West Somerset Railway General Discussion

I've no idea on the VAT implications, but this is exactly what we do at Broadway for the reason @nanstallon says, but it's not a full refund; if you pay £5 parking you get £3 back at the booking office. In this instance the car park is council owned so the agreement is with the council.

 

I would suggest that while its been a while since I visited the car park would benefit from a little investment

BUT whats the wider financial picture, what happened about the appeal and where have they found the £50000 from? It seems to be an approach from The Railway.

 

I don't see why that would be a problem. Just deduct the refunds before calculating VAT on the number of tickets actually sold.

 

I'm not sure that would be the precise answer, but the logic definitely works.

 

I think that the argument from HMRC comes down to the fact that, by giving a refund on car parking, you are effectively saying that part of your train ticket is to cover car parking and that is therefore vatable at the standard rate and not the zero rate for transport. This then applies then to all tickets sold. I think that the NYMR offer the car park refund on food in the buffet and not the ticket for this reason.

 

True, if the car park is owned by a third party, otherwise you could simply maintain that rail passengers get charged a lower parking fee.

 

There is no reason to park in that car park unless you want to use the train. If you allow passengers to park for free you might as well let everyone park for free, as there will be no difference. Fwiw, I’d happily pay to park there and thus increase the railways income.

 

The report on the Council’s website (5th July Full-Council Reports Pack, you’ll have to look hard to find it) says the toilets are in a poor state of repair.

 

You can say that again! I can’t remember the last time the hand driers in the Gents were working. But at least the toilets are not locked, unlike most public toilets in Cornwall.

 

I would like to offer my personal thanks to Steve Edge for all of the wonderful work that he has done with his web site WSR.ORG.UK This web site has for years become my ‘go to’ place in the past for all things WSR and I understand his need to ease up due to family reasons.

This web site must be the envy of every heritage railway organisation and will have set quite a high bar for the official WSR web site to attain.

It will still be the web site that will merit future following for all the best pictures as well as providing a valuable source of historic information.

Thanks again Steve.

 

What happened to “Platform” - is that still published? It seems to have just disappeared?

Tom

 

I received my copy last Friday.

 

The thing that frustrates me about the Plc website, and the 'News' link in particular, is that it is almost hidden away in the very top RH corner, whereas when you load the Plc's Home page your eye is drawn to the much larger, more prominent and colourful menu bar splashed across the full width of the screen. It's almost as if 'News' is an afterthought.....

 

If the DMU is not ready in time the current plan is to top and tail the shuttle trains with probably the 2 class 33's
The brakevan rides are being planned for a shunter, the o3 is the current plan.
This is all subject to change and the normal caveats, this is based on the railway asking for crew availability.

Robin F.

 

Thanks Robin, my curiosity is satisfied and frankly I prefer diesel to steam so all sounds good to me!

 

Is the Class 17 still on the line?

 

No it left last week, bound for Chinnor I believe.