West Somerset Railway General Discussion

The WSR's bacon has been saved by the CRF grant, but they're not out of the woods yet. If, as they say, they need to raise 500 or 1000K/year for infrastructure work then every year is going to be a crisis for years to come, if the result so far is anything to go by. They seem to have scraped the bottom of most of the available barrels and that's not a trick they can probably carry off o a regular basis.

 

Where's Lewis Carroll when you need him?

 

So does that £108K include the £44.5K from the WSRA?

 

In the last round of fundraising they did include them, but I don't know for this round I'm afraid. They give no breakdown (nor are required to, in fairness)

Patrick

 

Presumably the appeal is for money for solar panels, LED bulbs etc to reduce electricity consumption and bills long term?

 

Wearing my financial analyst hat, a cost avoidance on a non revenue generating item does nothing to get you out of a financial hole. It's simply a way of stopping the hole becoming that little bit bigger and should not be counted as a cash contribution. To claim otherwise is to be somewhat economical with the truth.

I do hope that the management team have a bank account where the balance matches the amount that is said to have been raised.

 

According to the latest Steam Beano, the Ravenglass and Eskdale was the only heritage railway to received a CRF Round 3 grant (of £451,500). It would therefore seem that the WSR Appeal is still a very long way even from its revised target of £500k, let along the original £1million.

 

Ravenglass was the only railway to get a third round CRF grant from Arts Council England.

The other third round CRF grants are from Historic England and the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Sent from my SM-A125F using Tapatalk

 

And, to be fair to SR, the Ravenglass award was made nearly a month earlier and at the time of going to press I guess it would have been correct.

Patrick

 

So has the WSR received a third round CRF grant or not? I've checked the website and the latest news article is from the end of October.

 

It doesn't help that there are several schemes about with similar names. But as far as I can see:

Arts Council Culture Recovery Fund awards are listed on a spreadsheet available here: https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/publication/culture-recovery-fund-data

I can't find the WSR (or any of the affiliated organisations) listed in any round.

The WSR plc received £865k from the Culture Recovery Fund for Heritage, Round 1 (October 2020): https://www.heritagefund.org.uk/abo...fund-heritage-decisions-up-to-1m-october-2020

The WSRHT received £13,100 from the Culture Recovery Fund for Heritage, Round 2 (April 2021): https://www.heritagefund.org.uk/abo...recovery-fund-heritage-second-round-decisions.

Tom

 

I'm sure if they had won a 3rd round grant they would be shouting it from the rooftops as an example of how good (?) they are.

 

More progress by the WSR Wagon Division

On New Year's Eve our small but determined group were pleased to outshop 813 Fund owned GWR diagram Z3 Gunpowder Van 105493. The van has recieved a full repaint including removal of the white walled tyres as per the owners request. We opted for the 1940s livery with the full GUNPOWDER VAN lettering on the sides and without the number on the end. We believe this is the first time the van has carried this livery in preservation.

Not to rest on our laurels, once the GPV was pushed out for some photographs, we pressed on with our next quick project - GWR diagram P15 'Starfish' 10T Ballast wagon 80669. This wagon was outshopped by the previous wagon group in 2019 but there were a few remaining jobs until this vehicle could be considered fully complete. These included finishing off one letter of signwriting, removal of muck from the bottom half and painting black, and varnishing. Some may say that varnishing is excessive for a wagon, however we considered it essential for this wagon, we don't want to keep having to do all this signwriting! It can be seen from the photographs what a great difference the varnishing makes in restoring the black. On NYE we completed the signwriting and varnishing just leaving the bottom half to be completed when we have a spare hour or two.

It is likely that the Starfish will be completed next, likely to be closely followed by the PMV No.1464. This vehicle was required for the Winterlights trains with very short notice and so it is far from complete. Various fittings are not yet attached (lamp brackets, door handles, builders plates etc), various blots are also missing leaving empty holes and the interior needs painting. We will also be applying an additional coat of topcoat to ensure all areas are adequately covered. The bottom end of the PMV also requires needle gunning and painting which will be a big job. So this van will likely keep us busy for the time being, but it will be worth the effort to see it fully completed.

 

Taken from WSR.ORG Facebook page …"….Calamity! Our webserver providers Freeola have just posted this: "We're currently experience a network outage affecting one of our data centres. This will be impacting a range of services". This affects wsr.org.uk I'm afraid. Back soon hopefully.

 

The most recent PDG minutes were on Mr Edge's excellent site. The given reason for the bid for third round CRF funding being unsuccessful, is that the WSR is back on a solid financial footing.

Well done, congratulations on a remarkable turn-around.

 

Interesting, if a little confusing.

All that money they urgently needed must have come in separately from the appeal, or has that appeal raised far more than the updates suggested?