S&D Railway Trust

That second shot is a cracker. A very young audience to the right as well. Maybe they will be in the next generation of volunteers?

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From a letter sent out by Roger Hardingham it appears that the shed and track at Washford Yard is close to being taken over by West Somerset Railway Heritage Trust. Fingers crossed that the deal does the distance.
Pat

 

Given the fears of what might have been, that will be a good outcome.

 

Given the circumstances of the eviction I hope the S&D Trust are getting a decent wodge of money out of this deal; which’d still be better value for the H-Trust than if they’d had to build their own shed.

 

Update now on S&DRT web-site:

https://www.sdrt.org/agreement-between-the-sdrt-and-the-west-somerset-railway-heritage-trust/

 

Lots I could say but won’t.

I hope that the agreement with the WSRHT re Washford gets completed and legally valid and enforceable and that there has been due diligence.

And not a knock down price to a Trust that never uttered anything in support of the SDRT when the notice to quit was served back in February 2020 or subsequently to challenge the actions of the WSR PLC.

 

The S&D Trust need money to be put towards the overhaul of 53808, so being pragmatic best to finally sell and put the past behind them, and move on to the next problem, how to find the funds to overhaul the 7F, and that the trust pledge their future with 53808 to the MHR, ideally some agreement with the Urie group to assist with the overhaul, once 499 is done?

 

As i have already said, the S&D need the money, It does though, leave a sour taste, that its being sold to an organisation that is widely perceived as being the PLC's Poodle, PLC says jump, and it asks how high, but its money, no matter how tainted, hopefully it will be the point where official ties can now be taken as fully severed, the only remaining subject being how much are the WSR PLC willing to pay to extract themselves from the obligation to overhaul the 7f, and that's got to be one for the legal teams on both sides,

 

Well, if the loco agreement is as robust as the lease agreement for Washford then the S & D Trust had best get the collecting boxes out.!

 

Didn't the WSR publicly acknowledge its obligations when the loco moved to the MHR? I think that would be hard to wriggle out of if they publicly had mentioned it

 

Yes i believe they did, but that does not mean they have the money to pay for it, it might be on the balance sheet, but that's just accountancy, My own impression is, that the company will somehow try to engineer a way to avoid their obligations, most likily by trying to impose conditions that are not acceptable to the S&D Trust, so they can say, they , not us have reneged on the agreement,

 

As a matter of interest has any loco owning body ever taken legal action to enforce the terms of a "use it and fix it" agreement when the user has refused to honour this?

 

The owner of 34010 did, against the NYMR - who ended up buying the loco off him to get themselves out of the mess - and I think he may well have done something similar against other railways for the industrial locos that he owned.

 

I suspect not as in my view such agreements were deeply flawed from the outset. They seemed too good to be true. The owning group don't have to worry about overhaul costs and the user gets free or substantially discounted use for a long period. Unless a sinking fund is created, which would need to be a restricted one in the case of a charity user, there are typically many other worthy calls on the user's funds so the overhaul costs becomes "tomorrow's problem". It can be confusing to see a substantial financial provision for overhaul in the user's accounts but "provision" doesn't mean any cash has actually been set aside. It's just an accounting entry to record a financial liability.
If the user does not honour the contractual commitment it's highly unlikely that a court would order it to do so (so called "specific performance"). There's an established principle that a court will not order specific performance where a breach of contract can be compensated by monetary damages.
That's where the fun starts. How do you calculate those? What account should be taken of any work done by the owner, hire on visits away to other railways, the condition of the locomotive at the start of the hire , the standard of overhaul required etc. ( The user should not be liable for any "betterment" i.e. putting the locomotive in a better condition than it was at the start of the contract.) The list, and the argument, can be extensive but is almost certainly going to end up with a figure well below the final cost of overhaul. Unless the user is assured that the locomotive will be hired back to it for a long term on completion of the overhaul there's little incentive for it to spend scarce funds and resources on an early return to traffic. Finally the owner has to weigh up the cost of litigation and the chances that ,if successful, the user would be able to pay. If it doesn't have the funds litigation would just waste funds that might otherwise have gone towards overhaul costs.
I think "use now pay later" loco hire contracts were an accident waiting to happen. Someone may prove me wrong but the evidence suggests they are best avoided.

 

Really? When? I don't have the full history but it certainly has not been owned by the NYMR for at least 20 years

 

The last thing you want is for it to go to court - that just uses up money.

It's also probably worth remembering that personalities can change and with it different pragmatic approaches may appear.

From a WSR plc point of view, even allowing that they have a responsibility for the overhaul, they would be justified in saying that that is predicated on doing the work in their own workshop. So any decision to go elsewhere and they would be justified in feeling they were only responsible for work to a value that they could have done themselves. (In other words - if they estimate that a bottom end overhaul might cost £150k at Minehead but £250k done commercially elsewhere, they would be fully justified in only contributing £150k towards it - which is not enough to get the job done commercially).

Crystal ball time: there is probably a solution out there that is more piecemeal than the binary approaches people are postulating ("either the WSR do all of it or none of it"). I wouldn't be surprised if eventually some solution works out in which, say, the bottom end is done at Minehead, paid for by the WSR plc; the boiler is done either at Ropely or off site, paid for by the MHR; the tender is done at Ropely by, and paid for, S&D volunteers; and the loco is run in and operated for a season at Minehead before going back to the MHR. That's only a "f'r instance" - many other permutations might be possible, but my hunch is that when all the parties sit down and start negotiating on a normal basis ( i.e. each party starting from "what do I really want that is of value to me, what am I to willing trade that is of values to others but I have in abundance, and where are my red lines") then some compromise will emerge that might cause a degree of internet froth about whether it was "fair" or not, or whether an aggrieved party got "justice", but which ultimately will all be water under the bridge.

Tom

 

As quoted, having an provision in the accounts, does not always mean there is a pot of money set aside, Personally, i don't think there is any money set aside, if there was, its been spent years ago, to keep the railway solvent, How might this play out, I think all ties will be severed, between the trust and WSR, after all they were told to in effect " get off my railway" How will this be clothed, by the PLC attaching terms, such as you need to sign an 15 year running agreement, handing us total control, which of course will not be acceptable, in the end i think it will come down to an agreed schedule of payments made by the WSR, to the MHR, in respect of some of the work needed, with the rest having to come from donations, towards the overhaul costs, it won't be enough of course to meet the full costs,

 

Some people are assuming that 53808 will remain on the Mid Hants. It may well do. However it was brought in as a need was identified for a working loco to fill a gap in the loco roster for a couple of years.

Now it is no longer working, and the MHR have plenty of their own locos under overhaul, it becomes a different proposition. Especially as the MHR have been burned in the past overhauling locos they don’t own.

Will be interesting to see how the situation develops.

 

Surprised that you don't know about this, but perhaps you haven't been around long enough.....

I can't remember the exact details of when, and can't be bothered to wade through old issues of Moors Line to check, but the NYMR paid 80K for it to settle the obligation then offered it for sale. I think they got 20K for it from SLL and regarded the loss of 60K as being as cheap a way out as could be managed. I think this was when Roger Heath was NYMR Chairman. FWIW, I wish they had kept it and done it as a slow-burn restoration but that's water under the bridge.