Britain's RSA moves to address membership issues

All rail organizations, it seems, struggle with issues of aging and declining memberships.

It’s a problem our correspondent Chase Gunnoe wrote about in this recent Trains News Wire article, one that led the National Railway Historical Society board of directors to consider, and ultimately reject, a significant organizational restructuring.

It’s also one Britain’s Railway Study Association is attacking in fairly aggressive fashion.

The 105-year-old RSA is, to be sure, a different sort of organization: a professional group with a history intertwined with that of British railroading, and one that has, at times, has had significant influence within the rail industry.

“The title of president was one which was conferred both as an honor, and setting a program for the year,” RSA council member Martin Shrubsole explained during last Friday’s RSA inspection trip from Chicago to Detroit (more on that shortly). “Quite often it would be a place where a senior railway manager, in his presidential address, would launch, if not policy, thoughts about the way things were changing, things that might materialize.”

The organization began as the Railway Student Association, and was involved in training individuals for railway careers. It changed its name, as Shrubsole noted, because people tended to remain members long after their student days.

But the RSA’s membership has aged and the volunteers who kept it going were stretched thin by professional demands. The current president, Michael Holden wanted to address its membership issues.

“I agreed to take the president’s role on one condition,” Holden said, “which was that they were prepared to have a radical review of how it was run and what its mission should be. … And what it should be, in my view, is the only cross-discipline professional body in the rail industry.”

In other words, while British railway civil engineers, mechanical engineers and operators, for example, each have their own industry groups, the RSA is open to those from all facets of the industry.

“It’s a way of bringing together people,” said another council member, Simon Feast from the UK’s Department for Transport, “that share an interest in railways, but in different aspects — the engineering side, the operating side, passenger, the customer-facing side of it.”

In his year as president, Holden believes the group has made progress in addressing what he called a “long-term decline.

“It was never going to change in a year,” he said. “But we’ve agreed on the path and the transitional route we’re taking, and we’ve agreed to … pay for a part-time chief executive. So there’s some paid impetus to make stuff happen.

“Frankly, the organization was not being run very professionally. And I felt if the organization was to survive, it needed to be given a fresh mission. And it needed to be overhauled so that it was run on a more professional basis.”

Holden is particularly well suited to leading such a turnaround. He has had great success as the “operator of last resort” when companies holding British rail franchises fail, turning around Connex South Eastern, a commuter rail operation, as well as the long-haul passenger service, East Coast Trains.

“I only really like taking over businesses that have been badly run and turn down and turning them around,” Holden said.

In the case of the RSA, the new CEO, Alex Warner, will put together “a major business plan,” said Shrubsole, “to try and get our focus on what we need to do to reaffirm the relevance of the original agreement, and to become much more in touch with a younger generation.”

RSA members were encouraged to see one operating company send four young members of its staff on the group’s week-long trip to Chicago. “This week has really demonstrated the benefit of it,” Shrubsole said, “because there has been a lot of interaction.”

It was a week packed with activity, as the 25 RSA members who made the trip to Chicago visiting Metra, the CTA and Belt Railway’s Clearing Yard, among other events, before wrapping up the week with Friday’s round trip to Detroit to learn about the project that has created Amtrak 110-mph service, as well as some other rail initiatives.

On board one of Iowa Pacific’s dome cars, attached to Amtrak’s Wolverine, the group the group heard presentations about Norfolk Southern’s Indiana Gateway project, the form of positive train control that allows Amtrak’s 110-mph corridor service, Michigan DOT’s exploration of additional high-speed rail work, and other topics. Detraining in Dearborn, the group went by bus to see Detroit’s People Mover and hear a presentation about the city’s M-1 streetcar project.

It all underlined that this was a professional group exploring professional interests.

Study tours like the ones to Chicago “for me, have always been about going somewhere different and seeing how people respond to similar challenges,” Holden said. “Wherever you go, the challenges are quite similar, but the way people handle them are wildly different. … I have done it on all five continents, and seeing how they have done it, how they make their railroads run and how they cope with political and economic pressures is fascinating.”

Holden hopes his year as president, and the process that lies ahead, will help the organization continue to provide such opportunities well into the future.

“I think there is room for the Railway Study Association to move itself into new ground,” he said, “and position itself as that placer to share business management activities for the rail industry.”