The Wilmington & Western Railroad in Delaware has been one of the longest running heritage operation in preservation. Over the last few years they have been struggling with huge issues between the board of directors and the membership/volunteers. The board quietly changed the bylaws a few years ago eliminating the rights of its members to vote on board members and to have a voice in the organization.

The new by laws, board minutes, finances, and everything else related to the business side of things have been secret. Volunteers have accused the former CMO of neglecting the equipment to the point it had become unsafe. Open his retirement a new mechanic was hired and he quickly built up a team of volunteers who worked very hard to correct decades of neglect. And in full disclosure, one of the reasons I am not longer volunteering is due to constant conflicts over how things were done. I have been a member since around 1980 but started riding in 1971.

The membership filed a lawsuit to force the board to be transparent and hold elections. Suddenly on or about August 10 the board sent out a notice there was going to be an election and anyone who was a member as of August 4 could vote. What they didn't tell anyone is there was a sudden surge of memebrs joining over the summer. Election day was on August 27 and a steady stream of people who recently joined and nobody had ever met walked in, voted, and walekd out. The membership by and large refused to vote and protested the election.

Members were given one minute each on the floor to comment. Their comments acan be seen in this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqJD4LLbSDY

Needless to say, the board of directors had their slate of candidates overwhelmingly voted in and the memberhsip is still going forward with its lawsuit.

As a former voluneteer I often had disagreements with the way some things were done. This is to be expected and I always worked had to be flexible and work within the system in place to preserve the heritage I came to care about so much over my entire lifetime.

The board is controlled by two men and the rest of the board is family, friends, and business associates of those two men. They slowly forced anyone with differing views off the board until they obtained total control. When a board of directors operates in secret, there is a reason and history shows us it is not a good reason.

The truth can run around naked all day.

I've seen this trick before. Suddenly a large number of new members joined a group, voted the existing board into full power, and then disappeared. Almost immediately, many of the existing members were thrown out of the organization "for cause". Within a few years, the group basically dissolved. There was never a clear answer as to where the hundreds of thousands of dollars went.

Bart

If they are running sham elections and shorting notice, an interested party should be alerting the Delaware Department of State to see if they are violating the state's corporation laws.

Appropriate attorneys have been retained, and a GoFundMe fund-raiser is active for the costs of filing and litigation.

Everything that has been reported about this election (by opponents, mind you) completely fails the "smell test."

It also is a stark reminder of why such organizations sometimes put in membership requirements, such as application for membership being announced in a newsletter/minutes/meeting agenda and the member voted in by attending members at the next meeting. It seems a frivolous waste of time and energy--until a situation like this occurs, more than once.