West Somerset Railway General Discussion

Ask anyone who edits or publishes a newsletter for a club, society, church etc and most will tell you that it is staggeringly easy to miss simple mistakes, especially days & dates.

 

The simple rule is to ask someone else to check your draft ....... you will only see what you think you have typed !

 

I suggest it's a sign of an organisation and leadership that have looked inwards for a long time, and lost the knack of looking out. The exchange between (I think) @Matt37401 & @FrankC over the track repairs was a really good example - whatever the rights and wrongs on the facts, the initial impression looked closed even if the information was being teed up for sharing.

 

Probably silly i know, but i cant help thinking that through this merger of the two societys it will be the WSRA who stand to gain from it, from past events the WSRA has tried to pull the rug and get control of the WSR and as has been mentioned a few times on this and other threads there will be no peace on the WSR while the WSRA exists. Just my thinking.

 

So what happens to the Santa trains now that there is another national lockdown? Training was due to be in November?

 

I would suggest general chatter about this is best had elsewhere as it's relevant to all railways, other than to note it shows how important it was to get some money coming in over the summer while we could, and not rely on the Christmas season.

 

Serious thought... This lockdown finishes 2nd Dec. Will that be enough time to get all rolling stock in place, loco's prepped and staff currency refresher training completed? Can it all be completed in the first week of December to try and save a few weeks Santa operations?

Hopefully someone will be on the case Monday morning...

 

Depending on the specifics of the rules, the WSR's November plans *may* be relatively unaffected as they don't involve the public.

 

Reading between the lines, if a solid case can be made that a situation involves safety or security considerations, these seem likely to be viewed under the "essential " banner.

 

But surely the safety or security considerations would be for activities that are currently in place, not something that you intend to do in the future. Otherwise lockdown would become meaningless as everyone would be in meetings for future projects

Keith

 

And that is what is wrong with the WSR. As long as people continue to hold grudges against groups within the railway for things that happened in the past that were done by people who are no longer leaders of those groups then the WSR is never going to move forward.

 

You’ve said what I’ve avoided saying but long thought. This antagonism is not new. A long time ago I had a footplate trip on the line and I was surprised at the anti WSRA comments made by the crew.

 

And as @DragonHandler comments, the focus on individual organisations being “bad” is what will condemn the WSR to failure if those from across the railway cannot transcend those perceptions.


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At times its almost as if to some people, past grudges are more important than finding a solution, We hear, such rubbish that for the railway to be saved, all it needs is X, or Y to leave, or be thrown out, but in that case, X, or Y must be all powerful, because you can bet removing them won't suddenly see a change, the problem lies far deeper than that, its policy, its how you move foreward, nothing can change unless the policy changes, and unless that person is the one making decisions, ( often they are not) then their removal isn't going to effect change , it only serves to satisfy someone's hatred of that person.

 

It's a business though, not somebody going to the gym or going to Next to buy a suit for a wedding. Railways, by their very nature, are socially distanced operations.

 

I was once told of a town in Russia, where, in the 70s, the inhabitants still regularly blamed their problems on the town's Jewish population, despite the fact that the last Jews had been evicted before the First World War. Habits of hate and blaming, once got into, are hard to lose ands it's always much easier to blame someone else than go to the effort of finding out the exact causes of a problem. After all, one of them may turn out to be uncomfortably close to home.

 

This seems to me to be equating "the WSRA" as an entity with the individuals who have been the WSRA's trustees at one time or another; just as some posters on here have equated "the PLC" with the individuals who are currently sitting on its board.

The end-point to which all parties seem to have agreed is to have a charity controlling a (new or old) operating company. The charity could be a completely new one or it could be the one resulting from a merger of the WSRA and the WSSRT. Which of the assets (such as museums, rolling stock and PLC shares), responsibilities and memberships the new charity inherits from the present charities is important. Is its name important? If it is also the membership body (rather than that being separate from the charity as in the Bluebell model), isn't "West Somerset Railway Association" the most appropriate name? Would some people hold grudges against the new controlling charity if it retains the name of the one that was a party to various squabbles in the past, but not if it has a new name?

 

Unfortunately for some, the name won't matter, they will say its the same old faces, and they will be right, across all the organisations, the same faces, seem to be prevalent, Now, I'm not saying these people have done a bad job, but some will be associated with whats gone on in the past, and for some, that will be enough to condemn them.