Trust board gives update on railway's financial crisis

Llangollen Railway Trust Board has issued a statement on the financial crisis affecting the world-famous heritage attraction.

It highlights the fact that employees of the railway's public limited company - from which the board is quite separate - were recently issued with redundancy notices and also outlines the possibility that liquidator may have the option of auctioning off the railway's assets.  

As llanblogger has been reporting, on March 1 the board of Llangollen Railway PLC asked its bank to call in receivers after it became insolvent to the tune of about £350,000 and could not legally continue trading.

A firm of liquidators was called in which began the process of selling off the assets of the world-famous heritage attraction.

The Trust board, which remains completely solvent, has declared its intentions of buying as many of the railway's assets as possible and has already raised over £50,000 from a public appeal. https://llangollenrailway.enthuse.com/profile

The board also says in the statement it has meetings arranged with potential funding bodies. 

The board statement, posted as a PDF document on the board's own Facebook page, says: "The PLC has been formally under the control of the Administrators since Monday 22nd March and PLC employees were issued with redundancy notices over the weekend of the 27th. 

"As far as the Trust board is aware no bid has been accepted for the entire PLC. 

"We are not party to the intentions of the Administrators but one option they have is to auction the assets and this has been mentioned in responses to bids from individuals. 

"We expect further details from the Administrators and their agents over the next few days. 

"The Trust board is considering our options with regard to obtaining the intangible assets of the PLC (for example website, key contracts, information contained within IT systems) so as to ease the transition from PLC to Trust.

"Trust Board members have been preparing business plans and cash flow forecasts for a Trust-run railway, these will be used in support of meetings with potential funding bodies over the next few days. 

"Assuming positive outcomes from all the above, detailed commercial, operational and engineering plans for reopening the railway need to be compiled, and the board will be asking volunteers to become involved in this process over the coming weeks. Much of this work has already been done but needs to be revisited in the light of the demise of the PLC."