IT WAS a close-run thing - but at the finishing post Evening Press, the racehorse, lost by a nose - to the iron horse.

Members of RICH - Ridings investment Club Holdings - seriously debated whether to follow the lure of buying attractive shares in the fiery Evening Press steed, or to follow the odds and invest in Railtrack.

And Railtrack won - not least because at the time of their deliberations the organisation which owns the railway system of Britain was standing at £4.70 on the Stock Exchange against an all-time high of £17.

Surely, they reasoned, from there at least in the short to medium term, the only way for Railtrack was up?

Still, Jim Porteous, chairman of this intrepid band of executives and former executives of Nestle Rowntree, is curious about whether this choice of choo-choos over gee-gees was the right one. He says: "Of course we will now watch with bated breath to see how Evening Press does over the coming year."

If RICH members had the investment cash to spare it was because the turbulence in the FTSE has taken its toll, with the value of the RICH unit slumping from £2.68 to £2.59.

Members may have consoled themselves that this depressing slide of four per cent was nowhere near the extent of the dive of the FTSE index over the same period of eight per cent, but it still meant strategic sales of stock in order to harvest some profitable fruits.

That entailed flogging 40 per cent of their holding in York-based Jarvis, which it bought in at £1.82 and was now selling at £3.15; and off loading 25 per cent of their Morrison holdings (they bought the supermarket shares at £1.11 and these now stood at £2.10).

The proceeds, combined with subscriptions meant a hefty pool for fresh investment, but RICH members decided prudently to re-invest just 40 per cent of it. The Evening Press racehorse was one prospect, but they also looked at Just (the merchandising group which owns Pinky and Perky), at Wolverhampton and Dudley Breweries and at Kingston Communications.

Jim, also a former Nestle man and now managing director of Notions marketing consultancy, said: "It's not as though we were deserting Jarvis which had done an excellent job, but we felt it was worth switching our money to Railtrack which it had so ably serviced with new infrastructure."

Apart from Railtrack, they decided that it was best at this stage to stick to a wait-and-see policy - and to review all their holdings by setting new "stop losses" - the value limits which would trigger automatic sales of stock.

Arcadia shares, which at the time of this meeting were worth £2.39, would be sold if they dropped to £2; ARM Holdings worth £2.56 would also be sold at £2; British Aerospace (value £3.21) would sell at £2.80; Dixon Motors (£1.79) £1.70; GUS (£4.47) £4; Jarvis (£3.15) £2.80; Matalan (£4.30) £3.50; Medisys (65p) 50p; Minmet (12 p) 10p; MMI (£1.11) £1; Morrison (£2.10) £1.80; Protherics (33p) 30p; Royal Bank (£15.70) £15; Slough Estates (£3.97) £3.90; Tesco (£2.62) £2.30; Turbo Genset (£3.57) £3; and Vodafone (£2.03) £1.60.

Such precautions are always necessary in the face of that old but true maxim when it comes to the Stock Exhange: Shares can go down as easily as they can go up.