arrangement whereby some shareholders had a vote and others did not! The reason being that the mems and arts only permitted individual share purchase to a proportion that prevented one person holding a voting majority). The reason for the sale was simply that the annual and long-term repair costs were not being matched by the income that could be obtained in hire fees from Llangollen. This was compounded by the waning of interest from the Plymouth end leaving only two or three directors to run the company. Given the fact that none of these were "hands on " enthusiasts they have to be commended for keeping the company on the road for as long as they did. GW 3802 Ltd is in the process of being wound up so after it's outstanding liabilities have been settled there should be a distribution of the remaining funds to shareholders. At the last count shareholders held 5440 voting shares and 4085 non voting.

 

I think the answer must be yes. If you look at companies House you can see that two previous years the railway seemed to loose 300k a year, which is where I have heard people saying its minus 700k ish. Obviously some of this seems to be the poor running of the engineering business, but clearly this alone isn't the only issue. I remember back when there was a gala that was themed around the closing of the Birkenhead line that the railway hired in 3 tender engines at considerable costs and the event lost a lot of money. I'm pretty sure that the same year the event in the October also lost a lot of money when they hired in sir kieth Park, on a weekend that had about 4 other steam galas taking place. The GM (who I believe has now just resigned) was walking up and down the platform angry about the event, even saying that from then on the railway would no longer do 2 steam galas per year.
There was talk that the railway had taken out a mortgage on the coaches to raise some capital to cover costs, I don't know if this is still the case, if it is then I'm sure there will be a large sum of money needed every month to pay for that.

I think it's about time that the railway was just open and honest, telling all members and shareholders exactly the situation where the railway is. Explain that xx amount of money needs to be raised to reduce as many overheads as possible, and to make the railway self sustainable. The railway really could and should be able to attract enough people to cover its costs with the location its in and the scenery that it runs through. Its not too far from some large populations of people to get bums on seats.