Annual General Meeting - Saturday 14 November 2009

[D1013]

This year's AGM will be held on Saturday, 14 November 2009 at the Birmingham & Midland Institute.

[D1013]

For those who could not make the AGM, the Chairman's speech included the following information:-

As most of you know, it’s been a somewhat special year for the WLA as it’s not often we had the privilege of running two nicely turned out Westerns for the whole year! Special thanks must go to the working members for keeping our two machines serviceable; as usual, there’s been a lot of hard work in keeping everything in running order. Various highlights included D1062’s visit to the West Somerset Railway in June 2009, closely followed by a visit to the East Lancs Railway in July 2009 – again, I’m sure everyone here would like to pass on their thanks to the working members who helped organise the visits and those who helped to prepare the locomotive as it would be easy not to fully appreciate all the preparation work that has go into making these visits possible. Anyway, the visits were highly successful and generated a lot of goodwill for both the WLA and SVR, including making new friends and members along the way. At the present time, we’ve got three tentative invites for D1062 to visit other railways – these include Swanage, Nene Valley and West Somerset. Obviously we cannot just simply go off and visit any railway whenever we get an invite as the priority is to help provide the service for the SVR whilst keeping on top of all the maintenance issues. Any invite will be carefully considered by the Committee and will need the support and agreement of the Working Members.

I’m pleased to say that Western Ranger soldiered on during the year, continuing to work the highly successful Driver Experience Courses, generating just over £3,800 profit for the WLA. D1062 was been allocated to the SVR passenger services, when rostered for the Class 52 turns. All that’s about to change for next year as Mark Smith has started to rip all the wires out of 13, which of course, marks the start of her much awaited overhaul. I suppose looks can be deceptive as many people have queried why are we taking 13 out of service when it’s still performing OK and looks like a museum piece?! The main reason is of course to do with the wiring as it’s extremely tired and would be a potential fire risk if we carried on much longer. Various components throughout the loco will also be restored and work is now well underway. Rest assured, so long as we keep the funds coming in and keep up with your support, who knows - 13 could be our next main line loco!

For the record, D1013 worked her last regular service train on 12th September 2009, with the GWR Observation Coach for WLA members and friends and then we had another good send off on the Diesel Gala weekend in October with D1013 working the Saturday evening train – some brilliant photo’s around for the night scenes! We also managed to gather up some of the original (older) members of the WLA and it was great to see people like Phil Harper, Richard Holdsworth and Graham Howell.

D1062 performed really well during the year, with the opportunity to resolve one or two problems following the major overhaul. In general, I think it is fair to say that the loco has proved to be reliable and certainly if performance is anything to go by, there would be no problem in attaching 12 to 14 coaches and sending it to any part of the country on the main line! Of course, 62 will now have to step in for Ranger for the next 5 years or so and at the present time, she seems well placed for her new revenue generating role for Driver Experience Courses plus the SVR’s allowance for the passenger trains.

During the SVR’s Gala, some of you may have noticed that we managed to commandeer the beer tent at Bridgnorth – not to drink lots of beer particularly but to set out our sales stand and display photo’s and relics. In fact, during the year, we’ve seen some very good sales of various WLA stock, including clothes and mugs. Thanks to everyone who has been promoting and selling these items and especially to everyone who had been buying them, as all of our sales make a good contribution to our much needed funds and all helps to promote the WLA. Special thanks must go to Steve Willis for providing a D1011 number plate to help raise funds for which we found a buyer. It should also be mentioned that our raffle tickets have been selling really well – first prize is a replica D1062 number plate (again thanks to Steve) or £250 cash and the draw will later on.

Ian and myself attended a Diesel Groups Meeting on the 25 October. This included a review of the 2009 operating season following a number of failures with the KR based diesels. The SVR are looking for greater co-operation and co-ordination between the Groups together with appropriate paperwork for Maintenance and Fitness to Run Exams. There may also be a person representing the Diesel Groups reporting direct to the GM and a follow up meeting is due next year. Also, there will be a general tightening up of Health & Safety following the derailment of 43106’s tender at Hampton Loade and this could lead to tighter control on documentation, rules and regulations etc.

On the financial side, looking to the year ahead, we will of course, be continuing to look for ways of generating funds as cash remains very tight and is likely to remain so with the work required on 13. For the time being we are likely to rely on the goodwill of the SVR to allow our account to run into deficit but we must be careful that we do not stretch ourselves too much financially, or to stretch the support of the SVR. Please remember that anyone who is renewing their membership or is helping to recruit a new member; who is buying an item off our sales stand; who is buying a raffle ticket; who is making a donation etc etc is helping the WLA to look after and preserve what could be two of the best Class 52’s in the Country. The success of the WLA is not down to any one individual and if all of us do our bit to help and promote the WLA we can be assured of our continued success.

Thank you.