Tornado

I think the loss of David Elliott is being felt deeper than he would have every had thought.

 

The current chairman had already removed him as a trustee as he was out of step with the new regime.

 

Plenty of retirees who are happy to get involved in such roles, so long as they are taken seriously and treated with respect. I’m in involved with one or two myself, others I have reluctantly had to drop due to a lack of said attitudes from the board. People with big egos, hooked on self-agrandisment do not make for popular or successful managers.

 

If that is true, then the movement is doomed is it not? Alternatively there are plenty of retired professionals in their later 60s and 70s with plenty of life left in them, not to mention a wealth of experience.

 

Are you a shareholder of Tornado Steam Traction Ltd et al ?...if so I suggest you call for an EGM.

 

It's easy to blame the current management but I suspect the root of the problems go back to the initial build back in 2008. The boiler design has always been a weak link and a result of an insistence on doing things one way and I believe not something Meiningham would put their name to. Aren't todays woes as a result of trying to rectify those flaws, albeit perhaps creating more in the process? I understand that there were also lots of other problems to overcome due to mistakes made in those early years, now easily forgotten about, such as the frames and tender. I can't be specific on the detail of those, though, but my sources were involved in sorting them out.

 

Indeed. But unlike most businesses, the ‘stakeholders’ have no say in how this one is run, who appoints the board members etc. I’m no expert in company law, but in this case, (and in several other cases in our ‘industry’) it seems all too easy for self-perpetuating cliques to form at board level and treat the organisation as their own plaything, generally to its detriment.

As far as the A1 Trust is concerned, a possible solution would be for all board appointments to be ratified by qualifying stakeholders (say Covenantors with £x of contributions ?) on the basis of a submission by the candidate detailing their CV etc and and connections to the existing board?

 

You are right but it’s many of the volunteers in their 40s to 60s who have been driven out by the current regime. They’ve not given up volunteering, they just gone to organisations where they are appreciated and not treated with contempt by the current regime.

 

It worked well for many years until the current regime took over, now running the trust in its own interest not in the interests of its covenantors. When - and I do think it’s just a matter of time considering the disastrous trajectory of the organisation - they are forced to resign or jump ship just before it hits the rocks, those picking up the pieces will need to put a new governance structure in place to rebuild the trust that has been broken at all levels.

 

There were indeed some problems in the early days of the building of Tornado but they were put right in a very transparent and open way. The then board commissioned an independent report into what had gone wrong and if I remember correctly made it available to all supporters. It was open and honest with its supporters, held a public meeting to discuss its findings and also with the press. The contrast with todays trustees couldn’t be starker.

 

Will you be willing to take up the challenge and help put such a structure in place? Or will you just sit on the sidelines to stir things up when those picking up the pieces don’t get it quite right?

 

As @Lineisclear will undoubtedly tell you, the managers of the Trust must manage the Trust for its best interests and not the interests of the covenentors or members.

 

Doubt that would be legal for a charity…?

 

Unless they are shareholders and can get together to make a coordinated request (eg through an AGM or similar), the covenanters would appear to have very little say in how the organisation should be run or how its officers are selected.

 

I’m a past volunteer of many years standing. So of course I am.

 

And as has come up in those debates, it is an unusual organisation that can be run simultaneously in the interests of the charity and in the face of regular supporters withdrawing their confidence.

 

Perfectly true. And that is what covenantors want. At the moment it is being run solely in the interests of the clique in charge… using OUR money.

 

They can of course cease supporting new fundraising campaigns or stop their covenants. Many have already done so. As someone who previously supported every new campaign, I’ve now reduced my support to the minimum needed to remain ‘involved’ and it will stay at that level until there is regime change.

 

Would those in charge, jump though, they might just as easily say, no I'm right, then crash the trust, in such a way that it's very hard to recover and the p2 becomes just so much scrap, but let's be practical about this, For instance, if the boiler is a weak link, then redesign the two new boilers back to original A1 spec, with copper fireboxes, and traditional staying, then run tornado with its current boiler, only until the 7 year ticket is up, and contract the work to a boiler works here in the UK, have the barrels made in Germany, or even cancel the order, and seek a new constructor, delay the P2 so it in effect takes over from 163 when that's ticket expires, so it is done properly, and then when the second new boiler is ready, that can go into tornado, and the original boiler gets uprated, with a new inner and outer firebox, to become the spare, or gets scrapped, because if you concentrate on one loco at a time, its more manageable, as long as you separate the operating team, from the construction team,