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Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

Discussion in 'Narrow Gauge Railways' started by 50044 Exeter, Dec 25, 2009.

  1. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    For clarity, and in fairness to @lynbarn, the figure of £10k of sales was mine, as a made up illustration of what effect that £7k of costs would be if the website drove £10k of sales on top of current sales, rather than just being a cost against the existing level of business.

    On all other points, I completely agree with your analysis of how such costs work. As 70p seems a little on the high side per transaction (again, we don't know the details of the pricing model or the assumed transaction size), I have assumed that it includes an element for the web-hosting. If I'm right, that is probably a reduction in other costs, and potentially avoids an up front capital cost, depending on quite how the old website was provided.

    It however reinforces the need to understand the detail before getting sucked into discussion of matters like costs, as it is the change in cost that will matter more than the absolute cost.
     
  2. lynbarn

    lynbarn Well-Known Member

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    Tom.

    Which ever way you look at it, it is still a significant amount of money that up until now we have not had to deal with. I believe we do have fees in place when some one wishes to use a card transaction at Woody Bay. My point was that this is extra to that, we won't know for sure until the 23/24 accounts come in to see the cost of all of this.

    I am still not convinces that selling tickets on line for a fee for our style of operation is going to make things any easier. Not only would it be interesting to see the figures next year but I would also like to see just how much volunteers time has been used to deal with any issues that may arise from all of this.

    How anyone can introduce such a system without carrying out a cost analyst and providing the data to those that have to make the decision beats me and again it is the membership at an AGM where the power lays that need to be convinced.

    I don't have any problem with the introduction of such systems, but it cannot hurt to let the membership know what is plans and to explain it to them how it will work and what if any benefits it will bring to the project.
     
  3. Michael B

    Michael B Member

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    It appears to me from my experience, without knowing what the rules say, that the planning authorities take no notice of the potential dangers presented by adjacent structures when considering planning applications. At a previous house permission was granted to next door to build a house at the end of the garden. It was bang next to an 80 ft poplar tree in our garden which would have its water supply cut off by the development. The tree's sister had previously keeled over across 3 gardens, luckily not braining anyone, only demolishing fences. The worry about the wind channeling up the narrow valley hindered our sleeping at night knowing what could happen to the new house if it fell the wrong way - one of the reasons we moved house. The planning authority took no notice of our case. We were powerless to do anything about it. The tree had a preservation order on it but it could be trimmed, or as was done by a subsequent owner, who had the top half chopped off. Later they had it inspected and it was totally rotten inside and permission was granted to remove it entirely. So it is likely it had been dangerous for many years and could have caused death. Let's hope the owners of the viaduct continue to monitor it and execute repairs to maintain it's safety as they did at the time when the parapets were reinstated. This is a liability that the Trust will have to consider at a future time if they acquire the viaduct. But it does not take away what appears to me to be the irresponsible granting of planning permission for houses which I assume, not having seen the plans, might be within striking distance of falling brickwork.
     
    Last edited: Jan 13, 2023
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  4. Pete Thornhill

    Pete Thornhill Resident of Nat Pres Staff Member Administrator Moderator Friend

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    Card fees - You can expect to pay anything from 1.5% to 3.5% with each payment, depending on the credit card your customer uses. There are also transaction fees which usually amount to 1-3% of sales, authorisation fees that take around 1-3p per sale, as well as merchant service fees of 0.25 to 0.35% so you can do the maths and work out a ball park figure.


    Another point you seem to have missed, you are talking about the online fee being extra to the current card fees. That is incorrect as a proportion of the current card fees will be replaced by the online booking fee. It’s even possible depending on your card reader provider and the deal the railway have with them that the online fee is lower and a better deal which in turn increases profit on some of the ticket sales converted to online booking.
     
  5. lynbarn

    lynbarn Well-Known Member

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    As far as I know the only cost to the L&BR with the old website was the annual hosting services and the domain name fees. There was some initial setting up fees which I don't have the details of to hand, but other costs would include the production for the headlining video (which is still in use on the new one), the point was it was maintained by volunteers, so there was no running costs as such involved, if you like we had control over when we could do the updates and we were also not being charged a fee for a a facility which I am yet to be convinces is going to be of any benefit to the project.
     
  6. Pete Thornhill

    Pete Thornhill Resident of Nat Pres Staff Member Administrator Moderator Friend

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    You’re making assumptions again. Who says that volunteers can’t update and manage the site?
     
  7. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    I'd disagree - you may just have been unaware of it. But as sure as eggs is eggs, if your booking office is processing card transactions, those transactions will have come with fees. Take a £1 card transaction and you don't get £1 in your bank account.

    How do you know that such a cost analysis wasn't done and shown to those who have to make the decision?


    It isn't the role of the membership, through the AGM, to micro-manage every decision made by those running the organisation. Do you think that an EGM should have been convened so that the membership could supervise the procurement of supplier via tender for some piece of work? That way madness lies.

    The membership has two functions. The first is to set the high-level direction of the organisation: what, as a body, is our objective? The second is to elect a board of trustees to deliver that objective in a manner that they see fit. If you think the board collectively, or one or more an individual trustees, aren't delivering, you can vote against them as they periodically fall due for re-election. But it absolutely isn't the job of the membership to second-guess every minor management action such as engaging a supplier to provide a website or process card transactions.

    Tom
     
  8. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    I help run church events with volunteers, who are very cash centric. We find that we can't rely on cash, and that most of our transactions are by card - and the numbers are ever growing. That includes selling tickets to events online, where the up front cash and ability to match supply to demand does help.

    I'm not a fan of enforced online booking, and like to turn up and go, but if I'm going somewhere as the centrepiece of a day, I do pre-book. So do very many others. That means shorter queues, and it means money in the bank earlier.

    You then suggest that (a) no cost benefit analysis has been done and (b) that the decision hasn't been taken properly. Those are serious allegations, and also suggest that trustees and managers have no authority to make operational decisions without explicit members approval through an AGM. I just ask you to think about the implications of that for the ability to run the organisation - it's absurd, and an impossible way to run an organisation.
    "As far as you know", "I don't have the details to hand", "other costs would include". Or, in other words, you know a little but not the full detail and don't like not being in full control so have chosen this forum on which to rant to the detriment of the organisation running the project that you profess to support.

    I work in IT, and I have enough involvement with my church's website to know what the costs are - and how it has driven additional income. They do exist, they do rise, and relying on volunteers isn't always the panacea that it seems. There can be a lot behind those shop windows, and it can be worth a lot more you seem willing to acknowledge.
     
  9. lynbarn

    lynbarn Well-Known Member

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    Hi Peter your second point in noted but the problem is it has not been explained in that way to the membership, as I understand it this is a charge purely from the hosting company of every transacting it does through their website and nothing to do with the standard card fees, so again why pay a hosting company to do something you should be able to ask and find a willing volunteer to do for you?
     
  10. Pete Thornhill

    Pete Thornhill Resident of Nat Pres Staff Member Administrator Moderator Friend

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    You won’t find a volunteer who can do it as there will always be processing fees.

    Here is a website I built for the owner of my previous employer, for their vanity project of a vineyard - https://www.foxburyfields.co.uk/

    I built this one around my other work as a favour really. We will ignore what they paid me to do it but it was much less than going to a normal web developer. Once built the owner has full control & responsibility for the website and do all the updates etc themselves.

    The ongoing costs are hosting plus the transaction fees for the online shop. The transaction fees are no different to those attached to their card reader in that without paying them they wouldn’t have the online shop as although I can (and did) build the front end of the shop, the backend you need merchant services for, without it there would be no shop, same as without paying the fees they would have no card reader.
     
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  11. lynbarn

    lynbarn Well-Known Member

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    So now I am a control freak? Great I will add that to the list of other names I have been called, so are you suggesting that as a member I shouldn't carry out my own due diligence of things at the railway?
     
  12. Pete Thornhill

    Pete Thornhill Resident of Nat Pres Staff Member Administrator Moderator Friend

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    Personal observation - perhaps it would be better to get an understanding of how this stuff works before rather publicly making incorrect assumptions based on how you “think” it does as it comes across as you don’t know what you are talking about and are making yourself look a little bit silly as a result. Due diligence requires an understanding of the fundamentals ;)
     
  13. ghost

    ghost Part of the furniture

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    Why does every commercial decision need to be 'explained to the membership'?
    Do you want to know when the tea room changes from PG Tips to Tetley because they're a bit cheaper? No. That's why the membership votes for a board - to run the railway on their behalf. As Tom has said, the membership sets the high level objectives, they don't get involved in the day to day commercial decisions - that is the job of the board/GM
    You seem to be under the illusion that IT is free or cheap. Maybe some is, but good IT is not.
    I suppose you would want an EGM to be called if the fares were put up by 10p?

    It's funny how you're so concerned with the costs of the website and transaction fees, but yet a few posts ago you and Meatman were openly campaigning for the railway to spend £750,000? on a site which would probably need a considerable amount of money spent to make it useable and even then would have no possibility of returning the investment.
    It's rather hypocritical to demand the finances and business plan of the OHSI (which let's not forget has not actually been purchased yet) and also complain about lack of fundraising/extension progress, yet also demand spending a huge sum (which would need to be borrowed) on a property which will be a drain on the railway for a very long time to come (possibly forever).
     
  14. Jon Lever

    Jon Lever New Member

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    Raising questions on here is not the same as carrying out due diligence, and in order to carry out any due diligence you need to have some idea of the issues involved, which, in the case of the handling of card transactions by a business, you obviously don't.
     
  15. Mrcow

    Mrcow Member

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    Seconded, the public expect to be able to buy in advance for pretty much any attraction. The way consumers interact with money is changing very, very quickly. It in no way increases the amount of station staff needed to process the fares, quite the opposite. The customer has already done the booking office interaction themselves at their own expense in time taken to decide what they want. That's the idea.
     
  16. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    That was your phrase, not mine but, if the cap fits,.... However, "due diligence" requires diligence, time and attention, and willingness to engage with facts rather than just assumptions. My concern is that what you are doing, intentionally or otherwise, is what is sometimes known as "JAQing off"; it is noticeable to this impartial reader that your questions are consistently one sided, hostile to the Trust board and in support of alternatives to what they are doing. It isn't a good look.
     
  17. RailWest

    RailWest Part of the furniture

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    >>>The membership has two functions. The first is to set the high-level direction of the organisation: what, as a body, is our objective? The second is to elect a board of trustees to deliver that objective in a manner that they see fit.....

    Hmmm....

    When I was invited to become a Trustee of another heritage railway body some years ago (a kind offer which I declined because (a) I felt that I did not have the time available to adequately discharge the task and (b) I was worried about my individual legal and financial liability in the event that some of their previous less-than-ideal decisions went badly wrong), it was explained to me that the task of a Board of Trustees was to manage the Trust in the best possible way in accordance with its Charitable Objectives and for the benefit of the Trust as a whole. Whilst the Board were at liberty, should they choose to do so, to invite the membership to comment on and/or express (by way of a vote/poll) a view as to a preferred course of action (ie "do you want us to do A or B" etc), ultimately it was the Board that made the choice and carried the responsibility so to do. If the Board decided, for whatever reason(s), that although the membership had chosen 'A' in fact they would do 'B', then that was their prerogative.

    Nevertheless, the membership does have the right to question the Board and hold them to account at a General Meeting. Members therefore IMHO are entitled to expect that the Trustees Reports to the 2023 AGM will provide a lot of the detail about the new website which has been discussed above, and if those Reports are found to be lacking then to ask 'questions from the floor' and get suitable answers. Whether there is grounds, on recent past experience, to be optimistic that will happen, I will leave for others to form their own views :)
     
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  18. Michael B

    Michael B Member

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    Typing 'Carriages' in the search box of the Lynton-rail website I found (on the 3rd page) an item dated 9 January (but could have been redated from an earlier post) by Nik Barrie with news, but not in the index of news items on the 'home archive' page - notably that Van 23 is 'now sitting on its bogies for the first time in over 70 years. The van is currently awaiting fitting of brakes and couplings. Currently it is not known when it will re-enter service.' Leaving aside the impression that it was on it's wheels until the early 1950s (but not in recent years at Woody Bay Station) this suggests the steel underframe has been fitted and the body reassembled. Is this a very old post or new ? because if new this sounds like significant progress and it would be nice to see some pictures - perhaps they will come in the Magazine due in the next fortnight.
     
    Last edited: Jan 13, 2023
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  19. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    And the clear implication of this is that charitable trusts not only are not, but are heavily constrained in law from being, democratic bodies. Which, in response to discussions about "due diligence" and the role of AGMs, demonstrates the utter innaccuracy of the following:
    .
    On the other hand, it does not preclude explanation of plans and, in broad terms, the reasoning for them, as here:
    However, it does require that the members receiving that briefing pay attention to it, and think about it before the decision is enacted - not wait till later, and then complain about the outcome (as I have seen happen elsewhere). Ultimately, as ordinary members of an organisation, we have three choices about a board's direction - back the board, seek to change the board and therefore direction, or walk away. I referenced events in West Somerset; the campaigners were very clear about what they wanted to happen and why, and still took a long time to only partially achieve their objectives.

    For context, I am a trustee of two non-railway charities, and have had to be briefed at length on my duties as a trustee and director (it is also incorporated as a company). As trustees, we are accountable through the AGM and other periodic meetings, quite aside from the informal contact that goes on. That accountability can go to discussion of specific decisions, but is about what the charity is doing in the round, not operational management. As others observe, if AGM or other membership level discussion dropped to the level of some of the points made here, the organisation would be unmanageable.
     
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  20. lynbarn

    lynbarn Well-Known Member

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    Is this what you where looking at

    https://www.lynton-rail.org.uk/trust/groups/pages/work-progress-van-23-8-ton-bogie-goods-brake-van
     

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