West Somerset Railway General Discussion

It seems to me that both sides of your coin are needed and the degree of success of the enterprise depends upon their consonance.

 

Looking at item 476 is the WSSRT actually going for Bailey or not?

 

With the current cosy (subservient?) relationship between chairmen? I think not, no matter what the board agreed.

 

Not necessarily. If said company does not have 'deep pockets', the injured party will have to consider whether they can recover enough to both i) fully compensate them for their damage, and ii) recover all their legal costs. (Actually, that's to some degree true even if the company is well-off; the civil system is a bit of a 'dice roll'.) If not, they may decide to try a negotiation to recover part of their damages (at lower cost). I believe this is what happened with several Llangollen clients (not that Llangollen broke a contract, but the calculus of costs, recoverable damages, etc was, I gather, similar.)

So that makes the company's side equally (or even more) complicated. It turns into a bit of a 'dice roll' for them too - they have to evaluate the chances of i) the aggrieved party actually suing, and ii) recovering a large enough amount of damages and costs to outweigh the loss if the contract is fulfilled. If not, breaking the contract may appear to be cheaper. (I say 'appear' because there are no guarantees; I once had to sue a company which broke a contract, and it cost them a lot - although less than if they'd stuck with it - but perhaps more than if they'd tried to negotiate from the start. The only people who unequivocally won were the lawyers, on both sides.)

Noel

 

Not just that, the following item suggests that there is a white knight wanting the loan of the sleeping car in exchange for a large donation. Given the initials of the donor it might be anticipated that it will be a large one - but will it be enough?

 

If the donor is who I think he is I suggest that he may want to know that he wont be spaffing his money away?

 

I don't disagree with anything in your post. However, if the financial position of the prospectively defaulting party is so parlous as to deter the aggrieved party from suing then the question of whether its directors should break the contract as a matter of duty becomes academic, and it was primarily the point about a director's duty that I sought to address.

The aggrieved party may very well have an equally difficult evaluation to make and its decision-making may sometimes be influenced by non-commercial considerations – e.g. charity trustees might regard a decision to write off the whole of the loss arising from a contract breach as a failure to carry out their own fiduciary duties.

Any negotiation is part of the conflict resolution poker game in which the participants have to evaluate on the basis of imperfect information what their opponent will do/can pay. Insights into what your opponent is likely to do can be invaluable in those circumstances. I imagine that the WSR plc directors will have derived some insight into the course the S&DRT board is likely to take in relation to 53808's overhaul from the plc's abrogation of the 2018 agreement to extend the Trust's stay at Washford, an action which gave the plc board a convenient opportunity to observe how the Trust would respond to a contract breach.

 

Good to hear good things from the railtour folk. The WSR folk are looking forward to more railtour folk this weekend.

Help from all who care about the WSR with promoting the service trains is always welcomed. So please point folks at https://www.west-somerset-railway.co.uk/events at every opportunity. Thanks in advance. #LoveYourRailway

Steve

 

It is encouraging to see that some of those services are already sold out or only have limited tickets remaining.

 

Precisely one of the reasons why I would not consider being a Director of the Plc or standing as a Trustee for one of the charities

 

Has the fund raising target been updated. With the incoming tour it should have done well.

 

Actually in order to meet accounting standards, the WSR ought to have created an asset and offseting liability for the overhaul at the time the agreement was signed and then depreciated the 'asset' over the expected time to the overhaul, thus charging the p and l account with the cost of the overhaul.

 

The problem is that such accounting treatments don’t deal with the question of hard cash, but are paper transactions only. As we’ve seen, the revaluation of liabilities at the WSR has allowed material changes in apparent performance to be recorded without addressing the underlying realities of the business.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

True, but i was trying to avoid turning this thread into 'accounting today'

 

Worrying if so, as the only reasonable analogy is the poker player.

 

Organization accounts that I've seen often have three sections:

• assets and liabilities (balance sheet) - how things would wind up if the music stopped and everyone had to sit down
• profit and loss - is the organization making or losing money, during a time period when the accounts were drawn up
• cash flows - does it have enough accessible money to pay the things it needs to pay right away, to keep going

for precisely that reason. (An organization can be positive on the first two, but still fail if the third is a problem; and they can go negative for a while on the second, but still keep going, if they are OK on the third.)

(Some of you will already know all this; this post is for the others.)

Noel

 

I am looking forward to a three page treatise on the benefits of double entry book-keeping next!! What a wonderful eclectic thread this is - anything about everything is available on here. !

 

If you are not careful I will write a piece about BR NPAS accounting vs. APTIS which was a big part of my life in 87/88!

#Icanboreforengland

 

And probably charge us for it too (I know what you lawyers are like)

 

Professional boring? Time for this Yellow Pages classic to be rolled out again