West Somerset Railway General Discussion

That's a bold statement, especially given the annual accounts. I hope he's right - but it has the whiff of a chairman's vote of confidence in the club manager.

 

I’ll be corrected if I’m wrong, but IIRC this is the first year the accountants have ‘qualified’ the WSR accounts.

Frankly, the past 6 years have been a disaster, with worse in prospect.

Happy? Well, if that’s how you interpret the fixed smiles because anything else has you sent to the Gulag…

 

Any update on the DMU appeal?

 

In the 2018/9 accounts the auditor stated ( page 15 )
QUOTE “ indicate a material uncertainty exists that may cast significant doubt on the
ability of the company to continue as a going concern. Our opinion is not modified in
this matter” END QUOTE.

The last sentence referred to the six months delay awaiting trading results. I.e spring
and summer running results.

Later in the same accounts p.24
QUOTE “ These events or conditions indicate that a material uncertainty exists
that may cause significant doubt on the company’s ability to continue as a
going concern “ END QUOTE.

There have been similar expressions of concern in all subsequent annual reports and
accounts but not quite so dire.

The concerns in the current report should I suggest be tempered by the fact the
Auditor has signed off the accounts including the Directors’ statement that they are
confident wrt 12 months trading.

Perhaps rather than ‘qualifications’ the comments are ‘reservations’

A cynic might say the Railway is tottering along on the bottom rung. Such can be said of
the majority of Heritage Railways unfortunately.

As 35B has suggested. The Chairman’s statement reads as a ‘pat on the back’ to his GM.
Based on personal observations he is right to do so. The actual operating results I.e. revenue
to costs ratio is improving. The capital requirements are however increasing, stock
overhaul, infrastructure etc.

Regarding the discussions wrt 53808 and whether the six WSR payments will be made.
Stating the obvious, it depends on the WSR surviving. Let’s, whatever the past, all
support ( or as a minimum not throw sh one t ) the WSR

Michael Rowe

 

Back in reality, EMF & WSR alongside support from the SVR have agreed the 3 year hire of 7812 Erlestoke Manor to the WSR. Erlestoke has proven a reliable and capable engine whilst 7802 Bradley Manor will return to the SVR following overhaul. I'm sure many will agree this is great news for all parties.

 

To clarify slightly 7812 will return to the SVR this coming week and work seasonal trains this winter. It will then remain in SVR service until the SVR Spring Steam Gala 18th - 21st April. The intention is that 7802 & 7812 will work together at that event. Transport South Westwards will then take place in time for 7812 to participate in the WSR Spring Steam Spectacular 2nd to 5th May 2025.The loco will then remain on the WSR until the end of December 2027.

 

But, as they say, ‘cash is king’ and the reserves get ever smaller.

Interesting, of course, that the WSR plc felt the need to appoint a ‘Director of Exterior Fundraising’. So presumably there was a perceiHas £1 been raised?

So no small or medium sized steam loco in service for off-peak, then?

Coal consumption figures would be interesting.

 

[QUOTE="Robin Moira White, post: 2899383, member: 24598"

Robin, you say

QUOTE “So no small or medium sized steam loco in service for off-peak, then?

Coal consumption figures would be interesting.” END QUOTE

Common sense perhaps suggests I should ignore your comments !

However I cannot help remembering that you were the person who disposed of a
0-6-0 pannier tank ( No.6412 ) and utilised the sale proceeds to buy Manor 4-6-0
No. 7821 ( which has never turned a wheel in the service of the WSR )

The WSR now only runs Scheduled services from late March until November 3.
Consists this year have been two sets of seven coaches at the peak Summer period.
From September until now ( last day of scheduled normal services today )
two sets of six coaches.

( There are no scheduled services twixt Christmas and the New Year or the Lent
Term half term, which in the past occasioned four or five coach trains. The
various Christmas services, Santa, Panto etc are short gentle low mileage workings.
Whether you utilise a Class 2 or Class 4 loco in terms of running costs matters little
I suspect.

2024 motive power has primarily been ; two Manors, one 2-6-0 (No. 9351 marginally the
highest mileage loco) and one Hawksworth Pannier. (9466 ). There have been other visitors
for short periods during the year.

The smaller the active loco fleet then simplistically the lower total motive power depreciation

It is true that the service could have been theoretically handled by 45xx or 55xx 2-6-2 tanks ; with
slower acceleration, timekeeping would have been more challenging ( as was seen some
two decades past when one Summer Nos 5542 and 5553 handled most of the July August
traffic. ) With the harder loco working required it is doubtful whether the Class 2 locos
actually used less coal than had Class 4 locos been available.

One final comment. The WSR over the last twenty years has managed a small fleet of
locos extremely well. Diesel replacements are rare, locos achieve their full ten
years between general overhauls, ( 9351 achieved 96K miles between overhauls ), I
would go so far as to say no other Heritage Railway does it better.

I know you feel aggrieved wrt WSR but …..

Michael Rowe

 

Gawd, the old cracked records continue to play.

I was the Chairman of the WSRA which, after an extensive consideration of the costs of restoration and likely (minimal) use of 6412 on the WSR in future, consulted with its membership and received overwhelming support for the disposal.

Two groups of members came forward and were assured that they would have priority if they could match the South Devon offer. Both came back to say they could not.

I have been delighted to see the use made of 6412 by the SDR, where it is ideally suited to their year-round traffic.

I note that your post has been liked by ‘Aberdare’: Andy Foster. Andy came to the WSRA Board as the WSR plc’s CME and recommended the purchase of Ditcheat Manor as a solution for the then motive power crisis. As it turned out, the inspectorate would not grant the hoped-for extension to the ticket but the WSR has its own second Manor quietly and safely stored at Swindon awaiting its time.

Running two Manors next year will not do much for coal economy, particularly off-peak, given the light passenger loads of the trains that have been running past Station House, Stogumber in the past few weeks. Presumably that factor, along with the 53808 payment and the increased wage and NI costs since the budget, have all been factored into a plan to see cash reserves maintained.

Perhaps you might venture a prediction as to the cash reserve position this time twelve months hence?

 

Sorry Robin I cannot let this go unchallenged. You have chosen to write some misleading or untrue statements, which you may indeed believe to be correct, to suit your point of view. Your training within the legal service as a Barrister has served you well to be selective in this process.

To correct you on a few facts:-

1. I did not approach the WSRA Board to recommend their purchase of Ditcheat Manor, I never attended any WSRA board meetings at this time. The board of the WSR plc had a standing policy to purchase a further locomotive and the then owner Ken Ryder had contacted me to advise that the asked for price had been reduced further. At previous WSR plc board meetings I had advised the board of the availability of the locomotive but due to the price I could not recommend purchase. On this occasion I advised the board that I thought the price reflected the value of the locomotive and recommended that the board make the purchase. Due to other capital projects at the time after discussion the board decided not to purchase. As a WSR plc director Robin was at this meeting. [For clarification I should add that I became a WSR plc director in 1986 and retired in December 1989 when I became the WSR's CME. After this time I continued to attend board meetings as an "Associate Director" until October 2016. Associate Directors were nothing to do with the WSRA but paid staff members who attended board meetings without rights to vote, attend and information or directors liabilities.]
2. It was you Robin that suggested to the WSR plc board at the above board meeting that the WSRA purchase the locomotive. Consequent upon this I was directed to examine the locomotive on the WSRA's behalf. Following that examination I reported that although in poor condition following some repairs to the boiler it may be possible for it to enter service for 2 seasons provided sufficient written documentation of the previous boiler inspections remained. This circumstance arose because although the tubes had been fitted some 10 years previously and the boiler required a full internal examination it had been lifted outside the frames more recently giving the opportunity for a full external examination. A similar situation arrises with 53808, the last "10 year" internal examination being in 2012 and the external in 2015. Unfortunately when we were able to source all the historical documents from several organisations there was not sufficient written evidence on the external condition to allow it to continue unexamined whilst replacing the tubes and conducting an internal examination in accordance with PSSR 2000 Regs 8 & 9.
3. The Inspectorate did not get involved. The decision that the boiler required a full overhaul was taken internally within the WSR.
4. Extension of boiler ticket. There was never any suggestion of the boiler ticket exceeding the period stipulated in the Written Scheme of Examination for the boiler. Internal and external examinations would both have been within 10 years but out of phase with each other.
5. Coal economy. For heritage railways running at 25 mph max there is very little difference in coal consumption between locomotives in the class 3 and 4 categories doing the same work. The WSR maintained (and still do) reasonably accurate coal consumption records for each locomotive. The annual consumption for all duties including test steaming, light engine moves etc would come out at 60 lbs to 70 lbs per mile run. The most economical being 4160 due to it's Meleso high superheat boiler, 53808 being similar, closely followed by 3850. A bigger effect on coal consumption would be condition of valve and piston rings, the locomotive with the highest consumption would change to the lowest after a valve re-bore and new rings.

Passenger loadings. My experience (as a driver) of passenger loadings this season have been very encouraging with the usual exceptions of the first train out of Minehead as far as Watchet and the last train from Bishops Lydeard as far as Watchet, all others seem to have been comfortably filled.

Your suggestion that the possible purchase of Ditcheat Manor was a solution to a "motive power crisis" is quite unkind. My only [inherited] crisis was in Spring 1990 at the start of my tenure, after then either sufficient motive power was available at the railway or a locomotive that could be made available at short notice. Ditcheat Manor would only have solved a crisis which was several years over the horizon!

Apologies for having to set the record straight but the readers of this deserve to be given the correct facts.

Andy Forster.

 

About time a little more positivity is injected into this thread as opposed to the doom and gloom we have seen recently. I am sure some folks will find a way to turn this into a negative but never mind....

Progress has been ongoing on multiple projects within the WSR Wagon Division at both Minehead and Williton. BR Vanwide B784676 (owned by DEPG) has had all new timber including some complex joinery on the door frames. All parts are now produced and the down side awaits fitting. The Up side is complete and ready for topcoat.

Meanwhile at Williton, following the outshopping of GWR Chaired Sleeper Wagon no.100678 in the Summer, we have focused our attention on two further GW vehicles - GWR 5 Plank Open no.135744 and GWR Macaw B Bogie Bolster no.32742.

The 5 Plank has fast become the most comprehensive wagon rebuild on the WSR in preservation, with multiple replacement sections of solebar let in where the originals were corroded beyond repair. More recently, the journals have been turned in the wheel lathe at Williton to remove pitting on the surface and have been fitted under the wagon for the final time. We have now began the replanking process with a third of the floor planks now fitted.

Macaw B no.32742 has come into the works recently for some small weld repairs, new gusset plates at one end, spot replanking on the deck and a full repaint. It is still early days for this one, but we hope that it and our other two current projects will be completed by the Spring Gala 2025.
For the near future, we have our eyes on two Mink A vans, no.139760 and no.126779 which both require full replanking. 126779 also requires various other jobs including axlebox and brake cylinder overhaul. This vehicle has not ran for over 20 years possibly more, so is well overdue some TLC!

 

I would respectfully suggest you look in the top-left corner of Wales, where the FR and WHR regularly turns out 5 or more steam locomotives per day, 4 days per week (with trains running 7 days per week in the high season), pulling long trains over steeply graded lines with very high locomotive availability and very few diesel replacements. The NGG16s and Double Engines accrue several 1,000s of miles per year, so will be approaching that sort of mileage when they come due for their 10 yearly overhauls.

Thus is in no way intended to denigrate the accomplishments of the loco department at the WSR.

 

All very commendable, but how much does this work cost , and how much income do they bring in? Are they possibly soaking up donations that could be better used elsewhere? This isn't a WSR issue, really, ad the WSR wagon collection is actually rather better than most, having a high non-BR content; too many other railways are all restoring much the same content of BR-built wagons, and ignoring (or don't have!) earlier ones. I think goods wagon restoration has become more pursued by volunteers because they are a lot simpler and cheaper to do, and the results are there to see in a matter of months - sign of thetimes, in that many people don't want to stick at a project for years?

 

Andy

Really helpful, thank you.

I have the note from the then WSR plc Chairman asking the WSRA to purchase Ditcheat. I’ll dig it out.

Robin

 

The PLC will pay for materials on vehicles they own, but often the WSRA will support work on PLC owned wagons with grant funding so recently our efforts have cost the PLC a negligable amount. Vehicle owners contribute to their own wagons, for example the DEPG have fully funded the work on their Vanwide, and the 813 Fund continue to fund the work on their wagons. We will gratefully accept donations to go towards consumables but don't rely on donations for significant purchases like large timber orders. I don't believe we take donations away from any other causes.

With regard to income they bring in, admittedly it is negligible however there are some exceptions, for example PMV S1464 is used every winter as a generator van (previously for Winterlights, now Panto Trains).

Generally speaking we are restoring vehicles to early 1940s condition. Agreed pre-BR vehicles are much more interesting, but I admire the efforts of our counterparts at the GCR and NVR (just two examples), that do fine work on post-BR stock. We do have a smaller side project of a 1950s/60s era Parcels train in which the BR Vanwide, BR liveried PMV and Fruit C will run.

Our small group was started in 2021 after members of the previous WSR Wagon group retired. Started out repainting GWR Toad 68765 and haven't looked back since!

 

Lots of benefits of doing up wagons, coming from another group mainly focussing on pre-BR wagons (at the moment, phase 2 awaits...)! As Seb has explained for their case, and in many other cases too, it's common for many wagons to be both privately owned and funded. So they don't really take away financial resources.

As for volunteer resources, I think the achievability of wagons is definitely a positive, there are plenty of people who want to get involved in something practical but don't have the knowledge to do some of the more specialist activities. They're also a good way to learn some of those skills. I've done all sorts of things on wagons where I'd have been a bit nervous about doing them for the first time if they were on something more critical like a loco.

It's good publicity too, a train of nicely restored wagons is much more likely to get in the media than another line of Mk1s, and generally gives of a positive attitude of "The railway is progressing, restoring doing stuff" which is after all our main aim.

Railways need to make money to survive, but it's a means to an end - the end is our hobby of playing steam trains, and if some of us want to play with wagons (along with all sorts of other railway roles and responsibilities that I know many wagon group people hold on their railways) that's how we'll spend our time

 

Coming from a line with a strong wagon group (concentrating primarily on pre-grouping and grouping-era wagons ) I think the morale boost they give can't be understated: in tough times when there is so much focus on trying to do events to just get the public in, the benefits of doing some projects that are done purely for their heritage value can't be overstated.

Tom

 

I agree with everything in Flying Scotsman's post even his suggestion about the the end purpose. That's what most members, and especially volunteers, almost certainly see as heritage railways' raison d etre. However that flags up a fault line running through the movement for those railways that are charities or are supported by charities. Their trustees' duty is to achieve different and specific public benefit purposes. If an organisation's primary purpose is, in practice, to enable people to enjoy their hobby of playing steam trains it could almost certainly not be a charity itself and the ability of a support charity to sustain it would be restricted. The resulting tension between member and volunteer expectations and charitable purposes is inherent in the corporate structures of many heritage railways. New structures such as charitable community benefit societies may be better suited to harmonising member and volunteer aspirations with public benefit obligations.

 

Loco costs: even in this era of coal at £400 / ton, I think coal costs can be overplayed. What matters is the total cost of running - that means the overhaul cost, in-service maintenance and coal / oil / water. So coal is important, but it is only one component in the per-mile operation cost of a locomotive.

One of the key drivers of that cost is how many miles you get between overhauls. Suppose you run 40k steam miles per year. If you can reliably get 80k miles per loco, you need to complete five overhauls every ten years. If you can only get 50k miles, you need to do 8 overhauls every ten years, which is proportionately more expensive. (Of course, high mileage can't come at the expense of running the loco into the ground such that the next overhaul becomes prohibitive - an issue I believe the NYMR hit on an occasion).

The optimal loco for a heritage line in my opinion is one that is slightly too large for the duties on offer. In the WSR case with sustained gradients and a regular need for 7 coach trains, that probably means a class 4/5 - a Manor looks like a very good loco for the line. The issue with a smaller loco on the same duties is that it has to be pushed harder: that leads to more wear and tare and ultimately cuts the likely ten year mileage. Pushing a smaller boiler harder is also likely to lead to more expensive future boiler overhauls. At which point, some (probably small) saving in coal spent lighting up is basically all swallowed up. (*)

A "too large" loco won't actually use much more coal: to lift a given load up a particular hill requires a given amount of energy, so there is no reason that it should need to burn more coal to do so (beyond what ever it needs for its own excess weight). It will probably be better than a "too small" loco on account of less fire throwing - also a consideration in this era of increased risk and sensitivity about line side fires. The main issue in my mind about large locos is the increased cost of overhaul on account of there just being "more" of everything - that is probably more of a consideration if your large loco is a Bulleid pacific. If you were comparing quite similar locos - say a Hall vs Manor - I doubt there is a great deal of difference. (Same number of axle boxes, same amount of brake rigging, same amount of motion to refurbish each overhaul etc). In such a scenario, other factors probably come into play when assessing the total cost of operation, such as whether a loco has an active fundraising group associated.

Is there nonetheless an option to run small locos on small duties? If you had regular 3/4 coach trains, would a small pannier tank or 14xx make sense? Well, potentially yes if it allowed you to generate cashflow at a time of year when it wasn't economic to run 6/7 coach trains. But then you run into another problem, which is what you do when it isn't available but is required. If you only have one such loco in traffic and it is not available, you end up substituting a much larger loco, which removes some of the gains. Or else you need two such locos in traffic to cover one duty, but then you have increased your fleet size and therefore - over a ten year cycle - how many locos you need to overhaul. We are seeing that issue on the Bluebell at the moment: we have several regular duties that are in the "medium" range for us (class 1/2) but only one medium loco for the last couple of years (No. 65). So then frequently the light trains get hauled by a big loco because it is the only one available. Most weekends we have two “medium” duties (the B service and the dining train) but invariably at the moment, one gets covered by a large loco.

There are lots of sticks you could use to beat the WSR - but I’d suggest loco provision is not one of them. To my outside eyes, they look like they operate one of the tightest and most stable loco operations of any of the major standard gauge heritage railways, with good reliability and high mileage from a small fleet.

(*) As a historical aside: when in the 1920s Swindon started rebuilding 4-6-0 "Stars" with bigger boilers to create the "Castle" class, the cost justification was not about using the additional boiler power to haul heavier trains or pull the same trains faster. Instead, the justification was that with a bigger boiler, it needed to run further from its peak evaporation rate, which cut boiler repair costs. Clearly the GWR had access to very good statistics about both the repair costs and coal costs of different types of boiler, and were sure in their assessment that a bigger boiler didn't lead to significantly different coal consumption on equivalent duties. Heritage economics are a bit different, but if you use a larger loco wisely in terms of continuous days in use, it shouldn't be significantly more expensive to run than a slightly smaller one.

Tom