10 years of rail travel in UK and Europe – Alan Yearsley

MEETING REPORT 12th OCTOBER 2022

Alan Yearsley was our speaker for October:  he’s been a regular attendee at branch meetings but had not previously given us a presentation, so we were most interested to hear about his ’10 years of rail travel in UK and Europe’, especially given his professional interest in continental railways.  We were not disappointed.  Alan’s talk commenced in the France of 2012 with images around the Bordeaux area, some demonstrating how much can change in such a relatively short time.  The scene shifted to Burgundy in 2014 with plenty of shots of tram systems to complement the activity on the mainline.  Alan included quite a few pictures of coach interiors, something seldom shown in our regular talks.  Going back to 2013 we were in both the UK and in the Netherlands, the latter made very clear from the profusion of bicycles apparent in some of the images.  Then it was on to Switzerland and Southern Germany in 2016 before a visit to the Czech Republic in the following years.  The German pictures included some shots of the Schwebebahn Dresden, always a fascinating oddity: we also glimpsed inside the German Railway Museum at Nuremberg.  Amongst the Czech material Alan played us some of the distinctive station jingles used at that time to precede announcements, but now sadly replaced by a uniform national jingle.  The show concluded with some varied photographs from around the UK over the past couple of years, though as a coda Alan had up his sleeve a file of images featuring the Manchester Metrolink service.  Altogether an enjoyable collection of rail and tram shots.