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Firstly, for every country, for every activity, all must be treated equally. Each country has its own history of railway development and the extent to which railways have been used and are used today can be very different. People’s understanding of railways, industrial heritage and heritage railway can vary from country to country. In some places activities are more advanced, in others, less so. It would be unfair to see and evaluate only their present state without considering the social and historical context.

Secondly, administration of an international organisation must not be done solely to one country’s way of thinking or business style. Things can be very different by region or country. We have members and potential members in; New Zealand and Australia in Oceania, China, Japan, Taiwan and Korea in East Asia, South East Asia, each country in a different social situation, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in South Asia, and Jordan in the Middle East. Their ways of thinking, business styles and social situations are not the same region by region, or even country by country in the same region. It is very important that we try to understand such differences. Our international organisation of heritage railways must be administered by balancing ways of thinking and business styles. This might not be so easy, but administration as ‘one size fits all’ is entirely wrong, because that could never be supported by people with different backgrounds.

Thirdly, we must not forget our friends who are making the effort in difficult situations in developing countries. Around three quarters of our members and potential members are from developing countries, or third world level. We know ordinary life is not so easy in some developing countries so we have to consider this in administering this, our international organisation. For example, we must keep our conference fee at less than 300 USD. If the price is too expensive, say more than 500 USD or 1000 USD, it would be like saying to the people in developing countries: “We don’t need you”, even though this were far from our purpose. If our administration were to be planned only from the viewpoint of people in richer countries, we would not be an Asia-Pacific organisation but a rich countries’ organisation. We must never allow this.