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Annual Report 2010
WATTRAIN Progress 2011 - Ian Smith The last few months have seen some rapid progress with the formation of WATTRAIN as a Limited Company based in London. Directors are David Morgan (President), Enrique Diaz & Chris Le Marshall (Vice Presidents); Ian Smith (Managing Director) and Ian Leigh (Finance Director). WATTRAIN now also has its own bank account and membership organisation. The new Membership Secretary, Andrea Hett, has set up the membership organisation and will shortly be accepting our first member organisations. WATTRAIN also has its own www.wattrain.vintagecarriagestrust.org/
website,
temporarily
housed
at
http://
This is very much a temporary affair, intended just to give WATTRAIN a web presence. We are working with a web designer to produce our own independent website, which we hope to launch in the spring. This will be a much more interactive affair and we intend that it will the major means by which WATTRAIN interacts with its members. It will not only give details of WATTRAIN and its activities, but will also house a comprehensive series of links to useful websites throughout the World, giving a whole host of interesting information to users. One of WATTRAIN‘s stated aims has always been the involvement of volunteers/staff from various member railways being able to visit other member railways to gain experience of differing operating conditions and/or ideas for use on their own railways. During 2011 we will be undertaking work to make this a more formal process, as originally envisaged. Currently, WATTRAIN has assisted several individuals from Australia to come across to UK and gain insight into the way in which the UK heritage industry works, but this has tended to be on an ad hoc basis. During the year, we will develop the more formal process for this to happen. Finally, 2012 sees the 3rd Major Congress, which will be the very first WATTRAIN Congress, to be held at the National Railway Museum in York, during September/October 2012. Organisation is in the very early stages, but we envisage at least 3 separate elements: These will be PreConference; Conference and Post Conference and will comprise visits to railway of interest in various areas of the country plus the main Conference element, based at York. Full details will appear on the website in due course. WATTRAIN welcomes any comments and questions, these can be sent to the directors via our website and we will be please to answer any and all queries as soon as possible!