West Somerset Railway General Discussion

I would not welcome the plc under present leadership gaining the freehold. Their behaviour shows them to be unfit to have the freehold.

 

Thank You John, I concur

As I have said in my posting on social media, I have not seen anything underhand and all parties that have engaged in the mediation process seem genuinely motivated for the good of the WSR. I am simply telling it how I find it without passing judgement. I have not dealt with any other parties so cant pass judgement.


As John says above, mistakes have been made, but mistakes are part of life and as I said to the volunteers and staff at my own railway " If we want to move forward we need to be tolerant of mistakes." I am glad to say that the railway folk up north have been tolerant of my mistakes, because I make loads of them Maybe the single biggest factor that would enable the WSR to move forward would simply be tolerance? Yes I know this is simplistic, but let’s be honest the micro-analysing of every twist and turn is hardly making great strides for the benefit of the WSR, and I am sorry to say whilst it carries on it never will?


It’s never as easy as "they don't want to do that" or "they are trying to do this" What you have is just people trying to do their best whilst seemingly swimming in shark infested waters, take the sharks away and hay presto the boat potters along happily. May I politely suggest that the best way forward is to accept the governance you have and let Mr Bailey's report be implemented by them. My prediction is that if you do you will be nicely surprised. If you don’t like it then just wait because another set of governance will be along latter.


Anyway I’m off to go and set light to one of those nasty heritage coaches that I don’t like. (this is a joke by the way)


Chris.

PS By the way My Anglo-welsh Bluenose Handle is a hangover from when I lived in Wales and my sad support of Birmingham city. I joined this forum many years ago.

 

John, I invite your attention to my very first post on this forum at https://www.national-preservation.c...eral-discussion.508987/page-1401#post-2588958, in which I sought to draw a clear distinction between the role of facilitator to which you had been appointed and the role of the HRA as neutral appointor of an arbitrator if requested to act as such under the 2018 plc-Trust Agreement. Sad to say, the sense of unease I expressed in the conclusion to that first post has not been dissipated by subsequent events.

Regarding the Code of Conduct matter, the obvious question to be asked is whether the HRA has yet engaged in the normal response of establishing whether there has been any non-compliance with the Code. It is difficult to see how the HRA could now claim not to be on notice of that possibility.

 

Kindly inform us all then of what the HRA's 'normal response' is to members who have been non compliant for 20 or so months and do not appear to have any intention of resolving this in the near future

While the plc board and you yourself are quite happy to criticise others and object to their actions I fail to see why you and/or the Plc Board should be upset if others do the same regarding the Plc's continued failings and your support for such.

By the way, we are still waiting for an answer from you regarding the Plc's non compliance due to its continued lack of HR policies and employee/volunteer protection from harassment & bullying (Third time of asking)

 

Wow, so my ID Card removal without even being informed, being called mentally unstable (along with a number of other verbal insults), being defamed to all of my colleagues on the WSR and branded a trouble maker, being told the ORR forced the PLC to remove me, being offered a roll around on the platform to sort it out and being left out in the cold with no way of regaining my hobby for 20 months even after writing to the HRA at the time and being ignored by you (the HRA), was only a mistake which I should have as a volunteer tolerated. !!!

If only I'd known I wouldn't have taken it all so personally !!!!!!!

 

And you of course have never taken every opportunity to denigrate here and in the local press the WSSRT 10. And you accuse others of hypocrisy...

I find it interesting that you are convinced that the PLC board will change. What is your evidence for that? It seems to be based on the belief in unicorns.

Considering your and the HRAs public contributions on issues in Somerset, I am not sure that you or the HRA are very well placed to advise on handling PR and managing difficult situation better. Looks like the Gamekeeper has been seduced by the Poacher.

The HRA has shown itself to be nothing more than a toothless old boys club.

 

A large part of the ongoing issues at the WSR is a serious and deepening lack of trust in both the performance and intentions of the current Plc Board.
If, as you suggest, we were to all put our concerns to one side and allow the current incumbents free and unsupervised reign would the HRA be prepared to guarantee to underwrite the costs of any recovery action required to save the railway from liquidation or any other such fate that might befall the railway whilst under the leadership of the current Board? No? I thought not. But you are happy to stick your oar in and stir the pot a little more.

I would respectfully suggest that the HRA has made a significant mistake in openly 'picking sides' in this ongoing dispute, especially where a HRA officer is involved and has already failed to stay neutral. It would be all to easy for observers to suggest that the HRA is acting to support it's officer irrespective of the rights or wrongs of his actions or the matters currently under dispute rather than acting as the 'governing body' for heritage railways.

 

Is the HRA regretting their involvement yet?... Chris Price has just been quoted in an absolutely extraordinary rant against the candidates that has landed in my inbox littered with falsehoods, half truths and misrepresentations.

 

An offer of facilitation was made and accepted. If the parties wanted the HRA to nominate an arbitrator they could have asked.

To be brutally honest I think the HRA has its hand full with issues such as future access to and use of coal, revisions to the ORR RM3 management maturity model and a host of other issues impacting its members. At the end of the day it is almost entirely a volunteer organisation dependent on people who are busy trying to cope with the impact of Covid 19 on their own railways. If you would like to apply your legal skills to the benefit of the heritage railway movement I'm sure we could use them.

 

Are you saying the HRA is too busy/understaffed to deal with one of their largest and most prominent members not abiding by the code of conduct? That seems a curious message for the HRA to put out.

 

Lucky you. Who was it from or are you just getting random rants from people?

 

Interesting. Has anyone else had it yet? It was a pdf attachment sent in the usual manner. I know these things tend to get sent out a few email addresses at a time from the occasions when things haven't been BCC'd, there've only been half a dozen other email addresses listed. If I'm not on a naughty list that other forum members are on, why not, and what can I do to ensure I am in future?

 

John, It seems as though a lot of people on here are under the impression that you are an officer of the HRA. I may be wrong but I believe that your only involvement with the HRA is, like me, as an attendee at meetings and that you were simply approached by the HRA to act as a facilitator and agreed to do. As such, neither of us have any voice in what the HRA does. Could you confirm, or otherwise?

 

Sorry seems to be the hardest word!!

 

It certainly is when the perpetrator doesn't recognise that they are in error - or their action was intentional...

 

John,
I am sorry to say but I now believe this forum is too toxic. Before I am accused of running scared, I will state that I am not, but I believe that this forum specifically, is not a healthy place for me to start entering the debate. I have dipped my toe in the water and the water seems very cold. Therefore I will politely desist from commenting further.

I will keep my engagement to more formal channels, and am happy to support the WSR governance, whoever they may be, without prejudice.

Regards
Chris.

 

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It seems to me that the current battle for the WSSRT is actually about governance and accountability. Between them, the WSRA and WSSRT hold a considerable share of the PLC, and as such, can hold the PLC and its officers to account. Hitherto, the WSSRT trustees are compliant and uncritical of the PLC, whilst the WSRA have remained largely silent.

If the evolution plan espoused by Mr Bailey is carried through, the PLC with set up a new charity, ruled by the PLC. The hope is then that the freehold of the line can be purchased with debt, possibly offset by selling bits of the freehold to property developers, and creating some sort of eternal spring of money to spend on trackwork, maintenance etc.

This new charity would own very significant assets, and debts, and would become the prime beneficiary of and grants and charitable funding. It is also extremely probable, and entirely sensible, that membership of this new charity will be a prerequisite of volunteering on the WSR.

Few of us are members of more than one governing charity on any one railway, thus membership of the WSRA and WSSRT will dwindle until these two are moribund. The lack of interest therein, along with selective information release will likely result in these two existing only to manage that shareholding, and manage it to endorse the actions of the PLC. The membership of the new WSR charity would have no voice to influence the PLC or the railway they serve, being effectively ruled by the PLC.

The action of the 10 prospective trustees, if successful, could see a situation where the WSRA and WSSRT are able to speak up, and challenge, holding the PLC to account. I cannot see why this is represented as an attack on the West Somerset Railway as an entity- accountability being generally held as fundamental to democratic governance.

I believe those who hope for the status quo to be maintained as regards the WSSRT are blind to the likelihood that the status quo will result in the death of the very thing they are trying to preserve.

 

The ideal carriage restoration team is a mixture. It's all very well learning to do things with a volunteer workforce but as people's spare time is limited progress is slow. This is not a practical answer unless there is a big volunteer workforce available, rapid progress ideal means 7 day a week working and that, to be realistic, means having full time staff or contractors, and contractors have the advantage that they can be laid off if funds run low. Ideally, the facilities would be available to allow two restorations at once, an early stage project and a late stage one, because the skills needed are very different and it spreads the workers out so they are not getting in oneanother's way.

The WSSRT have a dozen or so coaches to tackle and the only realistic way to do that is to firstly build a large storage and restoration shed and secondly throw a lot of resources at the project. A volunteer workforce tackling them one at a time stands little or no chance imho.

 

Some good points, which made me think.

The Bailey report calls Plan PLC the ‘Evolution’ and Plan Rebel Alliance as the ‘Revolution’. A fact reinforced today in the WSSRT’s latest Press Release to its members (which also in my opinion contains some ‘alternative facts’).

In fact, are these two descriptions the wrong way around ?