West Somerset Railway General Discussion

That has been tried once, by a number (variable) of individuals who were motivated and appropriately qualified. Given what happened that time, any more new candidates will be very hard to find and, even if they can be found, what chance would they stand of succeeding? I agree with Robin's post #39929 about the only likely future of the WSR.

 

I am not convinced that parallels with large corporates are valid, or that the parachute model sometimes used (especially following takeovers) is valid. In particular, such organisations tend to have sufficient depth of management that a change at the top need not impact day to day work. I don’t get the impression that the WSR has that luxury.

However it may come about, my personal instinct is that this is not about management, but leadership - and they are different. I see too much ego and use of “my” at present; a humbler model of leadership with far more emphasis on “our” would go a long way.


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The correct term would be "your", however there is absolutely no chance of that happening under the current regime.

 

Do I detect a bit of West Somerset exceptionalism here?
If the WSR is so complicated and so different from all other railways that it requires in depth specialist knowledge of it to be a director, then there is something seriously wrong with it.

 

I think Mr Grantham is saying that ALL preserved railways do not stand too much comparison with ordinary large business models. If so, I have to agree. Whilst I have encountered companies where the management/leadership enjoy/have earned the respect and loyalty of staff, and where staff believe they work for a very good company, making a very good product, and consequently take such pride in their work that quality control was all but irrelevant, I have never yet found a company where staff turn up out of love and do not take money for what they do.
A steam railway is selling something unnecessary to the public. It does not pay most of its workforce. It receives money from people for no return(in the case of appeal donations). It fulfils no essential need, and has very high costs to do so.
It really isn't like other business

 

Can people PLEASE include such references as hyperlinks? It is not trivial to turn such a number into the relevant post (I had to go through over half a dozen pages to find it), but if one is looking at the post one wants to refer to (as one almost must be, if one can produce the number), it's trivial to produce a hyperlink to it in one's own post (at least on a Windoze box - I'm not sure about Apples or mobiles). A few moments' work on the poster's part will save even more time for everyone who wants to refer to that post (which is necessary if one wishes to fully comprehend the post I'm replying to).

In most browsers, right-click on the date/time at the bottom of the post one wants to refer to, and select 'copy link'. This gets the URL for that post, which can then be pasted into the reply, inside [ url ] tags. E.g the post referred to is here. (If you click 'Reply', below this post, you can see how I did that.)

Thank you.

Noel

 

Leaving aside the fact that the "voluntary sector" is considerably greater than heritage railways alone and that some of the charities that benefit from people giving their time for free and money for no tangible return, the point I was challenging was that the WSR is different from all other heritage railways, not that it was different from other businesses.

 

Thank you Noel - I didn't know how to do that - it's even easier to just copy & paste the link without bothering with the url tags (doesn't look as neat but it does the job) like this:
https://www.national-preservation.c...eral-discussion.508987/page-2009#post-2684070

 

If I am 100 per cent honest, the only future I can see for the WSR, is one of stagnation, then collapse, and finally complete closure, And heres why, No one at the helm in either of the PLC, or the supporting bodies, has a plan , on how to turn things round, Crying we are broke can only be done so many times, and at the same time, you are spending money on retribution, and local inter group empire building, it leads people to question the railways priorities, Was it more important to punish people, , or to try to build a better ethos within the railway ? Hows it going to end ? with each captain arguing who knows best, whilst the railway, becomes a thing of ridicule , it does not have a future without change, yet those in charge are against change, often for their own reasons, ego, resentment, bloody-mindedness, and when the crash does come, the blame game will be even more vitriolic, as each will fight over the corpse, not to revive it, whist they can, but to so how prove they were right. Post WSR, the future could well be very bleak, rails ripped up, everything sold, the groups having to find a new base, whilst at the same time, being tainted by their involvement with the WSR.

 

I wonder if they would stay and play the blame game or up sticks and offski (a' la Llangollen) a few days before the crunch?

 

Alternatively if you 'left-click' the post number (next to the 'Like' and 'Reply' buttons on almost all posts) you get a little pop up with both the full text of the link https://national-preservation.com/t...eral-discussion.508987/page-2009#post-2684098 and some BB code (markup for forum software) that gives you a nice link like this to the West Somerset Railway General Discussion.

Because I'm nice here's a link to Robin's post #39929…

Simon

 

The rats will desert the sinking ship, I have no doubt about that, but I'm not so sure that, like Llangollen, it will be possible to jettison much of the ship's structure and save what's left. With the Manor, 63XX , DMU and most of the carriages likely to be sold off there will not be a lot left even if the LRO can somehow be transferred to a new operating body.

People have been predicting that a major line will fold for years now, Llangollen came close, and still may not survive, but the WSR looks like the one that will fulfil the prophecy

 

I wonder how the confidence of external organisations ("on which the railway depends") will be affected by the combination of i) the PLC's express opinion that it needs millions in the coming years to do critical infrastructure maintenance, and ii) the desultory response to a public appeal for those funds? (And both of those are from the PLC itself, not the critics of the current management.)

Noel

 

No exceptionalism from me. Just a recognition that the WSR is a small company and large company rules are ill suited.


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It’s not. Which is why anchoring management in the existing organisation rather than imposing it from outside is so important.

Let those of us who think it ill managed and in dire need of change not forget that this existing management retains support and is running a railway.


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had to chuckle.........WSR FB page has two photos of 53808 to :
1)Promote Family Week
2) Forties weekend

 

In fairness the WSRA has indicated that they support Bailey & are willing to merge into any future single supporters organisation

 

But so many of these passengers are unaware of the iceberg which you can see.

How do you ensure that "a majority of supporters in all categories" actually look out of the window, see what's ahead, and realise the potebtial disaster?

As you know, I don't include posting on this thread as the best course of action.

I'm seriously interested in how the current situation might actually change without more predictions of doom or worse on this forum.

 

WELL!
Perhaps 53808 will be making a "guest appearance" at these events. Now wouldn't that be special occasion.
have just checked the WSR website! There are no details of trains running or of how the Rover Tickets will work differently to the present arrangements. Any answers please.