LEADING WITH POSITIVITY!

Helen Smith, the general manager of the Severn Valley Railway was appointed in November 2019, just in time for the busy Christmas season. Thinking then that she was being thrown in at the deep end, alas, the water only got deeper (in some cases literally).

In Helen’s first year in post she has had to deal with storms, floods and a global pandemic which forced the complete and unprecedented shut down of the railway for over four months. At the start of November 2020, nearly a year after her appointment, Heritage Railway caught with Helen to find out what the year had been like for her.

Having come from a visitor attraction background, Helen has weathered storms before – both figuratively and literally – and during the conversation she is upbeat and ebullient. Answering with forthright confidence, she has a ready laugh and – with years of experience under her belt, is taking everything 2020 has thrown at her in her stride.

Attraction

Heritage Railway (HR): Helen, you came to the Severn Valley from The Tank Museum in Bovington in Dorset. What drew you to the heritage railway sector?

Helen Smith (HS): I’ve worked in military museums for the past 10 years and the challenges are very similar to heritage railways. Some of the job was looking at restoring the vehicles, showing them in action, and keeping up the heritage skills needed for fixing these things. We had apprenticeship schemes at The Tank Museum, we had just a built a workshop, so there were a lot of things that were related to what a heritage railway would have to deal with. The fact that it’s trains… at the end of the day it’s still a big metal object that needs to be fixed!

HR: Have you been able to draw on any of your previous experience in other roles?

HS: Running a railway is a nice mixture of everything I’ve done in my background. Science centres are very much about bringing your exhibits to life and you can’t get any more alive than a locomotive coming into a station!

It’s a