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West Somerset Railway General Discussion

Discussion in 'Heritage Railways & Centres in the UK' started by gwr4090, Nov 15, 2007.

  1. johnofwessex

    johnofwessex Resident of Nat Pres

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    Which Christmas?
     
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  2. gwilialan

    gwilialan Well-Known Member

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    Daydreaming :- Notes to 2021 accounts? Asset values have been increased in view of prices achieved in North Wales and the new coats of paint making margins look even better as management claim their painting strategy has saved the railway?

    More seriously -

    From the joint statement:-
    "Initial planning started in 2018 and the design was completed in 2020. It was finally approved by the Office of Rail and Road, the regulator, in February."

    So planning and design for a standard design crossing, using standard parts, in a standard configuration took two years??? I've managed multi-million pound bespoke projects from client specification to final completion and handover in less time than that.

    Everything the management have published about this crossing rings hollow to me. I don't know if they are trying to disguise laziness or incompetence or (one especially for the conspiracy theorists ;)) deliberately trying to bring the railway to it's knees. I can see absolutely no reason from a practical point of view why this project was not done and dusted in the winter of 2019/20 and the line fully ready to reopen for the 2020 season.

    And these are the people who are asking us to trust them with a million pounds of donations for no specific purpose ..with their track record? (pun unintended) no way!
     
    Last edited: Jun 7, 2021
  3. gwilialan

    gwilialan Well-Known Member

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    Or even "Which Festive Season?" In our modern multi cultural society :):rolleyes:
     
  4. flying scotsman123

    flying scotsman123 Resident of Nat Pres

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  5. 30854

    30854 Resident of Nat Pres

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    I suspect you refer to Yule, the one pinched by Christians for a birthday bash. :Pompus:
     
  6. DcB

    DcB Well-Known Member

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    Traditionally Christmas starts Christmas Eve and goes on for 12 days till January.
    Commercially supermarkets start selling Christmas items when the shelves are clear of Halloween items.
    So the level crossing might be completed October or January depending on the definition.
    I suspect they are aiming to get it completed at least before the festive Santa trains start, and use the vintage bus service during the summer.
     
  7. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    One wonders why a standard design needed such an over extended approval process, or whether perhaps the design was subject to significant debate and discussion before being presented to ORR once in a form that didn’t invite rejection?


    Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
     
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  8. Snifter

    Snifter Well-Known Member

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    It's all down to Covid............Cancellation of an Operationally Viable Infrastructure Design.
     
  9. gwralatea

    gwralatea Member

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    It's a shame there's only one like to give, this is bang on the money.

    Having grown up with the SVR, I've now moved away and have little to do with it. However over the intervening 20 years or so I've kept my membership up, and have got the requisite £200 or so of shares that you'd expect a supporter might have picked up over 40 years of life.

    Appeals generally fall on deaf ears (because I've got other priorities, and indeed other railways) but last week one came through for sorting out the locomotive shed, asking for £75. Hand in pocket straightaway, because I can see that it's an investment in the railway as a whole, not sorting out Hagley Hall as an individual locomotive. (Much as I love her, and she - with 43106 - are synonymous with the SVR of my childhood, sorting out Hagley Hall is not addressing a pressing locomotive need for the railway; though I accept that it is in a small way simply because of her place in the queue but you see what I mean).

    I'm much less keen on giving any of the railways I support cash to bail them out because they've made the wrong decisions, or to do the sort of day to days things that they should be accounting for anyway. Not that I'm saying the WSR fall into those categories, it's just that your post made me think about what I do support, which I've never really stopped to analyse before!
     
  10. MellishR

    MellishR Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    You might not be saying that but a lot of us have been saying exactly that.
     
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  11. gwralatea

    gwralatea Member

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  12. Bayard

    Bayard Well-Known Member

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    I think that's a bit unfair. A railway desperate to increase its ridership needs smart locos, buildings and rolling stock to attract the customers and the carriages were looking very shabby. People like smart: it wasn't a job that could have been put off for much longer, regardless of the other priorities. Look where chancing it with the level crossing has ended them up. Anyway, should the railway fold, the MK1s are worth more now than they were. It's not as if they would be scrapped in such an event.
     
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  13. Pete Thornhill

    Pete Thornhill Resident of Nat Pres Staff Member Administrator Moderator Friend

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    See it’s a difficult one. On one hand as you say, smart rolling stock is important and I do not disagree and think the work done on the coaches is really good and the different authentic steam era liveries are a big improvement.

    However, reality is you don’t decorate your house if you cannot pay the mortgage.

    Did they actually all need doing at once? Certainly for the foreseeable future 2 sets of coaches are required for the service.

    I am sure you will lose a lot more passengers by not being able to run to Minehead, or not at all by becoming insolvent.

    I suppose it illustrates the lack of a clear vision. In isolation it’s a great and sensible thing to be doing, but as part of the bigger picture I’m not sure when it is apparent you need millions injected into the business to survive going forwards.
     
  14. Big Al

    Big Al Nat Pres stalwart Staff Member Moderator

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    All true in relation to the last sentence and the wider comments in the above post.

    I'm prepared to give the WSR some slack on this and assume they are in control and know what they are doing. If they are hanging it all on the goodwill of benefactors then I also wish them well. Whether it's a secure way to run a railway is really for others with the expert knowledge to judge.
     
  15. 30854

    30854 Resident of Nat Pres

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    "Authentic British Railways Experience" themed event anyone? No? Then @Bayard must have a good point. At a time when stock needs to be 'Covid Clean' to operate, the sight of shabby stock does the exact opposite of anything to reassure prospective passengers.
     
  16. Pete Thornhill

    Pete Thornhill Resident of Nat Pres Staff Member Administrator Moderator Friend

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    Yes it is a good point, as is the one you make. I don’t disagree and another plus point was I believe the WSRA funded it which is good to see,

    I’m actually not trying to bash them for doing it, just questioning the importance as part of the bigger picture, with the current situation although it’s not entirely clear what that is other than needing serious amounts of cash.

    I hope I am proved wrong and the WSR is successful in securing the funding it requires. I’ll be honest, after reading the appeal press release I was left with a genuine doubt of the railways ability to survive and ability to meet the target they have set, which is ambitious to say the least.

    As I said in a previous post, the problem for me is that while wishing to donate to save the railway, the lack of any detail puts me off doing so and I don’t think I am the only one.

    Another concern is that if the railway is predicted to lose £1 million with a budgeted traffic level 50% of normal, if and when traffic levels return to normal there will still be an annual loss of several hundred thousand pounds.

    It is not clear how much of the £1 million a year, the longer term target, is planned to plug this shortfall, or what is being done cut costs or going to be done differently to try to change this as a loss of even a quarter of 2021 is not sustainable long term.

    When you add in the lack of clarity of the infrastructure projects over the next few years and the costs for those and it’s relation to the above losses, the lack of detail also makes you wonder what exactly will be done to prevent such a maintenance backlog again and at what cost.
     
  17. free2grice

    free2grice Part of the furniture Friend

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    After reading the WSR's latest appeal, I 'm left feeling rather disappointed. Other railways have been successful in running a service for the last 12 months, the WSR decided not to.

    ''The WSR has launched an emergency ‘SOS’ funding appeal for £1 million to see it through to next May.

    The first CRFH bid was very successful when the railway was granted £864,900 last October.

    The WSR was confidently hoping to receive a further DCMS grant of up to £432,200 from its CRFH scheme''.

    I appreciate that others will not agree but the way that the appeal is worded the WSR comes across as greedy and just wants more of our money.

    I am always pleased to give to those that deserve it but for me the WSR appeal falls well short of that. <BJ>
     
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  18. DcB

    DcB Well-Known Member

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    With an authentic bus replacement service!
     
  19. Sidmouth

    Sidmouth Resident of Nat Pres Staff Member Moderator

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    One question that is in need of asking is that given the shortfall in income over expenditure this seeks to cover what has been done to manage the costs and bring them down to manageable levels . I appreciate potentially we are playing with people livelyhoods but other lines seem to have been way more proactive at bringing their cost base down as well
     
  20. nanstallon

    nanstallon Part of the furniture

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    Agreed - if management are asking for a bale-out from the consequences of their failures, you can be sure that the begging bowl will be brought out again and again unless the incompetent management is replaced.
     
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