11th March 2020 · ‘A Ninth Colour Rail Journey’

Presenter: Paul Chancellor

In March we received our first visit from Paul Chancellor, owner of Colour Rail and Chairman of the Society’s Development Committee. I don’t why we have waited so long to invite him down the M50, for it was a superb evening.

Paul started with an A-Z of named trains from the Anglo-Scottish Car Carrier to the Waverley. The Yorkshire Pullman was included in a separate Pullman section which also featured the Blue Pullmans, well known to us in South Wales and what I always felt were the precursors to the HSTs. Highlights included the Condor and the first diesel hauled Bristolian.

The second half of the evening featured a journey around the railway regions of Britain featuring many much loved branch lines, for example Hemyock (going well into the 70s with 03s and eventually 25s), Tenbury Wells and Dornoch with its GWR panniers. We had a wide variety of first generation DMUs – from 101s to 126s and maroon EMUs at Shenfield. In a nod towards ourselves the finale was a historical ride from Portsmouth to Cardiff which just shows how our “new” 165s cannot compare with five mark ones hauled by a 33 (or even, much to my surprise a Canton Britannia).

Paul also gave us an interesting talk about the value of old negatives even if we feel they are in a poor condition. Photoshop can work wonders as he demonstrated with a digitally enhanced image of 4469, Sir Ralph Wedgewood the A4 that was destroyed in the Baedeker Raid on York in 1942.

A fantastic evening, thank you Paul.