Spa Valley Railway - Latest News

@Jamessquared As a very long term user of SE water for my water supply I would correct your words 'is simply failing' to 'has now failed'.

I hope the Government, who are now taking an interest in what is happening, step in asap and nationalise the company. IMHO there is no instant magic wand solution, but a strong management and a quickly put into action recovery plan will no doubt be costly, but at least in a company now owned by us the fact that we cannot live without a steady water supply will take priority.

Bryan

 

I wish I shared your confidence in the effect of change. While the top table may change, the majority of staff will not - including those on the ground whose work has failed.

I've worked around a number of organisations that have had changes of ownership, and the consistent theme is that what happens in the boardroom frequently has limited effect further down the organisation. That includes organisations privatised before the majority of employees' working lives started, but where practices like "waiting out" and an inability to make decisions retain very strong echoes of the public sector organisation that they used to belong to.

I have no doubt that a very hard kick up the backside is absolutely required, but much less confidence that a change of ownership will have any serious effect on its own.

 

My elderly aunt and uncle in East Grinstead haven't had water for nearly a week now.

 

Your prejudice against the public sector is very deeply embedded; you must have had some dismal experiences at a formative age. I worked for both private and public sector organisations and found strengths and weaknesses in both, but there was no obvious polarity.

 

I write as I find, because my experience in large organisations is that those behaviours are deeply embedded, and make significant change very difficult to achieve. I have not encountered those behaviours in private sector organisations in anything like the same way, nor have I found them tolerated.

I have no defence for South East Water's management, and part of the genius of the capitalist model is that an organisation's failure can cause those who fund it to lose their money outright - an incentive whose power is easily overlooked.

But I do not believe that nationalising them will, in and of itself, cause performance to improve. It might, done right, enable dramatic change but my concern is that a change of a few names will not lead to addressing deep seated issues.

 

The positive news is that the supply is still on at Tunbridge Wells West, the Bulleid is full, as is our tanker wagon, so there is hope yet for an uneventful weekend. In any case, we can phone up one of the water delivery companies and get it brought in as we did at Christmas and have done before. Contingency planning is something we're rather good at!

 

Read "Slide Rule", by Nevil Shute Norway (one of the most influential, on me, books I ever read).

Noel

 

Whereas I worked for a company that was nationalised and then became privatised. Light years between the two organisations and fair to say that most staff cared about all facets of the business far more in the private world. Before just lots of it doesn't matter the government will pay.

 

Read it years ago! It's probably still on a bookshelf somewhere, unless my wife has donated it to the Lions' bookstall.

 

Had that as a set reader in 4th year at grammar school. Right up my street. Much more readable than the Thomas Hardy we had to read for O Level the next year.

 

Back to the operational Spa Valley Railway.

I had really hoped to add a photo of 34053 working this weekend to get this thread back on track.

But I've managed to get myself up to my armpits in designing the maps to go with a Whitsun week 1972 car trip I made to Germany for steam.

Very late nights (01.00 hrs again this morning) is leaving me quite tired, and the need to not lose the plot as I work from all sorts of old and new documents etc is keeping me at home.

Bryan - I must plan better to keep my UK steam trips on the boil - B

 

His fiction is well worth reading too. 'On the Beach' is probably the most terrifying novel I've ever read - and it's not a horror!