SVR General Discussion

Am I correct in thinking that where Helen Smith came into the role with the pandemic, her predecessor was almost immediately faced with the 2007 storm damage?

Good luck to whoever takes on the role.


Jon

 

Change is always difficult to implement, especially with people who have been used to the old ways for a long time and the older you are the harder it is to accept. The key to successful change is really good communications, something a lot of railways are not good at. I received an email last night telling me that something is going to change on the NYMR, no explanation of why or what the benefits would be. As it affects me my immediate reaction was to object to it. If I’d been given a full explanation as to why then I’d probably have embraced it. It isn’t just senior management that needs to know why.

 

Deleted

 

b) is incorrect, at least historically. The DMU was the mainstay of 'normal' running when diesel diagrams were first introduced to supplement steam. Later it ran the winter services and took its turn with mainline diesel locomotives on the summer ones. The fish and chip runs were in addition. It was only when bogie and other work kicked in from around 2018 (from memory) that this fundamentally changed.

 

Fair, but I’d look at the number of roles, not just the highest profile one. If you’ve 11 people on £50k+, that’s over £600k with employer costs that you’ve got to take simply to pay those salaries.

That has some significant implications for the economics of the railway even if they’re perfect and way underpaid.


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If the GM is on a nearly six figure sum, plus another 10 staff on £50k+, then the staffing costs with national insurance, pension, benefits, etc will probably over £750,000 a year. A day rover is £27.50, so the railway need to sell 27,000 full fare tickets just to cover the wage bill of 11 members of staff.

 

Or you can cut benefits to long serving volunteers who have given their time, effort and hard earned cash over 50 odd years for nothing…

 

The SVR's MD role, as currently constituted, is the responsible person for the safety of tens of staff, over a thousand volunteers and around a quarter of a million visitors. That person can be interviewed under caution for reportable incidents. They can be personally fined for unlimited sums under H&S. They can be indicted and convicted for Corporate manslaughter. It's a board role (I think at ORR's preference?) so you get directors' liabilities too. It's also responsible for finance, business strategy etc., and is the reporting line for multiple managers. The business runs pubs, a museum, several catering sites, in-house and contract engineering, stock storage and testing. It's a huge role. It's a moot point what the job specification will be going forward.

 

Quite. And if we assume that their roles and pay are essential, that has big implications for the way that the company needs to be. Alternatively, if the roles and/or pay levels aren’t essential, then the company needs to find ways to reduce the pay costs so that those roles are less of a burden on profitability.

You will note that I’ve said nothing about simply paying less. £50k is now not that exceptional a salary level and, as others have said, the right people will need the right packages - there’s an old saying about peanuts and monkeys.

But if this level of pay and responsibility is essential, then it’s yet another sign that preservation is not the volunteer based shoestring operation it once was. That has big implications.


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Your conclusion is correct. The larger lines ceased being shoestring operations 20years ago. That supporters and enthusiasts are only just realising that is something I find astonishing, even though both facts have been apparent to me for many years.

i don’t know what the 11 roles paid more than £50k are, but I am quite prepared to believe that the current scale of SVR operation would be impossible without the overwhelming majority of them. In my experience most heritage lines of size are under supplied with management. The reason for that is that they are all without exception well aware of the need to derive the most from the least and they lack the income.

 

I think an important factor in the perception, of all kinds of costs, is the impact of inflation. £50k sounds a lot, but 20 years ago was worth a lot more than today - it’s equivalent to £28.6k 20 years ago.

In this discussion, that’s coming in in two ways. One is the perception of pay thresholds, and what constitutes high pay. The other, for all costs, is the sheer size of the values that are required. The ratios between income and costs may be similar to the Barry era, but the absolute numbers required from appeals are now getting to a scale that is increasingly challenging to plug.


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Ah good I was hoping somebody with first hand knowledge would clarify.
The number of days (Galas aside) when an 8 coach train is fully needed to cope with demand must be very few in reality. (7 or less is most common on the SV but often far from fully loaded).
So the real comparison (in SVR terms) should be the difference between a 3 car DMU (say 150 seats) and a "mainline" diesel hauling 4 or 5 coaches.
It still sounds as though DMU use would be around 3 times more economical in fuel terms as the "timetable improver" for a midweek 3 train service (preferably with the other 2 being steam).

 

Just remember SVR has an annual turnover of around £5million so management needs to be appropriate for a company that size.

 

Interestingly another railway not far away of similar length and not dissimilar level of train service provision seems to manage quite well without a GM/MD!
It is though a much simpler business without pubs, engine house, boiler shop, multiple catering outlets, etc etc and - crucially - uses volunteers wherever possible.
Whether their management structure and high level of unpaid input is sustainable long term (early retirement is on the way out) is questionable and will only be found out over time.
Perhaps the SVR has allowed itself to become overly complicated and the right solution lies somewhere between the two situations?

 

The flip side to that, if we are talking about the same place, is when I visited that line at Christmas, there were disappointingly few opportunities for me to put secondary spend into the line, which I like to do if I can afford it, doubly so if it's somewhere where I can travel for free

 

That's not correct. The DMU's main use for around 25 years was on the fish and chip trains. The use on what was AS2 came about after an attempt to reduce the A service to a two engine service failed because passengers found the gap between trains to be too much, the DMU offered an economical alternative, as while it didn't carry many passengers itself, the 75 minute service interval boosted numbers on the other two trains

 

I can honestly say I've never struggled to make a 'secondary spend' at the SVR's happy neighbours! In contrast the SVR's official shops have become pretty much a desert for the enthusiast looking to support the railway. Much of my secondary spend at the SVR goes to Kidderminster Museum, the EMF coach and the 813 stall. As for the Engine House, the last time I visited (Autumn Gala) the shop had actually been dismantled!

 

What the SVR requires is a Robin Coombes. His thesis for the University of Birmingham, sponsored by the HRA, was illuminating. Many of the problems facing the SVR strongly resonate with his findings on the challenges facing the movement and the commensurate need to examine governance, sustainability and approaches to leadership. Robin is now putting many of his ideas into practice at the KESR as their General Manager with positive results, in promoting the values of social capital.

If you want to hear about his ideas on leadership and challenges for heritage railways, then you will find the following podcast interesting.

https://theroundhousepodcast.com/2022/02/16/dr-robin-coombes-thesis-on-heritage-railways/