| | The Council of Management is the Trust's Board and is concerned more with strategy and fundraising with operational matters devolved to the trading subsidiary, the Swanage Railway Company. These notes provide an overview of some of the matters discussed this month. - The CoM as been considering both the way business is undertaken and also how to provide increased focus on key issues facing the SRT. The Assets and Membership & Volunteers groups have enabled some business to be considered in more depth away from the CoM and there has been a view that the CoM could now have fewer formal sessions. As a 'half way house', around half the 2007 CoM meetings will be structured as a brief formal meeting (dubbed 'MiniCoM') with the rest of the time given over to in depth consideration of a single topic. The first such meeting will be on January 13th where the topic will be 'fundraising'.
- The 2007 CoM meeting dates are: January 13th*, Feb 10th, March 24th* (Members Day), April 28th, May 19th*, June 30th, July28th*, September 1st, September 29th*, October 13th (AGM), November 3rd and December 1st*. Those meetings marked * will be 'MiniCoM's' plus a topic to be confirmed. The members open session will take place as usual at 2pm irrespective of the meeting type. Venues to be confirmed but will usually be rectory classroom.
- Members Day 2007 will be the weekend of March 24th/25th with a CoM Open Forum on the 24th at the Mowlem committee room.
- The SRT has received a proposal from HSUPS inviting the SRT to take over the assets and liabilities of HSUPS including their part restored Hampshire Unit. The SRT rejected this approach in view of the size of the liabilities. The Swanage Railway has been offered the use of another restored Hampshire unit for galas and events and it was felt that this provided a better option to satisfy the occasional heritage use.
- An approach had been received from a heritage railway that might take some of the SR surplus rolling stock including the Trust's unrestored Mk 1 SK. This was being followed up.
- An outline proposal for the construction of a significant building on the down platform at Harmans Cross was considered. The majority of the funding for this was already in place or had been offered by members. The SRT was being asked to contribute limited top-up funding over a three year period. The SRC was also providing some funding to enable the building to be larger than originally planned to provide additional operational facilities. The SRT welcomed this proposal and the additional funding was likely to be approved once some details were clarified.
- The budget for the remaining restoration work on Bulleid 4365 was reviewed and approved. This work relates to the fitting out of this vehicle by volunteers at Swanage. The approved budget includes the production of authentic Bournemouth Line moquette as used on these vehicles for services to the Swanage area.
- The SRT financial performance in 2006 continued to be encouraging and projections continued to show a useful surplus at year end that would enable some projects to be advanced.
- It was expected that the 2006 SRT Draw would show a profit of a little over £11k. This will be used to assist with the funding of several projects. It was decided that a Draw should again be undertaken in 2007 but that it should be focussed on a named project as this seemed to produce greater income. The restoration of Devon Belle Observation Car 14 will be the beneficiary of the 2007 Draw.
- The Santa Draw will be run this year with the beneficiary being the Churchill repatriation project.
- The SRT policies were reviewed and some changes adopted. This review is typically undertaken annually and aimed at ensuring that the policies remain relevant. The revised text will be published in due course.
The next CoM meeting will take place on Saturday 13th January 2007 at 2:00 pm in the Rectory Classroom, Church Hill, Swanage. An open forum to allow Members and volunteers to ask questions will be held prior to the start of formal business. |