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Recent Society events
Meetings Oct – Nov 2008
Meetings Apr – May 2008
Meetings Oct – Dec 2006
The Norfolk Railway Society’s 50th Anniversary Meeting December 15, 2005
Meetings Oct - Nov 2008
Andrew Wright reports....
“It was all my mother’s fault,” declared NRS President Arnold Hoskins when asked for a title for his talk on October 2. We were able to judge whether this was indeed true as Arnold took us on a journey explaining the development of his fascination with railways.
His mother was a thrifty woman who encouraged him to develop a variety of interests. Living close to a tram terminus and seeing the small railway in the original Earlham House seem to have been formative experiences in the young Arthur’s life. He recalled a family holiday to Llandudno, travelling by train from Norwich City station on the M&GN, and giving him a first glimpse of the Snowdon Mountain and Welsh Highland Railways – his introduction to narrow gauge.
A later family holiday took them to the south coast and the Romney Hythe & Dymchurch Railway. Aged 10, Arnold took a solo journey on the line with the blessing of his parents. In 1938 a school trip to the Peak District and Lake District introduced him to the National Trust, an organisation he joined in the 1960s.
During 1944 Arnold received his call-up papers, and he regaled us with stories of his time in HQ Malaya Command and train journeys between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. After the war, continuing his studies to qualify as a sanitary inspector, he had to visit various local authorities and chose to travel by train, getting experience of Southern electrics. By now working for Norwich City Corporation, Arnold’s interests continued to develop and in 1955 he became secretary of the Norwich and District Model Engineers, a post he held until 1986. He also joined the NRS as a founder member “to get to know about locomotives if I was going to model them”. Other interests led him to membership of the National Trust, the RSPB, and the Inland Waterways Association. (The duties of a sanitary inspector included the inspection of canal boats and a question on this topic came up in the qualifying examination).
Through the model engineers, Arnold met David William “Bill” Harvey and later, due to Bill’s influence, joined the Talyllyn Railway Preservation Society. There were more tales of early NRS outings – travelling by train to places of interest such as the RH&DR.
In the second half of the evening Arnold showed us a varied selection of his slides with a notable Welsh slant, covering the Talyllyn and Welsh Highland Railways and the Great Orme Tramway.
So was it all his mother’s fault? Well, you be the judge, but on this evidence she certainly helped shape an enquiring mind and an outgoing approach which has created another railway enthusiast. And we’re all the better for that.
Mike Handscomb reports....
There’s usually something to suit every taste at our Members’ Informal Evenings, and so it proved again on October 16.
You want movies? We saw the Great Central (Mike Fordham), Oliver Cromwell’s return to GE main line duties and Sir Nigel Gresley on the North Yorks Moors line (Robert Scarfe). Prefer stills? John Hutchinson obliged with holiday shots of bulky 2-10-2Ts on the metre-gauge Hartz Mountain railway, Graham Smith revived memories of a busy Norwich station in 1975 and a NRS visit of the same era to Jack Ray’s Crewchester 0-gauge garden layout, and a well-crafted presentation from David Pearce extolled the railway drawings of A N Wolstenholme.
Feel like closing your eyes and just listening? Then Edward Mann’s Argo recordings of the Somerset & Dorset and a N7 on the Enfield branch were just the job – or you could listen to Pete Willis muse on the reason 4ft 81/2” was chosen for standard gauge, or Mike Handscomb read excerpts from the current Railway Magazine.
If after all that your brain still thirsted for new challenges, Ken Mills obliged with a picture puzzle. No-one could identify the loco in his picture nor the country; eventually Ken revealed that it was a Baldwin 3-cyl pacific on the Central do Brasil.
The unfortunate illlness of our planned speaker prompted a last-minute change of programme on November 6. Graham Kenworthy’s series of phone calls had been rewarded with what he called ‘a rapid response from the B team’ – Messrs Mills, Adderson, Fordham and Graham himself.
Ken Mills began with a journey along the Isle of Man Steam Railway from Douglas to Port Erin back in the 1970s. Then came Richard Adderson’s review of his year: a year in which no. 70013 returned to Norwich (just as Richard had seen it return 40 years ago) and the quad-art set arrived at Sheringham. Shed experts were were challenged to identify the locations of Mike Fordham’s rail-blue era diesel shots – a hard core of shedbashers in the audience calling out ‘Old Oak’, ‘Knottingley’, ‘Tyseley’ etc almost as soon as the picture flashed up. Fianlly Graham Kenworthy displayed historic plans of Eastern Counties Railway stations between Audley End and Chesterton Jct, supplementing them with archive photographs. So, a quartet of first-class slide presentations. Let’s hear it for the B Team!
What a treat we enjoyed on November 20. Dave Theobald has made a habit of choosing the most dangerous railway locations on earth for steam railway photography – and he’s returned with stunning photographs. The title he chose, Steam Under an Armed Guard, was no exaggeration. His slides took us first to Pakistan, along the 5’6” gauge north-west frontier line up to the Afghan border, where his party was under the very necessary protection of the Khyber Rifles. Not only have political events made it impossible to repeat such a journey today, but part of the line has been swept away by floods.
Eritrea, in 2006, was no less formidable. Not content with travelling along and photographing the reopened 100km from Massawa to Asmara, Dave’s group then hired a 4x4 for trackbed exploration in even more remote terrain. Some of his photos were later published in Steam Railway.
Thence to awesome industrial lines in Inner Mongolia, where one participant’s activities got the party arrested, and finally to the metre-gauge system in Myanmar (Burma). Although the visit was ‘officially sanctioned’, pictures at stations still had to be taken covertly.
Dave’s extraordinary pictures included local people as well as ‘non-railway’ sights, and several showed abandoned steam locomotives. Thank you Graham and Edward for securing such an entertaining speaker.
Meetings Apr - May 2008
Mike Handscomb reports....
As happens each year at this time, we have a change at the top. At the Society’s Annual General Meeting on April 17, Dave White stepped down after his year’s chairmanship and was succeeded by vice-chairman Pete Willis. The customary badges of office (J15 brake valve and M&GN bridge plate) were exchanged.
Among the treats in store for us this autumn will be our President, Arnold Hoskins looking back on his life – no doubt with an engineering and railway slant – and Martin Fargher of Network Rail talking about Trowse swing bridge and the Crossrail project.
In view of the healthy state of the NRS finances, treasurer Gerald Siviour’s proposal that the subscription for 2009 should remain at the current rate of £17 was approved by the meeting. Although membership secretary Edward Mann was saddened to report that deaths and resignations had reduced our numbers to 75, he was encouraged by three new members joing us so far this year.
Publicity officer Mike Fordham said he had been working on a date for next year’s NRS Annual Show (later he reported that it was booked for January 31).
Full Minutes of the AGM will be circulated in due course.
We enjoyed another excellent evening on May 2, when we learnt about the East Anglian Transport Museum from its vice chairman Mark Carr. Mark’s in-depth knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, Lowestoft’s ‘trams, trolleys ‘n’ trains’ enterprise was evident, as he told how the project had grown from most unlikely beginnings: the lower saloon shell of an old Norwich tram in founder Dick Bird’s muddy back garden. Mark’s well-chosen slides illustrated the work involved, the vehicle collection and the development of buildings on the Carlton Colville site which is now a popular ‘visitor experience’. But, he emphasised, had today’s Health & Safety legislation been in place in the 1960s and 1970s, then almost certainly the EATM would not exist.
Our last evening session before the summer was held on May 15. Wisbech historian Andrew Ingram has visited us before, and on this occasion the subject of his illustrated talk was Railway Memories.
From an early age railways encroached on to Andrew’s childhood, an early memory being visits to Wisbech North (M&GN) station. Highlights of teenage years included ‘cabbing’, and acting as an unofficial signalman. His obsession with spotting culminated in a week’s all-line railrover when he attempted to cover as many miles as possible, eschewing B&B for makeshift accommodation in compartments. One day his mother showed him a newspaper cutting about the imminent closure of the Wisbech & Upwell tramway. This aroused a lifelong interest which went on to inspire him, years later, not just to produce several publications about it but to organise centenary celebrations as well.
Andrew concluded by showing a selection from his enormous photographic archive which, as well as railways, covers other transport forms and Fenland local history.
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Meetings Oct – Dec 2006
Mike Handscomb reports....
“Few, if any, of tonight’s slides will have trains in them” – that was Jim Connor’s apologetic introduction on October 19 to his slide show Disused Stations on the London Underground. But we needn’t have worried. The pictures Jim showed told a fascinating tale of the many stations which have fallen off the LUL map over the years. First up was the King William Street terminus of the pioneer City & South London Rly, superseded as early as 1900. There followed a host of dimly-remembered names: South Kentish Town (Northern Line, cl. 1924), Down Street (Piccadilly Line, cl.1932), Brompton Road (Piccadilly Line, cl.1934) and Wood Lane (Central Line, cl.1947) among them. Much in evidence were Leslie Green’s street elevations faced in ruby-red glazed brick, and his green-and-white tiled booking halls. We also had many subterranean glimpses. Having been granted special access to many trackside areas, Jim showed dim scenes of grimy ceramic name-signs and long-forgotten posters, which we’d never be permitted to see for ourselves.
The meeting ended earlier than usual so that Jim could catch the last Colchester train. A pity we had no time for the last batch of pictures, but how refreshing to have a speaker come to our meeting “the proper way”.
A recent addition to Norfolk’s museums is the William Marriott Museum at Holt station. Taking its name from “the father of the M&GN”, it’s housed in a replica of the old Thursford goods shed. On November 2 its curator Dave King gave us a presentation called A Journey Though Time. To our surprise Dave told us little about his museum. Instead he provided a potted history of the North Norfolk Railway, using both vintage and current photographs to illustrate stations, lineside features and rolling stock. Apart from NNR-based locomotives, he showed recent visitors such as Green Arrow and City of Truro. After the break Dave answered a number of questions about the North Norfolk line. Subjects ranged from the type of coal used on the NNR to future plans including the restoration of Sheringham level crossing and the controversial Norfolk Orbital route.
Bill Wood began taking movies at the age of 12. Having persuaded a friendly chemist to hire him a camera for 2/- (10p) a day, he roamed around Ulster recording fast-disappearing railways. He’s kept up the pastime, and acquired other historic films, some taken as early as 1896. Bill’s resultant 70 hours of film must now constitute an unparalleled archive of Irish railways. On November 16 he brought just a couple of hours’ worth to give us a Circular Tour of North Antrim. Many sequences had been taken at the busy coastal town of Portrush, where excursion traffic provided endless interest. As bucolic contrast, the Ballycastle Railway, the last of the NCC’s narrow-gauge lines to close (in 1950) had tank locos whose coal supplies were carried in baskets on the buffer-beam. Interspersed with Bill’s priceless railway footage were several non-railway scenes. One minute we were sharing his family snaps, the next marvelling at the sight of RMS Titanic being launched from Harland & Wolff’s Belfast yard in 1911!
A bit further afield on December 7, when John Hanchet entertained us to his films of Elephants on Rollerskates and other Germanic Steam. His title was readily apparent when we saw the transhipment trolleys used to take mighty standard-gauge wagons along 750mm tracks – not to mention some of the chunky narrow-gauge steam locos with their tiny driving wheels. John’s evening was in two parts. First came footage from the Gmünd – Gross Gerungs line which runs through picturesque and sparsely-populated country on the Austrian/Czech border. John had discovered it in the late 1970s, and his sequences showing the fly-shunting antics and manual coaling procedures had to be seen to be believed. After the break John gave us a tour of some east German narrow-gauge freight lines. After the fall of the Berlin wall he’d hurried to visit and film them before they were either closed or ‘touristified’ Even omitting the well-known Harz system he had a wealth of fascinating material, and it was a disappointment when the 10 o’clock curfew sounded.
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December 15, 2005
The Norfolk Railway Society’s 50th Anniversary Meeting
Neil Hacker reports:
The NRS celebrated its fiftieth anniversary on December 15 2005 with a very special meeting. The guest of honour was Andrew Scott, Head of the National Railway Museum (NRM) at York; the location for the meeting was the Green Room at the Archive Centre, Martineau Lane.
About 80 members and distinguished guests were present, the latter including David Madden of the North Norfolk Rly and John Watling of the GER Society. The meeting also featured a short survey of the Society’s history from president Arnold Hoskins, as well as toasts and refreshments. Chairman David Pearce made the introductions and provided continuity.
Looking back over “Fifty Years of the Norfolk Railway Society”, Arnold recounted how he was one of the 28 founding members who gathered at the YMCA on December 16 1955. At that time he was already a keen modeller and was anxious to make contact with fellow railway enthusiasts and increase his railway knowledge.
Andrew Scott, surveying the wider railway field in “Fifty Years of Enthusiasm and Preservation”, confessed that he had no East Anglian credentials, but hailed from the former realms of the Great Central. He began young in 1965, bunking Woodford Halse shed with his father. In 1967 on a sixth-form trip to York he had visited Bittern (now at the NRM) on shed. At Newcastle University he had joined the North Eastern Loco Preservation Group, becoming involved with industrial locomotives, the North Yorks Moors Railway’s Q6, the Locomotion replica and the 1975 Shildon celebration of the Stockton and Darlington's 150th anniversary. A little later he came across Green Arrow. By this time he was with the NELPG and had some success raising funds for the shed at Grosmont. He moved to the London Transport Museum at about the time that steam trains were first brought back to run on main-line railways. By the time the National Collection was concentrated at York, enthusiasts had succeeded in putting preservation on the map.
Toasts were then proposed and drunk to the Norfolk Railway Society and
the
NRM and the special refreshments consumed.
In his Keynote Speech, Andrew Scott went on to describe the work of, and developments at, the NRM at York and at Shildon. While its largest display space, the Great Hall at York, contained an area of 1 hectare (2.5 acres) there were in fact only 280 railway vehicles in a collection of two million items. The Museum’s mission was to “inspire learning about the world of railways and the railway’s impact on the world”. There were four distinct aspects to this: running a very busy museum, providing programmes for learners, caring for the collection so that its usefulness was maximised, and providing educational and interpretative services for diverse audiences.
The Great Hall provides a world as well as a British railway perspective. The giant Chinese 4-8-4 was British-built. The 1964 Bullet Train, which arrived in 2001 from Japan, represents the first 20th-century railway.
The adjoining Railway Hall contains typical railway travel exhibits including the London and South Western branch line passenger train waiting at its platform. The Works which is concerned with the stewardship of the collection was almost lost in 1999 when the roof collapsed. It is still in need of further funding and lottery assistance.
The collection of smaller items is kept mainly at the Warehouse. 11,000 items are displayed on cheaply available industrial racking. This wonderful treasure house contains such things as the Platform 91/4 sign from Harry Potter, the Britannia Sculpture from the boardroom at Euston, a Michelin pneumatic railway wheel, and the Manchester Signal School’s training model, as well as a large collection of railway silverware.
Another feature of the Museum is the Viewing Gallery where visitors can watch main line traffic through York station and monitor what is approaching on a signal display that is a slave of the York Control Centre. The Museum tries to be constantly changing. It has special footplate days and a great variety of events and activities such the school holiday “Cab It” family days, aimed especially at fathers and children. There is a large mural of the Railway Story of York. Rail Fest 2004 was the largest event held at the Museum since 1985 and celebrated the 200 years of progress since Trevithick’s first demonstration. It featured a number of the newest trains like the Pendolino, and was so successful that it might be repeated every couple of years. There are also miniature railways in six gauges.
Actually running its engines is the concern of the Museum’s Train Operations department. As well as running on site, engines are loaned to other heritage railways or for trips on the main line. The Museum recently operated its own service, putting Flying Scotsman on to the York – Scarborough run where it carried over 40,000 passengers last summer. Alan Pegler, the engine’s pioneer preserver, sadly now in a wheelchair, had been among the summer’s passengers. Flying Scotsman would return in 2007 after a boiler overhaul; other suitable engines included Green Arrow and Sir Lamiel. The Society would be familiar with some of the Museum’s local loans such as the visit of City of Truro to North Norfolk last summer.
Mr Scott spoke a little about the NRM at Shildon which particularly celebrated Timothy Hackworth, whom he described as the first railway manager as well as a celebrated pioneering engineer, who entered his Sans Pareil at the Rainhill Trials.
There was still a lot to do at the Museum. Mr Scott ended by showing the poor conditions in which railway drawings were currently kept at York, and revealed his plans for bringing his facilities up to the standard of the Norfolk Archive Centre. He hoped to make an enlarged reading room on the Balcony and to create a proper catalogue. Much remained to be done to improve access to the Museum’s site but this was a matter for the very long term.
Chairman David Pearce warmly thanked Mr Scott on behalf of the Society for his contributions to the anniversary meeting.
It is intriguing to note that the slides for both Mr Scott’s presentations were digitally projected on the Archive Centre’s computer projection equipment. When the NRS was founded colour photography was still beyond the means of most speakers and the rare computers cost millions, filled very large rooms and only produced paper printout.
Postscript: In the Queen’s New Year’s Honours, Andrew Scott was awarded the CBE for services to museums
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Meetings Apr – May 2008
Meetings Oct – Dec 2006
The Norfolk Railway Society’s 50th Anniversary Meeting December 15, 2005
Meetings Oct - Nov 2008
Andrew Wright reports....
“It was all my mother’s fault,” declared NRS President Arnold Hoskins when asked for a title for his talk on October 2. We were able to judge whether this was indeed true as Arnold took us on a journey explaining the development of his fascination with railways.
His mother was a thrifty woman who encouraged him to develop a variety of interests. Living close to a tram terminus and seeing the small railway in the original Earlham House seem to have been formative experiences in the young Arthur’s life. He recalled a family holiday to Llandudno, travelling by train from Norwich City station on the M&GN, and giving him a first glimpse of the Snowdon Mountain and Welsh Highland Railways – his introduction to narrow gauge.
A later family holiday took them to the south coast and the Romney Hythe & Dymchurch Railway. Aged 10, Arnold took a solo journey on the line with the blessing of his parents. In 1938 a school trip to the Peak District and Lake District introduced him to the National Trust, an organisation he joined in the 1960s.
During 1944 Arnold received his call-up papers, and he regaled us with stories of his time in HQ Malaya Command and train journeys between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. After the war, continuing his studies to qualify as a sanitary inspector, he had to visit various local authorities and chose to travel by train, getting experience of Southern electrics. By now working for Norwich City Corporation, Arnold’s interests continued to develop and in 1955 he became secretary of the Norwich and District Model Engineers, a post he held until 1986. He also joined the NRS as a founder member “to get to know about locomotives if I was going to model them”. Other interests led him to membership of the National Trust, the RSPB, and the Inland Waterways Association. (The duties of a sanitary inspector included the inspection of canal boats and a question on this topic came up in the qualifying examination).
Through the model engineers, Arnold met David William “Bill” Harvey and later, due to Bill’s influence, joined the Talyllyn Railway Preservation Society. There were more tales of early NRS outings – travelling by train to places of interest such as the RH&DR.
In the second half of the evening Arnold showed us a varied selection of his slides with a notable Welsh slant, covering the Talyllyn and Welsh Highland Railways and the Great Orme Tramway.
So was it all his mother’s fault? Well, you be the judge, but on this evidence she certainly helped shape an enquiring mind and an outgoing approach which has created another railway enthusiast. And we’re all the better for that.
Mike Handscomb reports....
There’s usually something to suit every taste at our Members’ Informal Evenings, and so it proved again on October 16.
You want movies? We saw the Great Central (Mike Fordham), Oliver Cromwell’s return to GE main line duties and Sir Nigel Gresley on the North Yorks Moors line (Robert Scarfe). Prefer stills? John Hutchinson obliged with holiday shots of bulky 2-10-2Ts on the metre-gauge Hartz Mountain railway, Graham Smith revived memories of a busy Norwich station in 1975 and a NRS visit of the same era to Jack Ray’s Crewchester 0-gauge garden layout, and a well-crafted presentation from David Pearce extolled the railway drawings of A N Wolstenholme.
Feel like closing your eyes and just listening? Then Edward Mann’s Argo recordings of the Somerset & Dorset and a N7 on the Enfield branch were just the job – or you could listen to Pete Willis muse on the reason 4ft 81/2” was chosen for standard gauge, or Mike Handscomb read excerpts from the current Railway Magazine.
If after all that your brain still thirsted for new challenges, Ken Mills obliged with a picture puzzle. No-one could identify the loco in his picture nor the country; eventually Ken revealed that it was a Baldwin 3-cyl pacific on the Central do Brasil.
The unfortunate illlness of our planned speaker prompted a last-minute change of programme on November 6. Graham Kenworthy’s series of phone calls had been rewarded with what he called ‘a rapid response from the B team’ – Messrs Mills, Adderson, Fordham and Graham himself.
Ken Mills began with a journey along the Isle of Man Steam Railway from Douglas to Port Erin back in the 1970s. Then came Richard Adderson’s review of his year: a year in which no. 70013 returned to Norwich (just as Richard had seen it return 40 years ago) and the quad-art set arrived at Sheringham. Shed experts were were challenged to identify the locations of Mike Fordham’s rail-blue era diesel shots – a hard core of shedbashers in the audience calling out ‘Old Oak’, ‘Knottingley’, ‘Tyseley’ etc almost as soon as the picture flashed up. Fianlly Graham Kenworthy displayed historic plans of Eastern Counties Railway stations between Audley End and Chesterton Jct, supplementing them with archive photographs. So, a quartet of first-class slide presentations. Let’s hear it for the B Team!
What a treat we enjoyed on November 20. Dave Theobald has made a habit of choosing the most dangerous railway locations on earth for steam railway photography – and he’s returned with stunning photographs. The title he chose, Steam Under an Armed Guard, was no exaggeration. His slides took us first to Pakistan, along the 5’6” gauge north-west frontier line up to the Afghan border, where his party was under the very necessary protection of the Khyber Rifles. Not only have political events made it impossible to repeat such a journey today, but part of the line has been swept away by floods.
Eritrea, in 2006, was no less formidable. Not content with travelling along and photographing the reopened 100km from Massawa to Asmara, Dave’s group then hired a 4x4 for trackbed exploration in even more remote terrain. Some of his photos were later published in Steam Railway.
Thence to awesome industrial lines in Inner Mongolia, where one participant’s activities got the party arrested, and finally to the metre-gauge system in Myanmar (Burma). Although the visit was ‘officially sanctioned’, pictures at stations still had to be taken covertly.
Dave’s extraordinary pictures included local people as well as ‘non-railway’ sights, and several showed abandoned steam locomotives. Thank you Graham and Edward for securing such an entertaining speaker.
Meetings Apr - May 2008
Mike Handscomb reports....
As happens each year at this time, we have a change at the top. At the Society’s Annual General Meeting on April 17, Dave White stepped down after his year’s chairmanship and was succeeded by vice-chairman Pete Willis. The customary badges of office (J15 brake valve and M&GN bridge plate) were exchanged.
Among the treats in store for us this autumn will be our President, Arnold Hoskins looking back on his life – no doubt with an engineering and railway slant – and Martin Fargher of Network Rail talking about Trowse swing bridge and the Crossrail project.
In view of the healthy state of the NRS finances, treasurer Gerald Siviour’s proposal that the subscription for 2009 should remain at the current rate of £17 was approved by the meeting. Although membership secretary Edward Mann was saddened to report that deaths and resignations had reduced our numbers to 75, he was encouraged by three new members joing us so far this year.
Publicity officer Mike Fordham said he had been working on a date for next year’s NRS Annual Show (later he reported that it was booked for January 31).
Full Minutes of the AGM will be circulated in due course.
We enjoyed another excellent evening on May 2, when we learnt about the East Anglian Transport Museum from its vice chairman Mark Carr. Mark’s in-depth knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, Lowestoft’s ‘trams, trolleys ‘n’ trains’ enterprise was evident, as he told how the project had grown from most unlikely beginnings: the lower saloon shell of an old Norwich tram in founder Dick Bird’s muddy back garden. Mark’s well-chosen slides illustrated the work involved, the vehicle collection and the development of buildings on the Carlton Colville site which is now a popular ‘visitor experience’. But, he emphasised, had today’s Health & Safety legislation been in place in the 1960s and 1970s, then almost certainly the EATM would not exist.
Our last evening session before the summer was held on May 15. Wisbech historian Andrew Ingram has visited us before, and on this occasion the subject of his illustrated talk was Railway Memories.
From an early age railways encroached on to Andrew’s childhood, an early memory being visits to Wisbech North (M&GN) station. Highlights of teenage years included ‘cabbing’, and acting as an unofficial signalman. His obsession with spotting culminated in a week’s all-line railrover when he attempted to cover as many miles as possible, eschewing B&B for makeshift accommodation in compartments. One day his mother showed him a newspaper cutting about the imminent closure of the Wisbech & Upwell tramway. This aroused a lifelong interest which went on to inspire him, years later, not just to produce several publications about it but to organise centenary celebrations as well.
Andrew concluded by showing a selection from his enormous photographic archive which, as well as railways, covers other transport forms and Fenland local history.
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Meetings Oct – Dec 2006
Mike Handscomb reports....
“Few, if any, of tonight’s slides will have trains in them” – that was Jim Connor’s apologetic introduction on October 19 to his slide show Disused Stations on the London Underground. But we needn’t have worried. The pictures Jim showed told a fascinating tale of the many stations which have fallen off the LUL map over the years. First up was the King William Street terminus of the pioneer City & South London Rly, superseded as early as 1900. There followed a host of dimly-remembered names: South Kentish Town (Northern Line, cl. 1924), Down Street (Piccadilly Line, cl.1932), Brompton Road (Piccadilly Line, cl.1934) and Wood Lane (Central Line, cl.1947) among them. Much in evidence were Leslie Green’s street elevations faced in ruby-red glazed brick, and his green-and-white tiled booking halls. We also had many subterranean glimpses. Having been granted special access to many trackside areas, Jim showed dim scenes of grimy ceramic name-signs and long-forgotten posters, which we’d never be permitted to see for ourselves.
The meeting ended earlier than usual so that Jim could catch the last Colchester train. A pity we had no time for the last batch of pictures, but how refreshing to have a speaker come to our meeting “the proper way”.
A recent addition to Norfolk’s museums is the William Marriott Museum at Holt station. Taking its name from “the father of the M&GN”, it’s housed in a replica of the old Thursford goods shed. On November 2 its curator Dave King gave us a presentation called A Journey Though Time. To our surprise Dave told us little about his museum. Instead he provided a potted history of the North Norfolk Railway, using both vintage and current photographs to illustrate stations, lineside features and rolling stock. Apart from NNR-based locomotives, he showed recent visitors such as Green Arrow and City of Truro. After the break Dave answered a number of questions about the North Norfolk line. Subjects ranged from the type of coal used on the NNR to future plans including the restoration of Sheringham level crossing and the controversial Norfolk Orbital route.
Bill Wood began taking movies at the age of 12. Having persuaded a friendly chemist to hire him a camera for 2/- (10p) a day, he roamed around Ulster recording fast-disappearing railways. He’s kept up the pastime, and acquired other historic films, some taken as early as 1896. Bill’s resultant 70 hours of film must now constitute an unparalleled archive of Irish railways. On November 16 he brought just a couple of hours’ worth to give us a Circular Tour of North Antrim. Many sequences had been taken at the busy coastal town of Portrush, where excursion traffic provided endless interest. As bucolic contrast, the Ballycastle Railway, the last of the NCC’s narrow-gauge lines to close (in 1950) had tank locos whose coal supplies were carried in baskets on the buffer-beam. Interspersed with Bill’s priceless railway footage were several non-railway scenes. One minute we were sharing his family snaps, the next marvelling at the sight of RMS Titanic being launched from Harland & Wolff’s Belfast yard in 1911!
A bit further afield on December 7, when John Hanchet entertained us to his films of Elephants on Rollerskates and other Germanic Steam. His title was readily apparent when we saw the transhipment trolleys used to take mighty standard-gauge wagons along 750mm tracks – not to mention some of the chunky narrow-gauge steam locos with their tiny driving wheels. John’s evening was in two parts. First came footage from the Gmünd – Gross Gerungs line which runs through picturesque and sparsely-populated country on the Austrian/Czech border. John had discovered it in the late 1970s, and his sequences showing the fly-shunting antics and manual coaling procedures had to be seen to be believed. After the break John gave us a tour of some east German narrow-gauge freight lines. After the fall of the Berlin wall he’d hurried to visit and film them before they were either closed or ‘touristified’ Even omitting the well-known Harz system he had a wealth of fascinating material, and it was a disappointment when the 10 o’clock curfew sounded.
Top of page
December 15, 2005
The Norfolk Railway Society’s 50th Anniversary Meeting
Neil Hacker reports:
The NRS celebrated its fiftieth anniversary on December 15 2005 with a very special meeting. The guest of honour was Andrew Scott, Head of the National Railway Museum (NRM) at York; the location for the meeting was the Green Room at the Archive Centre, Martineau Lane.
About 80 members and distinguished guests were present, the latter including David Madden of the North Norfolk Rly and John Watling of the GER Society. The meeting also featured a short survey of the Society’s history from president Arnold Hoskins, as well as toasts and refreshments. Chairman David Pearce made the introductions and provided continuity.
Looking back over “Fifty Years of the Norfolk Railway Society”, Arnold recounted how he was one of the 28 founding members who gathered at the YMCA on December 16 1955. At that time he was already a keen modeller and was anxious to make contact with fellow railway enthusiasts and increase his railway knowledge.
Andrew Scott, surveying the wider railway field in “Fifty Years of Enthusiasm and Preservation”, confessed that he had no East Anglian credentials, but hailed from the former realms of the Great Central. He began young in 1965, bunking Woodford Halse shed with his father. In 1967 on a sixth-form trip to York he had visited Bittern (now at the NRM) on shed. At Newcastle University he had joined the North Eastern Loco Preservation Group, becoming involved with industrial locomotives, the North Yorks Moors Railway’s Q6, the Locomotion replica and the 1975 Shildon celebration of the Stockton and Darlington's 150th anniversary. A little later he came across Green Arrow. By this time he was with the NELPG and had some success raising funds for the shed at Grosmont. He moved to the London Transport Museum at about the time that steam trains were first brought back to run on main-line railways. By the time the National Collection was concentrated at York, enthusiasts had succeeded in putting preservation on the map.
 |
| Chairman
David
Pearce thanks Andrew Scott for entertaining the NRS and its guests.
Picture : Mike Handscomb
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In his Keynote Speech, Andrew Scott went on to describe the work of, and developments at, the NRM at York and at Shildon. While its largest display space, the Great Hall at York, contained an area of 1 hectare (2.5 acres) there were in fact only 280 railway vehicles in a collection of two million items. The Museum’s mission was to “inspire learning about the world of railways and the railway’s impact on the world”. There were four distinct aspects to this: running a very busy museum, providing programmes for learners, caring for the collection so that its usefulness was maximised, and providing educational and interpretative services for diverse audiences.
The Great Hall provides a world as well as a British railway perspective. The giant Chinese 4-8-4 was British-built. The 1964 Bullet Train, which arrived in 2001 from Japan, represents the first 20th-century railway.
The adjoining Railway Hall contains typical railway travel exhibits including the London and South Western branch line passenger train waiting at its platform. The Works which is concerned with the stewardship of the collection was almost lost in 1999 when the roof collapsed. It is still in need of further funding and lottery assistance.
The collection of smaller items is kept mainly at the Warehouse. 11,000 items are displayed on cheaply available industrial racking. This wonderful treasure house contains such things as the Platform 91/4 sign from Harry Potter, the Britannia Sculpture from the boardroom at Euston, a Michelin pneumatic railway wheel, and the Manchester Signal School’s training model, as well as a large collection of railway silverware.
Another feature of the Museum is the Viewing Gallery where visitors can watch main line traffic through York station and monitor what is approaching on a signal display that is a slave of the York Control Centre. The Museum tries to be constantly changing. It has special footplate days and a great variety of events and activities such the school holiday “Cab It” family days, aimed especially at fathers and children. There is a large mural of the Railway Story of York. Rail Fest 2004 was the largest event held at the Museum since 1985 and celebrated the 200 years of progress since Trevithick’s first demonstration. It featured a number of the newest trains like the Pendolino, and was so successful that it might be repeated every couple of years. There are also miniature railways in six gauges.
Actually running its engines is the concern of the Museum’s Train Operations department. As well as running on site, engines are loaned to other heritage railways or for trips on the main line. The Museum recently operated its own service, putting Flying Scotsman on to the York – Scarborough run where it carried over 40,000 passengers last summer. Alan Pegler, the engine’s pioneer preserver, sadly now in a wheelchair, had been among the summer’s passengers. Flying Scotsman would return in 2007 after a boiler overhaul; other suitable engines included Green Arrow and Sir Lamiel. The Society would be familiar with some of the Museum’s local loans such as the visit of City of Truro to North Norfolk last summer.
Mr Scott spoke a little about the NRM at Shildon which particularly celebrated Timothy Hackworth, whom he described as the first railway manager as well as a celebrated pioneering engineer, who entered his Sans Pareil at the Rainhill Trials.
There was still a lot to do at the Museum. Mr Scott ended by showing the poor conditions in which railway drawings were currently kept at York, and revealed his plans for bringing his facilities up to the standard of the Norfolk Archive Centre. He hoped to make an enlarged reading room on the Balcony and to create a proper catalogue. Much remained to be done to improve access to the Museum’s site but this was a matter for the very long term.
Chairman David Pearce warmly thanked Mr Scott on behalf of the Society for his contributions to the anniversary meeting.
It is intriguing to note that the slides for both Mr Scott’s presentations were digitally projected on the Archive Centre’s computer projection equipment. When the NRS was founded colour photography was still beyond the means of most speakers and the rare computers cost millions, filled very large rooms and only produced paper printout.
Postscript: In the Queen’s New Year’s Honours, Andrew Scott was awarded the CBE for services to museums
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