Reports of meetings from October 2022 to October 2023
2022
20th September 2022: A joint meeting with the MK Branch was held in Roade Village Hall. Tony Ellershaw from the Ivatt Diesel Re-creation Project gave an insight into the proposal to build a replica of the LMS pioneer mainline diesel 10000.
24th. October: Bill Davies gave us an entertaining illustrated talk of his life and times on the railway and into retirement entitled ’On and off the Footplate in Retirement’
21st November: Steve Brame, a Northampton man born and bred, trained as a civil engineer and cut his teeth with the Engineers Dept of BR specialising in bridge building. He finished his career on Crossrail, but the times in between were spent off the railway as a consultant including one of the redesigns of Silverstone Racetrack.
2023
23rd January 2023: Bryan Cross returned with his photographic series on the Peter Bland Collection Part 5. Good presentations of BR Steam always go down well.
20th February: Our president Bryan Arman returned to continue his series on the history of Swindon Works, this time covering the Collett years, probably the most memorable era for our members who were familiar with his products on the Western.
20th March: Stephen Gay returned with Part 2 of his walk along the Woodhead Route interspersed with tales of people he met on the way reminiscing on the route when its working.
22nd May: With the advantage of lighter evenings, we took the opportunity to hold an evening meeting. David Scudamore presented another in his series on the ‘Railways around Cambridge’, photographs mostly taken when he lived in the area with the addition of some from his forays back over the years since, looking at how the scene changed.
25th September: At our first meeting after a summer break, Tony Storey hailing from the south coast gave us a photographic record of Six Decades of Steam. His presentation started with records from the time when he was growing up in Christchurch, which were followed by his visits to grandparents in Manchester when he was a child. His talk concluded with visits to some preserved lines, including the Bluebell Railway, monitoring the progress from their earliest days to the present day. Tony’s father encouraged him to learn about the art of photography from an early age, and many of his photographs clearly showed this skill, setting them apart from just snaps of locos!
23rd October: This was a DIY meeting when Members are invited to bring along and show a collection of railway related photographs. A couple of Members showed slides of trips in England and Germany, together with some now historic slides of Culworth and Woodford on the GC before dismantling took place. Also included was an interesting photo of the south side of the legendary Shrewsbury signal box, a side rarely photographed. After a break for tea, the Chairman showed a selection of photos from a former Branch Member, now longer with us, of various trips he made around the UK in the late 1950s.