National Meetings

A presentation from the LCGB/NRM Ken Nunn collection, by Jeremy Harrison, of images from 1945 into the 1950s. This was a period of rapid change, as the railways changed from their drab, run down appearence at the end of the war, to a bright, clean new order, with the first glimpses of modernisation and a…

Robert Pritchard will give a presentation on the railways of Slovakia over the last 12 years, from 2012 to 2023. He will give us a tour of Slovakia by rail including some general interest photos and maybe the odd tram thrown in. The talk will be in three geographical sections - covering the capital Bratislava…

David Jackman will present "A Southern Miscellany", as seen through the lens of photographers who have passed their images to the Society's Photographic Archive, featuring a potpourri of photographs from the 1950s onwards (mainly from the 60s and 70s), including a wide selection of steam, diesel and electric motive power across the region, from the…

Michael Grieves started taking cine film in the 1960s, and from 1969 into the 1970s, took much on various trips to Europe in search of steam, which has now been scanned into digital format. Tonight he will show a miscellany, drawing from trips to Czechoslovakia, Austria - featuring the Vordernberg rack line in winter -…

The introduction of “Pacesetter” fares for under-26-year-olds in 1968 made international air travel much more affordable, and Frank Stamford - our regular Australian attendee - took advantage of them to make  a fifteen-week round the world trip in search of steam, visiting Indonesia, the British Isles, Western Europe (from Portugal to West Germany), and South…

Tony Bowles brings us another selection from The Restoration & Archiving Trust, this time comprising a mixture of colour and black & white photographs covering the narrow gauge lines in France that were still existed from the mid 1950s onwards, starting in Corsica & finishing on the Reseau Breton. For this virtual event, you will…

Robin Patrick gives a presentation of his early black & white photography, from 1959 to 1966, a period in which he started his railway career at Roade. So 1964 with steam on WCML - the year he would most like to go back to  - features strongly. But he also travelled around the country, visiting…

Günter is promising a further selection of excellent Steam photography from around the world, featuring both his own work, and of his friends Bernhard Haseneder and Dirk Hoellerhage. Countries featured include Germany (both West and East), Czechoslovakia, Turkey, India, South Africa and China, over the last half century (and a bit). An event to bring…

Geoff Plumb (Watford Branch Chairman) returns to present another of his popular ‘That Was The Year That Was’ series, this time taking us through 1973 (is that really over half a century ago?). We start the year with East to West cross-border German steam around Bebra in January, moving on to Austria for snowy scenes…

Former Society Chairman and British Rail Business Manager Highland Callum MacLeod joins us to tell of the challenges that faced the West Highland Line in the early 1980s, and the changes, upgrades and transformation that followed in meeting and overcoming these through that decade. These included the introduction of RETB signalling and DMUs, together with…

A two part presentation, by two of our German stalwarts. In the first half, Helmut Dahlhaus will show photos by his late brother Hans Dieter Dahlhaus of steam on Căile Ferate Române (Romanian Railways) between 1968 and 1980, to be followed from some his own images of steam in Czechoslovakia. For a more powerful express…