Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

By 3 and 4, do you mean the former stables? Whilst useful, perhaps, why do they NEED to be purchased?

 

In that case one would like to think that due to the supposed price paid for OSHI the previous owners are paying the market rate to remain in the house for the next couple of years and are not there at some seriously reduced rate

 

Why did they NEED to buy the pub?
If the required land to build a line on the necessary new alignment had already been secured, and the plan is for a new station, what was the point of buying the old? As a healthy restaurant business it was valued far higher than building a new station.
Even if the L&B had all the ready money needed to push on with all its core objectives- building a railway line, building new M-W locomotives, designing and building the new additional stock, workshops, maintenance, and still had a million or two spare, I would vote against buying the OSHI. Many pubs are struggling, and successfully running such a business requires special skills, experience, charm, hospitality and a healthy dose of luck. Even if the trustees have these necessary attributes, running that business as well would take away from the core tasks of building and running the railway.
It is a risky investment, with money they don't actually have, to no real purpose.
Far better to let someone else risk their own capital, and reap the reward

 

I wonder whether the need might be related to road access? Does anyone know whether there might be any restriction to access to the proposed new station site unless the OSHI was purchased? Or, was it all smoke-and-mirrors suggesting that: look, we now have the OSHI site and are making good progress? Perhaps it is progress, but I don't expect to hear any analysis from the experts down Woody Bay way any time soon...

 

A really sensible post, @Ross Buchanan .

It is clear that it is nice to have the physical remains of Blackmoor Gate Station in the L&B family, but it is far from clear that it was essential, given that the line is being rerouted around the pub. Moreover, even if you conclude that acqurining the site was not only essential, but the the next step on the critical path (both of which are contestable), then it doesn't automatically follow that LBBC itself should run the pub as a business - it would have been perfectly possible for LBBC to be the landlord and to lease the pub to a landlord in the normal way.

Again, there may be very good reasons for running the business this way, albeit those arguments haven't been made. What is increasingly clear is that LBBC has paid a great deal of money for the OSHI - well over the odds for similar properties in the area - and that far from insulating the Trust from the cost and the risk as it was (sensibly) designed to do, the Trust has an exposure to LBBC of at least half a million pounds, and, because LBBC is also operating the pub this risk is magnified by the operational risks of the hospitality trade.

Beyond locking up a large amount of capital that the Trust needs elsewhere to extend the railway, we now have a great deal of unnecessary risk in the Trust, which will require very close and careful management - distracting scarce management time from where the actual focus = extending railway - should be.

 

No doubt they drove a hard bargain and got themselves a good deal.

Some are wondering if the railway could've bought separately the strip of land essential for the railway, without needing to buy the pub. But that would only've been possible if the previous owner was willing to sell it separately.
The option is still there, at some time in the future, to sell the pub in order to repay the loans and keep the land required for the railway. Whether such a sale'd deliver an overall profit or a loss is another question.

 

At which my concern is over how the best outcome can be reached. There’s a natural human tendency to avoid recognising losses, which easily encourages hanging on rather than crystallising a loss.


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A Fairview solution is certainly possible, @Miff and may yet be advantageous. But if that was the plan, then that's a million miles (and arguably a million pounds....) from the prospectus and the communications.

The other problem that @35B recognises is that it is hard to recognise losses at any time. Here it will be especially difficult as "recognising losses" even outside default means getting the individual shareholders to recognise their losses. It would be helpful from a governance perspective (that word again!) if there were separate management for LBBC from the Trust Board if you found you needed to do this.

 

The evidence suggests that the vendor was a remarkably good negotiator. Achieving such a substantial premium on market rates at this juncture was quite an achievement. It's understood that the rental on the house is...shall we say...sub commercial?

Sadly, being in a hurry to purchase weakens one's hand....

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Sadly each one of our many pieces of trackbed are effectively ransom strips. That's why EA are taking their time.
Bratton Fleming came up for sale before, and they turned it down as too expensive.
The next time it came up, it was more!

 

The argument still stands regarding where you make your pollution and who is responsible for it. Coal was in free fall as an energy source from about 1965 onwards. UK power station emissions have been regulated since 1956, vehicle emissions regulation started in August 1978.

 

The emissions would still have been less than the contemporary road vehicles.

 

Indeed. Electrostatic precipitators were standard on power stations certainly by the the '60's. We can of course differentiate between classical pollution and the modern addition of CO2.

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The evidence might also support a theory that the purchaser was remarkably poor at negotiating?

 

In fairness, over paying for a purchase could suggest either or both theories. One would need other evidence to determine which might be the case.

 

I have to say that at a time of tight finances and poor mental health I'm seriously weighing up walking away from both Trust membership and reading this thread. It's just one thing after another and you don't get any of this nonsense with the SVR. Talyllyn, Great Central or Duke of Gloucester - which are my other memberships.

I mean, the SVR has been pretty bleak at times in the last couple of years, but it's never (quite) reached the ferrets in a sack stage.

I'm bored and tired of helping to finance this farce in North Devon, but willing to be persuaded why not to stop. I don't view YVT as the answer though so will not be contributing further to EA/YVT unless and until all the groups are inside the same tent. The most I'll do is keep a trust membership ticking over in the hope of better days ahead, but even that is hanging by a thread.

What a way to rebuild a railway.

 

?The DoG group managed to get censured by the Charity Commission for a big conflict of interests in their structure.

 

That frustration is precisely what animates many of us. The one thing I will comment, as someone who believes that the Trust should be "the" L&B organisation, is that at present, money given to EA/YVT is much more likely to deliver benefits quickly.

That grieves me, and it needs to change.

 

I know, but that's a (serious) thing - not a complete, total, existential mess.

 

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