TVY Thames Valley branch

The talk describes the long and complex story of railways around Mangotsfield where the first railway transporting coal arrived in 1832. We then follow the history with various railway companies involving both standard and broad gauge, to closure and the establishment of the Bristol and Bath Railway Path which was the first project by Sustrans.

The presentation explores the fluctuating history of the North London line and includes a photographic journey from Richmond to the former Terminus of Broad Street.

Martin, who is well known to many of our RCTS Branch members, having been the host of our successful Swindon Works railway sites tour which we ran last year, comes from a long family line of Swindon railway employees. In this talk Martin will give us some of his personnel experiences of life inside Swindon…

Railway carriages may be overshadowed by the glamour of the locomotive, but they can be glamorous too - or very basic! This presentation traces the diverse and fascinating story of how carriages evolved from the early stagecoach on rails; to modern day vehicles, with more than a few trials and errors along the way. Take…

Brian Sullivan returns to give us a further selection of historic scanned slides taken by Tommy Tomalin, this time covering the route from Didcot through to Snow Hill station in Birmingham. There are stops at various stations along the route to see the railway operations.