West Somerset Railway General Discussion

Given that in 2019 (the year in question) it ran close to 9000 miles and about 150 days in traffic, passing by the owner’s base at least twice every day and must have had at least one fairly invasive external boiler examination during that time, do you seriously think it was being used all that time without the owner’s permission? That’s a pretty serious thing to allege.

Tom

 

Just in case folk have forgotten, the eviction notice came in 2020, and virtually no trains at all have run since then, as some people seem to be getting their timelines mixed up.

I'm really not sure there's anything more to say that hasn't already been said, there's been nothing new on this particular front to discuss. All that seems to be happening is as people forget the precise details of how and when certain things were said and occurred, the discussion veers further and further away from reality.

 

Not only do the timelines get confused, so do the issues involved. The eviction notice came in 2020, but I believe that the S&DRT were notified at the end of 2018/early 2019 that the WSR felt that they may not be able to honour their committment to overhaul the loco when the time comes. Two seperate, but not unrelated, issues.

Peter

 

Ia not "alleging" anything but trying to establish whether the comments are from personal knowledge.

 

I only know that this is so because I have great faith in the society that I have been a member of for almost 40 years, namely the S&DRT, would have stopped their loco long ago if they were unhappy about its use. But hey, why let a bit of logic get in the way of another means of bashing of the WSR.

Peter

 

Even on the WSR, I think the default assumption that a railway is using someone else's loco with their permission doesn't need to be questioned unless there's a specific and well founded reason to question it...

 

Perhaps with a slight dash of hindsight logic would suggest suspension of use pending new negotiations

 

Perhaps you should tell the SDRT that directly. I'm sure they'd be delighted to have somebody completely external with no involvement in their organization tell them how they've made poor decisions in their past.

 

Would that be the same hindsight logic that says fifty years ago railways that hadn't yet been set up should have rescued more pre-Mark 1 carriages?

Tom

 

Thirty or forty years of operation is not unusual

 

Ian Young, SDRT chairman, didn't have any inkling of the WSR plc board attempting to renege on the agreement with 53808 until December in 2019 when JJP sent round the begging bowl and the SDRT said 'no', as they couldn't within the legal restraints of the trust, but they would pay for a new tender body as a gesture of goodwill... then they were served with the Notice to Quit of 10th February 2020.

 

"Thirty or forty years of operation is not unusual"

The NYMR really only got going around 1970, which by my calculation is 50 years ago, and despite having quite a strong LNER leaning in those days, (something it has sadly lost with a preference for becoming an identikit 1950s BR line (imho), it only managed to acquire only three LNER carriages in as-withdrawn, immediately usable condition. There were very few left by then and Mk1s in ready to run condition were becoming plentiful. Where were they, and other lines, supposed to get them from? The vast majority had gone by 1965 or earlier.

 

That's odd. I am a non active member of the S&DRT living 200 miles away in Yorkshire and I knew about the issue of the 7Fs overhaul in early Dec.2019 so I'm pretty sure that Ian Young knew about it before then. My only information come from the quarterly Pines Express in which Ian had already stated his concern about the problems that the WSR was experiencing. He went public about the 7F in the Winter 2019 issue published in early December but I'm sure that a shrewd cookie like him could see it coming sooner than that. Clearly there was much going on between the S&DRT and the WSR that we on Nat Pres, quite correctly, knew nothing about at the time.

Peter

 

It was fairly obvious, as you say, that as soon as the WSR got into financial difficulties, which was way before December 2019, that it might not be able to afford the overhaul to 53808. However there is a world of difference between that and actually saying that there was no longer the intention to try and meet their obligation and correspondingly writing down the provision in the accounts. Throughout this whole affair, the ability of the WSR to undertake the overhaul has not changed in the slightest, only the intention.

 

To say they could but won't must surely qualify as a damning indictment of the PLC board's lack of integrity ....

 

I gather from another that the WSR plc accounts are now published at Companies House as per 24th December.

I haven't had time to look at them yet.

 

They are indeed, someone with a better understanding than me could usefully comment on them.

 

Pages 32/33 were quite interesting, in the Accounting policies Borrowings and Provisions.

 

Presumably - https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/...2c1dc42ebd999a83ad38838f307732f92b55b4045a3d5

 

The Companies House website doesn't support direct links to individual documents but for anyone needing a quick link to the latest accounts, you can find them on the PLC's filing history page.

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/01010188/filing-history