A Ninth Colour-Rail Journey

Presenter: Paul Chancellor

The Northampton Branch first live meeting was held at Weston Favell village hall with an audience of about twenty members suitably distanced from each other.

Paul Chancellor started the meeting by reviewing the history of the Colour-Rail Company founded by himself to rationalise more than 105 thousand railway photographic slides which he had accumulated over a considerable number of years. He indicated that many of them had been kept in poor storage conditions and needed to be reviewed.

His presentation consisted of named trains, the first half being those of UK state operating companies, both before, during and after nationalisation. The second half featured “Pullman” trains. Most of the named trains had a relatively short named life although unnamed trains following the same routes continued. Amongst the former group of fifty or so trains were the familiar ones like “Flying Scotsman” , “Royal Scot” and “Cornish Riviera” and some unusual , and usually short lived ones, such as “The Devonian”, “The Man of Kent”, “The Pines Express” and “The Scarborough Flier”.

The named Pullman trains included “The Blue Pullman”, “The Brighton Belle” (now reinstated), “The Devon Belle”, “The Golden Arrow Pullman” and “The Tyne-Tees Pullman”.

Also in the secon half were some rare slides of closed minor lines in north Cornwall, East Anglia, Bournemouth to Bristol and Cardiff via Salisbury and branch lines serving Aberfeldy, Gleneagles in Scotland and Oxenholme, Bewdley, Much Wenlock and Audley End in England.

This was a very interesting presentation including much historic railway content unfamiliar to much of the audience and we would recommend to other RCTS Branches. Our heart-felt thanks go to Paul Chancellor for such interesting photographic material.