West Somerset Railway General Discussion

You don't like them do you?!!

and before you say anything I want and I need the WSR to be the Success its Potential Deserves and I too look forward to seeing 4561 back in steam as I was involved in its rescue from Barry and hold £80 worth of shares at 1975 money value. From memory we only paid £3,300 for her but Mike Grimoldby will correct me if I am wrong on that one.

 

....and are now busy planning an extension, which will combine 21st Century operations with 19th/20th Century heritage, hopefully with consensus within its membership

 

IIRC, though, the commercial manager was one of the very first to fall to JJP's cost cutting!

 

People. I've said several times on WSR threads, and will repeat now, that I don't believe the structure is the problem. Instead, the problem is that the way the structure works creates rifts in which personal disagreements and animosities can become institutionalised, and just deepen. Some of those personal animosities are extremely evident from posters' comments on here; at other times, I see profoundly differing visions of how the WSR could or should work.

With the structures in use elsewhere, the organisational design helps force people who disagree to come together by removing the space for those arguments to fester and smoulder; the WSR's could be designed to ensure they remain alive. Unfortunately, the reverse isn't true - implementing such structures won't undo the damage done by those compounded disagreements and animosities.

My concern is that there are some people - on various fronts of the debates revealed here - who are by their personality and history, fuel for those conflicts; I genuinely doubt that the divisions that exist can be closed while those people are in leadership roles in or around the railway. I'd even go so far as to say that the existence of such personal conflicts as have been seen at the WSR would have made the success of the GWSR impossible - just consider the debates over the design at Broadway conducted in WSR fashion...

 

Could it be the exclusive use of Commonwealth and B4 bogies on the WSR whereas the Gloucester Warwicks have a number of original Mark 1 bogies?

 

4160 was an ideal loco for the WSR. It is sad that it went away, but I can understand the 4160 people not wanting the WSRA getting control of it. Going by their naive handling of the 'sale' of Promotions to the plc, they might easily have done the same with 4160. And if I owned a loco (must remember to do my Euromillions lottery), I wouldn't hire it to the WSR after the way they have behaved with regard to 53808. Anyway, the litigation is sub judice, so I won't make any comment about the court case, except to say that people don't donate to railways for the money to line lawyers' pockets.

 

I have retained my worthless share certificate in the North Devon Railway Company Ltd (Ilfracombe) for the same reason!

 

I suggest the reason that 4160 don't want WSRA control is tied up with the whole dispute over whether the shareholding was or wasn't validly transferred; any question about WSRA "naivety" would be after the event rationalisation.

 

In August 2025, I caught the 28 bus from Taunton to Minehead. It used to be run by Buses of Somerset, but since May 2023, the 28 has been run by South West Coaches. Taunton has grown somewhat, and housing now extends right past Norton Camp.

What amazed me was when we got to Bishop's Lydeard. The station is still there, but it is now a community arts centre (a lot of passengers got off the bus to visit a big exhibition of sculptures by local artists, some of them on display in the filled in area between the platforms). Given the time of year, I expected the A358 to be bumper to bumper, but the road flows more freely nowadays, especially since the major improvements carried out over the last two years. The road is straighter and free of height restrictions, but then, it was built over the trackbed and those two low bridges over the A358 at Combe Florey were demolished. A lot of people put up a good fight to save the trackbed and those bridges, but the collapse of the WSR gave the road lobby a much stronger case for the road improvements. In Williton town centre, there were plenty of signs advertising the cycle hire centre and cycle tracks at the "Old Railway Station". The station building at Watchet was still there (now as a cafe selling cream teas etc), but not much else survives. Mind you, the annual craft fayre being held on the old station site was doing well, so at least the tourists had an extra something nice to do on this nice sunny day. As the bus went through Washford, it was nice to see an open railway station (or more accurate, the "Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway Steam Museum"), at least the trust didn't have to leave Washford after all. The issues surrounding their eviction eventually broke the WSR, and thanks to a good appeal in Heritage Railway magazine (which HUGE numbers of people gave money into), the S&D trust was able to buy the entire Washford site. I got off the bus on Minehead sea front, and amazingly there were trains at Minehead station! OK, it's now a mock american themed miniature railway marketed as "Uncle Sam's Coastline Flyer". The "steam" locomotive is really a battery electric powered steam outline locomotive, but at least the families staying at Butlins seemed to be enjoying it (there is a rare breeds farm at Blue Anchor, the other end of "Uncle Sam's Coastline Flyer").

 

The remaining commercial team continued their good work inc attendances at these venues. Well done them.

Steve

 

You do wonder a bit about loco policy on the WSR. Most of the major lines seem to either own their own locos, or have a couple of very deep, long-term strategic relationships with loco owning groups. (Maunsell, Bulleid and Camelot Societies at the Bluebell; SLL at Swanage; NELPG at the NYMR etc.), or some combination of both. The WSR seems to have been able to develop that relationship with a diesel group (the DEPG) but not a steam owning group. Indeed, only a couple of years ago on this thread there was much talk about wanting to get a long-term loco strategy in place, since which time more locos have left the railway than arrived.

Tom

 

got to ask the question, even if 4160 returned to the WSR would the Plc want to hire it? The question is double loaded as it’s a question of another long term hire arrangement plus what happens if the current payment issue is not resolved?

 

Well I don't think it would be on a "run and repair" agreement at any rate!

 

FYI a letter from said gentleman is on the Footplate Gossip page https://www.4160ltd.com/footplate-gossip/

Someone of that name was in 2017 pictured in the local paper and described as former RNLI crew, if that helps
https://www.somersetcountygazette.c...mber-walks-on-vintage-biplane-to-raise-money/

Patrick

 

The issue is that relationships such as the MLS, SLL, NELPG etc. have built up over many years, with trust on both sides - which makes one wonder why no such loco group has become embedded on the WSR?

Tom

 

Despite actually agreeing with some of the sentiments on the 4160 website, I have always thought that an artificially low price was engineered for the 4160 shares and, ironically, the price 4110 was sold for must provide pretty strong evidence to that effect. If the fear of the current owners really is that the loco will fall into PLC hands, surely the solution is simple - come to a solution where the WSRA 's holding remains below (say) 40%. Even if all the sold shares were to be restored to the WSRA I don't think their holding would approach that.

 

Well, one has the S &D Trust - and look where it got them!

 

Also in recent years long term (25 year) agreements have been formed with the owners of 6695 and 44422, but obviously neither lasted very long.

The WSR has always had a heavy reliance on short term hire locos, to an extent unheard of on other major lines.

 

Quite ...

There’s a general shortage of operational steam locos; and steam is the stock-in-trade of heritage railways. So you’d have thought continuity of supply would be high on the risk registers of lines, and good relations with loco owning groups would be of high strategic importance.

Tom

 

The Charity Commission would take a very dim view of that.
A Serious Report option is 'Where a charity's independence is seriously called into question'