West Somerset Railway General Discussion

Which is fair comment but the tension between some of those other parties and the PLC has led to calls for a clear out and a suspicion that some would even like to see the PLC fail.
In order to "cling to power" individuals have to submit themselves for re election every so often and remain in office only if the shareholders agree to re-appoint them. If there's sufficient unhappiness amongst other parties to threaten the viability of the railway it's the shareholders judgement as to whether change on the board is required. There are companies act provisions for them to table a resolution to remove individuals directors provided that they can amass the required percentage of shareholders (usually 5%) and subject, where a general meeting is called by them, to the cost of calling and holding the meeting being received by the company in advance.
Neither limited companies nor incorporated charities are designed to be run as member democracies. Pressure from other parties for that to happen is always likely to end in frustration. and dieappointment. A Community Benefit Society is probably the nearest match to a democratic members' preservation society which still affords the vital protection of limited liability. Such a vehicle would appear to have the potential to resolve much of the tension between the PLC board and some of the other parties.

 

This may be true of a "normal" limited company, but a heritage railway is not a normal limited company. For a start the shareholders did not buy their shares for any material gain, the shares being effectively worthless and unsaleable. Secondly the shareholders are only interested in the correct governance of the company insofar as they are interested in the company as a whole, which, for the vast majority of the shareholders (by number of shareholders, not number of shares held), is between hardly and not at all, having bought the shares as a way of donating money. Indeed, many shareholders are probably now deceased. There are a small number of shareholders that do have a great interest in the running of the company, but, by and large, they are outnumbered, both in number and shareholding, by those who don't care but are happy to lend their proxy votes to the incumbent board. All of which doesn't really add up to shareholders making judgement as to whether change on the board is required.

 

and you don't see anything wrong in that, either?

 

It must be you, because it certainly wasn't me.

No, of course it doesn't have to be provided, however, that doesn't mean that it might not be a good idea to make this information available. There are good reasons for doing so and only bad ones for not doing so. Not doing so because there is no compulsion to do so is not a good reason.

 

Agreed.

This forum is generally a fairly good indicator of general sentiment, albeit you have to filter for the extremes.

 

All of which confirms that taking account of expectations and wishes of those involved in heritage railways, particularly volunteers, use of the traditional limited company is far from ideal. The fact remains that directors' power and duties as well as the rights of shareholders are governed by company law for which purpose heritage railway companies are indisputably deemed to be "normal". By and large volunteers tend to want more democratic and responsive controlling entities similar to unincorporated preservation societies. That's manifest in dislike of legally proper proxy voting by distant shareholders. Probably there'd be a preference for only those turning up at AGM's being able to vote? That's not legally possible so the tension continues between those who actually run heritage railways and those who think they should.

 

Some jottings of mine on page 4 of this week’s West Somerset Free Press.

I see this nonsense has made it to page 16 of this month’s ‘Railnews’. (The pink story.) I can feel a letter to the editor there coming on…

Robin

 

With a significant exception at the WSR, the majority of heritage railway structures have charitiable bodies at the apex of their corporate structure. Those bodies have trustees, and an important aspect of their role is in the first two syllables of the word "trustee" - trust. It is that element that is missing around WSR, and has been at the core of a number of heritage railway issues where boards have come under challenge from railway supporters. In the same way (but over different issues), in the CofE, loss of trust has deposed one Archbishop and left the other deeply weakened.

Once the centrality of trust is understood, the question of proxies or of postal votes can be seen for the red herring that it is - when an issue really matters, remote shareholders do emerge and engage, as we have seen at the L&B this year. Company law does restrict the ability of limited companies to prevent people voting by proxy, and it is also true that those voting by proxy have a limited view of information because of their distance. The answer to that is not to reduce their rights, but to provide a clearer and fairer view of the information that they need to be able to cast their votes in an informed way.

That means that what matters is culture, and proper engagement with stakeholders. A core aspect of the issues at WSR is the view that the railway's business is the railway's business. There are valid reasons why that may be so, but it's a fundamental misjudgement. The cash and labour to support heritage railways, especially large ones, is hard to obtain. Those with an open culture will draw more to themselves, and develop engagement. Those that put hurdles in the way of reasonable questions raise the question of "what do they have to hide".

 

Well, from the scenes on the Williton webcam just now it must be "come in fancy dress day". Some very flamboyantly dressed people and lots of arm-waving and laughing. This must be a spoof , people on the WSR don't do happiness, or do they?

 

The points made in the statement by Robin are just inaccurate and 'dumbed' down to an audience of uninformed readers which this paper will circulate to.

Why would BL-NF operations cause a massive problem to the running of the WSR core services? It has happened in the past. I don't understand the point about heavy maintenance renewals not being able to have closure periods.

The signalling at Taunton is due to be going through a re-signalling scheme within the next few years so it's current 1980s design is irrelevant.

 

You may disagree with Robin, but slinging the mud you started about people with letters after their name isn’t going to win people round.

I profoundly disagree with your assertion that even a limited scheme starting at BL will come for little disruption, and since there appears to be some desire for it to possibly be further up the railway at some, the disruption may be quite significant.

whether the proposal is overall good or bad for the WSR I have no idea. I can see under certain conditions and with the acceptance of considerable compromises it might be beneficial. (Perhaps “someone” will pay for infrastructure improvements in some future scheme)
. Perhaps this is just about maintaining good and productive links with the CC. However, easy and straightforward it will never be. Lower impact than some other schemes, maybe.

On balance though I find it hard to disagree that there are better ways to spend £137,000.

There was no call for what you said. You may be right, Robin may be right. Let’s discuss without the mud eg?

 

The law, by and large, tells you what you must do and what you can't do. That doesn't mean that everything else is what you should do.

 

All of which may be the case (although it isn't), but it really doesn't make any difference to the fact that the whole "connection of the WSR with the Main Line" case has been examined time and again over the last forty years and has always come up with the same answer, that it will be expensive and that the local authority is unwilling to fund it, as was BR then NR and the WSR can't afford to fund it. It doesn't need £137,000 to be spent to find out that this is still the case, as it will be, since nothing significant has changed in the past forty years.

 

The article posted below Robin's piece, within the same post, states 'If it went ahead, an hourly park and ride service would use the Minehead branch as far as Bishops Lydeard'. That's the current proposal.

Why do you profoundly disagree? Voyager units used to shuttle back and forth to Taunton on steam gala days, long before the successful trial in 2019 with GWR. The GBRf contract when Mk2s and 57s/67s were based at BL overnight. The WSR regularly gets trains in off the mainline network, almost on a daily basis, and some of these work through to Minehead. These things all point to one thing.

 

Any concept of a service through to Minehead when there is already a good, subsidised bus service running exactly parallel, is for the birds. Quite apart from anything else, the council won’t subsidise two competing transport providers along the same transport corridor.

(For those who haven’t been keeping up at the back, local council finances are dire, and most councils are either fast working towards delivering, or will within the next two years be mandated to deliver, what is called the “Legal minimum service level”. That doesn’t include subsidising fantasy rail travel).

For a service to BL - how often, ie on which days? The WSR gets, say, 150k passengers, but how many of those are coach parties and how many currently come by car? Evidence elsewhere is that a rail connection does not drive much traffic - possibly some change mode, but it is hard to imagine the service would generate more than a few thousand passengers a year. It’s hard to see any viability even there, certainly not for a year-round service, or year-round-on-operating-days.

For any business for which cash flow is so critical - and most heritage railways are in that boat - looking for sources of grant funding has a certain siren charm. But for every opportunity, you have to also look for the opportunity cost. It is hard to see that any plausible level of traffic would be transformative for the WSR, and in the meantime you have to ask - for the managers and directors of the railway, what part of the core role is taking a back burner to free up the management to concentrate on thinking about Taunton? Pursuing the scheme even just with management time is not free of cost.

Tom

 

IF the scheme is to BL only and IF there aren’t any WSR connecting services, then the impact is limited to that part of the railway from the connection to BL. At BL there is the question of how those services interact with the WSR operations. At the most basic level, even if the incoming service from TN bounces off the buffers, (say 10 min turnaround) there is around 15mins of every hour (in which a train will arrive) when the station is not completely free for the WSR to arrive, run round or go to/from shed. Double that problem if there is a WSR DMU connecting service. So very quickly the occupation of the station (two platforms and no separate run round with the shed on the mainline end of the layout, has a significant occupation to deal with.

You also need a BL signaller whenever the train will run or an investment in alternative signalling arrangements. If no change to the signalling That means the BL signaller will probably have to be paid staff, and at least one person employed solely for that purpose whose rest days etc will have to be covered, which means at least one other member of staff who is available whenever they have to be (though they may do other things too). Volunteers can fill in the gaps, but it would be risky to rely too heavily on being able to find a volunteer to cover sickness, holiday, training etc etc.

Now - you might build a platform for the mainline services, a distance from the current station and separate the problem, and that was something I observed some pages ago.

Finally, whatever anyone thinks, the mainline train will have to take precedence over the WSR services. Which means that the 15mins in the hour may not always line up with carefully crafted plans.

So to sum up, even an incoming charter once a week (especially if that travels up the line and therefore makes use of capacity further along the railway) is easier to accommodate than a regular all year service. This is a very significant step for the WSR.

In your opinion and possibly experience. I think there is a big difference between mentioning your qualifications where relevant but otherwise not doing and people listing them out in every scenario. It’s the first time I have seen Robin list those letters.

 

Is the BL car park full on a normal WSR operating day? If yes, this poses a potential issue unless someone funds a bigger car park.
Any commuter or park/ride service from BL to Taunton will need to run early enough for people to get to work/change for trains to get them to Bristol/Exeter for work, meaning spaces will be occupied from early til late. WSR visitors won't be happy if they can't park.
It'll also have to be competitively priced against the bus service and probably quicker to change people's behaviours.

If they're going to resignal the mainline perhaps it'd also be worth a feasibility study on running an independent line along the old formation into the bay platform at the Norton end of Platform 5, just in case someone wins the EuroMillions!

 

If I was to dust off my PhD in the bleeding obvious.......

Taunton is due for resignalling

If you want to improve access to the WSR from the mainline now is the time to start thinking about it otherwise its another 40 years or a lorra lorra loot

So the WSR/Council/Whoever needs to think about what It/They might like out of it. They wont be doing their jobs properly if they done.

So far so good

The question is looking at whats possible is it worth even spending the money on a detailed proposal. The suggestion is no and there is sound evidence to suggest that those who say move on nothing worth looking at are right.

 

There is quite a large difference between "making sure that the WSR keeps its main line connection/simplifying access to that mainline connection" which is what a PhD in the bleedin' obvious would flag up to anyone working on the resignalling plan, and "a Park and Ride service operating out of Bishop's Lydeard", which it appears, is what the £137,000 will be spent looking at.