P2 Locomotive Company and related matters

Where do you get all your information from, to conclude bankruptcy is possible?

 

If the Trust is awash with funds, why hasn’t the P2 made any significant progress in the last few years?

 

They've prioritised getting Tornado back in action and earning money? The sensible, logical course of action.

 

From several things that have happened, or maybe not happened, and the many mistakes that are coming to light that will mean extra costs over and above what's been budgeted for, the new works , for example, fitting it out, the overhaul of the boiler, instead of finishing off one that was nearly complete, it was decided to overhaul from scratch the existing boiler, 3 sets of tubes , 2 of which are scrap, the turning down of tyres, the transport to and from where they were turned, the need to replace the grate, other snagging work, all at a time when fund raising seems to have stalled and people have stopped funding, Its all drip by drip, like a small leak, but it all adds up.

 

But an action that they have failed to achieve.

 

Hang on, that was a 6 month project wasn’t it? Plenty of time to make significant progress on the P2. By now it should be boasting a pony truck, finished cylinder block, brand new boiler and proven valve gear model ….

Now just where are they?

 

When I spoke to them last week, I was told that was indeed their priority - getting 60163 back out and running.

 

I wonder how long it would have taken them if it wasn't a priority....

 

That remains to be seen..............

 

Is that any surprise? Most of those clubs want a small number of people to donate £1000 each, some want more like £1500. I'd suggest that the Venn diagram of 'people who have that much money to donate', 'people who are railway enthusiasts' and 'railway enthusiasts who specifically want to see a P2 run' is vanishingly small and the pool of 4-figure sum donors is quite possibly exhausted.

That's even before you consider the country has been / is in a cost of living crisis, final salary pensions are no longer a thing and, putting it politely, we're about hitting the time when people with the required nostalgia/memories and financial means are becoming an endangered species. The days when your average person in the street could drop £1000 and not think twice are long gone, if they ever existed in the first place.

There's also the fact that any project that even hints that they're only interested if you've got £1000 to give them on the spot is inevitably going to alienate a number of people who would otherwise be minded to donate - I know this because I'm one of them.

It would be interesting to analyse whether the projects that have a 'small number of people giving large sums' approach are making any more progress than those which have a 'large number of people giving small sums' mindset. My thinking is that a project that asks 2000 people to give £15 each is going to hit its funding target a lot quicker than one that asks 30 people to give £1000 each.

A good comparison would be to look back to the 1960s and reflect just how many mainline steam locomotives were saved by one or two people buying them outright, versus how many were saved by many people giving small donations.

 

Probably one for a better accountant than me, but while such a course of action is of course logical for a company, for a charity you get into the realms of whether money has been donated to a restricted fund or not. Reading the 2022 accounts of the A1 Steam locomotive Trust (the most recent available) it appears there are restricted funds for the A1, P2 and V4; and no unrestricted fund. To my mind, that makes transfer to the A1 of any money donated to the P2 (and vice versa) problematic. So it is not a simple of question of using all the money in the organisation on the project that most quickly leads to a revenue stream, as a conventional business might.

The confusion I have is that the charity has restricted funds, but there is additionally a series of five wholly-owned subsidiary companies in the group, and a series of transfers of money between them. For me, life is too short to track what is going where (beyond a vague feeling I have that the corporate structure feels complex relative to the overall scale of the organisation). But I think a question I would have would be "if I have made a charitable donation explicitly for the P2, can the Trustees assure me that that donation will only be used to progress the P2 project?" That ought to be a very easy question to answer in a well-run charity.

Tom

 

I did briefly ask about this on the Tornado thread a little while ago https://national-preservation.com/threads/tornado.10750/page-387#post-2887342

 

You can run out of money without going insolvent (people go bankrupt, companies etc go insolvent). Insolvent is unable to pay debts as they fall due, but if you know that's a risk, but have a trickle of income coming in, you stop doing new things, pay the bills and hope...

 

Going back to the early days,the mantra as espoused by David Champion,was a large number of donors donating small amounts.About the cost of a pint of beer per week was frequently mentioned,I seem to recall. David used to present the conventions before Mark Allatt and very good he was,too.

I feel that the very sad passing of David Elliott has also left a huge void in the expertise available to the trust. As well as a being a fine engineer,he had the skill of imparting his technical knowledge in a matter easily understood by the layman.

I hope the Trust can negotiate its difficulties,we shall see.

 

To be fair, most (if not all) of the clubs have "easy payment" options, e.g.

 

This.

David Elliott's communication skills were second to none.

 

Including that ridiculous "ten (10)".

 

What's 'ridiculous' about it?

 

Explaining in digits the meaning of the word "ten". Is there anyone above the age of about five who doesn't understand both equally well (or in a few cases not understand either)?

 

Screen readers? Oh, and this makes for depressing reading.

https://www.theguardian.com/educati...ircase-finds-england-and-wales-teacher-survey

And haven't we seen elsewhere a case where someone was adamant that 9.11 was greater than 9.9?