Tornado

For those wondering what the fuss is all about regarding lack of news from the Trust I’m just tracking back to try and pinpoint when the normal regular frequency of communications to us supporters ceased …. back soon with before and after evidence …..

 

Indeed. The three golden rules for communications I always try to work by (not always successfully, of course):

1. Have a clear picture in your mind of your audience.
2. Don't write so you can be understood, but write so you can't be misunderstood.
3. If your audience still doesn't accurately absorb what you are trying to say, the problem lies with you, not the audience.

Tom

 

Also don't use the the all too familiar assumption that bullshit baffles brains, it doesn't, it just makes people angry.

 

Perhaps it does in the army though …. ?

 

OK, let me rephase that, I'm not a trained boilersmith, but i have worked on boilers, and have picked up some skills from working with others who are time served boilersmiths, one being Norman Paine, anyone remember him? getting back to my post, Others have also said very much the same.
it is entirely possible that the German works, has lost a lot of the skilled tradesmen and those now doing the work, don't have the same experience, and the foundations ring corners have been replaced and at the time the works would have been drawing up the componants for the two redesigned boilers, which do have a larger waterspace, , by fitting a smaller inner firebox, if I have this wrong, then please correct me, a welder replacing the corners, could very well have found that the new plate didnt quite fit, but that one from the new build boilers did, because of the larger space between the plates, but of course, it's just my theory I could be far of the mark, but to me, it seems very plausible.

 

Oh definitely, plus very often someone will be promoted to get them out of the way, if their a liability, put them in charge of a desk, filing paperclips, and let those who can do,

 

Perhaps it's more the rank and file aren't expected to answer back...

 

As that "one" I should give an update.
I emailed Steve Davies on 6th March and got a reply the same day (despite his being out of the country), which however addressed only the particular matters that I had just raised, not my earlier emails. I emailed him again on 11th, quoting mine from January, which quoted mine from May last year, which quoted post #7178 of this thread. So far I have heard no more.

 

You've probably been marked down by name as one of those anonymous snipers...

 

Oxymoron?

 

Depends how much moral courage you have...

 

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kesselzerknall_in_Meiningen

Interesting

A LNW&R boiler blew up 5 years after WW1.
Unskilled,badly supervised labour had assembled safety valves.

The Meiningen boiler blew up because russians had removed all test manometers but one,(and all the double rails) in 1951.
The only available manometer was used for another boiler test.

War cassualties .

 

Okay, here’s a look at the frequency of A1 Trust communications from pre-2022 compared to the most recent period.

Part of the deal between the Trust and the Covenantors was that there would be monthly news bulletins (Tornado Telegraph ), and a more in depth quarterly magazine (The Communication Cord).

Firstly, Tornado Telegraph ….

Always monthly until July 2022


Then only four issues in 2024, and none since August 2024


Next, The Communication Cord …

Always quarterly until the end of 2022


Then only two in 2024



Now also during 2022 the Trust were faced with the reality that there was no way on Earth that they could meet their 6 month overhaul target. Indeed, in July the loco was sat in LMS at Loughborough as a set of bare frames, still being dismantled and scraped cleaned, whilst solutions to the distorted Cartazzi horn area were being debated. The drivers were off site, as obviously was the boiler.There was also little happening on the loco regarding ETCS, work being focussed on the tender.

Yet this was the situation with the tour programme. Bookings were still being taken for the tours shown below up until the cancellation date shown, clearly in the knowledge that there was absolutely no way the loco could possibly be available. This deception led to my ceasing to volunteer on the overhaul.


So, what exactly happened in 2022 to cause the Trust to act in this fashion? There appears to have been a sudden loss of their sense of duty to both their supporters and their customers. What did they hope to achieve by this? Was this a directive from the Chairman? However it came about, the entire board / trustees were certainly complicit in my view.

 

Excellent bit of work there, @Sheff .

 

Are there many grassy knolls round Darlington way?

 

Indeed well done...

 

When you see it laid out like that, Is there any real excuse to be had? my view, is that the buck stops with the board, and the chairman, who really should have resigned. how many cancelations was that, how many times tours were re advertised, then theres the engine, You have your own works, so why was the overhaul contracted out, could that not have been started in the old works, then brought over, same as what was done with the P2? or are the trust, not keen to get their nice shiny new works dirty by having bits of a steam engine being overhauled, If I didn't know better, I might think someone might want it as a museum, rather than a workshop,

 

Just regarding the communications, I think you answered your own question:

Like I alluded to in my previous post, when the s**t hits the fan the trust are not the only organisation to let the 'nice to haves' slip. We can debate if regular communication is actually a nice to have, or if it should have been prioritised more than it was. Resource is finite so something has to give. Presumably you weren't the only one who walked away during that time, so the resource situation is even worse then it already was. The situation with the bookings is clearly not acceptable, but it's not hard to imagine how it is the sort of thing that gets lost in the noise in an organisation going through a significant change in its management structure.

Genuine question for the supporters here; how many more cancelled rail tours or how many additional delays would you have accepted in exchange for the communications continuing on their original time table? Would you have been supportive if the solution was to use funds to hire in additional resource to make sure that both activities could carry on alongside each other?

I think there are several reasons one could suggest: Speed, resourcing levels, proximity to the volunteer base and as you alluded to Martin the fact that they had started the process of dismantling one works, building a brand new one and were in the middle of constructing a second loco. Handing a '6 month' overhaul over to a third party that are well equipped, well experienced and have consistent resource levels is a sensible solution to try to quantify and control exactly what that original overhaul was hoped to be.

 

I'd say the fall-off in donations answers the question as to whether it's acceptable or not. And is very telling that the correlation between apologising for poor communication tracks this dip as much as anything.

Yes, things can go squirelly in any organisation, but bear in mind this is a new-build, so the usual caveat of old machinery doesn't apply.

However, if there is time to repeatedly put out tour announcements that can best be described as "optimistic", there is time to give a fair update instead.

So this isn't just "sorry we've been busy" (which I would hold as inexcusable in itself), but "we had the time to make promises we couldn't keep, but not time to inform covenantors of the position". I really cannot see any justification for that.

 

Perhaps you "might think" correctly. That seems to be the direction of travel. If that is indeed the case, then in future the P2 will be shipped elsewhere as a kit of parts for someone else to sort out and assemble. That will be after the boiler, pony truck and cylinder block have been sitting around in Darlington for a while. As for the valve gear, who knows?