Sussex
Meeting Reports
Thursday 25th SeptemberGloucestershire & Warwickshire Railway
Mike Dickson
For our first meeting of the new season in September we welcolmed Mike Dickson who gave an illustrated talk on the Goucestershire and Warwickshire Railway, which currently runs from Toddington to Cheltenham Racecourse. We started with a short history of the line from its opening until 1961 when local services were withdrawn the line then survived mainly for freight traffic as well as some Summer Saturday Services until the line closed in 1976 when a freight train derailed at Winchcombe and damaged the track. The Glos and Warwicks Railway paid £15000 for 15 miles of trackbed from Cheltenham to Broadway where the railway is now aiming to rebuild the railway. We saw a large number of slides showing how the current railway was rebuilt from scratch with a signal box moved from Hall Green to Winchcombe, part of the old Snow Hll station moved to the railway along with a station building from Monmouth Troy and we saw how Toddington Station was rebuilt from the ruin it was when the railway brought the line. We also saw some slides showing current railway activity between Toddington and Winchcombe which showed how much has been rebuilt, unfortunatly we ran out of time and were unable to see further slides of the rebuilt railway at Cheltenham Racecourse.
Thursday 22nd May
50 Years of Taffys Travels Part 1 Western & Southern
Peter Jones
For our final meeting of the current season we welcomed Peter Jones with 50 years of Taffys Travels, Southern and Western part one. We started at Aberdare 50 years ago with Peters first 3 pictures and then went up and down Wales with with various shots of steam and diesels at locations like Aberyswyth, Dovey Junction, and at Pontypool Road in 1978 where we saw 4 seperate diesel trains all awaitng signals at the same time. We left Wales at Severn Tunnel Junction with a shot of a class 31 on a Portsmouth train, down to Bristol Temple Meads we saw shots of steam in the 1960's and a large number of diesels (Classes 25,31,33,37 and 47) at the now closed shed in 1980. We then moved up the main line to Reading where we crossed over onto Southern metals and saw 30451 King Arthur at Farnborough in 1959 and then down to the Weymouth area with a 5WES at Upwey and a class 33 on the Weymouth Tramway in the 1970's. We then headed back along the mainline with a detour to the Swanage branch in preservation times and at Southampton in 1960 we saw Merchant Navy 35001 in the docks area along with shots of the QE1 and QE2, onto Portsmouth we saw a class 155 at Harbour station and then on towards London we went via Eastleigh and Woking where we saw a Class 33 heading a dead Class 47 on a Exeter to Waterloo train.We then went onto the Brighton Mainline with a 4CEP seen at East Croydon along with a Class 73 on a Gatwick Express train before we headed into Kent via Redhill and saw various electric units at Dover Priory before we headed towards Brighton via the KESR with shots of Thumper DEMU'S at Rye in 1986, a class 33 on a van train at Eastbourne and some 2 SAPS at Seaford. We finished our excellent evenings entertainment at Brighton where we saw 3 Class 20's on the Three to the Sea railtour in 1987 and our final slide was of Evening Star in 1970.
Thursday 24th April
All in all a very interesting talk made the better by the time that Douglas has spent in researching all the cards he has collected by contacting either the card printers or the artists who did the original paintings to ensure that he had all the correct details about the cards. It should also be noted that very few cards had any titles i.e. Happy Birthday or Merry Xmas etc. We look forward to Douglas returning to us in the future to show us the rest of his excellent collection.
Lineside Greetings
Douglas d'Enno
For our April meeting we welcomed branch member Douglas d'Enno with his very interesting talk entitled Railway Greeting Cards. Douglas originally got interested in the subject as a result of getting a jigsaw depicting the locomotive City of Hereford and has since then built up a collection of greeting cards from shops and artists, a number of the cards have appeared as paintings or jigsaws. We started at the beginning of steam with the Rocket at Rainhill and then 3 engines on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1831. We then moved onto the GWR with scenes from Calne, Birmingham Snow Hill and Yeovil Pen Mill amongst others along with a rare Don Brecon card of a double headed train at Hemmerdon Summit. This was followed by a number of different Standard engines amongst them 71000 Duke of Gloucester. We then finished a super evening with a variety of cards including Merry Xmas at Woody Bay 1925, cards from the Ffestiniog Railway, Dolgoch Viaduct on the Talyllyn, memories of Quainton Road in 1932 with Doug concluding with a card of the last main line steam engine built, Evening Star, hauling a Pines Express over the Somerset and Dorset Railway.
Thursday 27th March
After the AGM we then had members slides firstly Paul Snelling presented his 2007 year which showed locally 47810 at Shoreham and Lord Nelson 850 at Wivelsfield in June, Horsted Keynes and the Spa Valley along with shots from the Statfold Barn Railway and from Poland and Belgium. David Cox then gave an interesting show of Industrial Steam with scenes from the 80's at Bold Colliery and Chatham Dockyard and Long Marston. This was followed with shots from preserved industrial railways at the Sittingbourne & Kemsley, Foxfield and Tanfield railways. David then showed some scenes from charter photo shoots at Fords Dagenham, Allied Steel at Cardiff, Shelton Steelworks at Stoke and Workington Steelworks all of which are no longer possible as they have all sadly closed. Godfrey Gould then showed us slides from the Nene Valley railway with European Stock and Engines to the fore, we then moved on to Etchingham in East Sussex with shots both inside and outside of the old signal box along with the old Hastings DEMU'S and then a LCGB visit to the signal box at Redhill along with some shots of 4 VEPS. We finished the evening when Paul Snelling had a second helping this time showing us some of his Colour-Rail collection with scenes from the 50's and 60's at Welshpool, Churston, Fairford, Oswestry, Lampeter and Weymouth tramway amongst others.
Branch AGM and Members Slides
10 branch members including the committee attended Sussex’s AGM held on 27th March 2008. In the months leading up to the AGM there was some doubts as to whether the branch would continue beyond the summer of 2008 with the possibility of just the branch secretary being left to continue running the branch. Thankfully some volunteers came forward and duly joined the committee at the AGM. All told the AGM was completed in 28 minutes.
Thursday 28th February
As time moved on the railway has slowly moved north towards East Grinstead, firstly to Horsted House Farm where a push pull train from Horsted Keynes ran separately, onto Newcombe Bridge at West Hoathly and then finally to its current northerly terminus at Kingscote which was purchased for £70000 in 1985 and where trains reached in 1994 after both the platforms had to be rebuilt from scratch.Along the way Roger showed us various shots of how the railway has slowly been built up from its original state when brought from BR, some of the main buildings built have been the engine sheds at Sheffield Park and the carriage sheds at Horsted Keynes finally we were brought up to date with current matters with a shot of the diesel shunter helping out with the spoil trains being used at the edge of the rubbish tip the last big obstacle to be removed before East Grinstead is reached hopefully sometime in the next 2 years.
Even though a number of visitors to the meeting are members of the Bluebell Railway everyone learned something new and we were all thoroughly entertained by Roger.
40 Years of The Bluebell Railway
Roger Price
For our February meeting we welcomed Roger Price from the Bluebell Railway who gave us an entertaining slide show and talk showing how this wonderful preserved railway has grown and developed over the last 40 years or so from 2 Engines and Carriages to what it is today. Roger is currently a guard on the Bluebell Railway and has held lots of positions since he arrived there in 1971 along with engine Blackmoor Vale and the Bullied Society when they relocated from the Longmoor Military Railway. We saw some slides of the stock as it arrived at Haywards Heath in 1971 and as it was transported by low loader to the Bluebell over the course of the next 2 weeks. From 1971 until May 1976 we saw how Blackmoor Vale was slowly restored and finally unveiled to eveyone, we moved up the line to Horsted Keynes and we discovered that the railway cottages at Horsted Keynes came with the railway when it was purchased from BR and were then sold for the princely sum of £1500 each !! We also saw how the buildings on platforms 1 and 2 were slowly rebuilt to replace those that were demolished as long ago as 1920.
Thursday 24th January The majority of the slides seen covered Jeremy's trips to Italy in the period 1990 - 1997. We started with a slide from 1974 however as steam was still evidence at this time before it just faded away.Another early shot from 1984 showed some locos which had luggage compartments and then onto the 1990's where we saw a large variety of colourful electric and Diesel Loco's, shunters and Multiple units and some of the original Pendelino units, inter mixed with slides of various steam tours or charters that Jeremy had been on in this period. A couple of unusual slides we saw included one from 1990 when Jeremy took a trip to Palma Nova which was operated by a EMU and DMU working in multiple and in 1992 a slide of an Air Italia train when the airline replaced some of its planes with trains !! could you imagine someone like British Airways or Easy Jet doing that today ?
All in all this was an interesting presentation of Railways in Italy during the 1990's and we hope to invite Jeremy back sometime in the future but with a bit longer notice next time.
The Railways of Italy
Jeremy Harrison
For our January meeting our booked speaker Chris Jackson Editor of the Railway Gazette was unable to attend as he had been called abroad no doubt chasing up some exclusive scoop, so we were grateful that Jeremy Harrison of the Croydon branch was able to step in at short notice with Railways of Italy.
Thursday 13th December 2007
Alan Wesson then did his round on Eastern European Railways he gace us the initials of the National Railway company and we had to work out which country it was, it wasn't very easy with only about 50% being guessed right 'Guessing being the operative word'. Paul Snelling then did his photo round before we had the last round on naming the Battle of Britain Engines. At the end it was the team of Mike Fanthorpe Jim Aston and Michael Hooker who took the honours.
A big thank you to Godfrey Gould for setting 4 rounds of questions as well as Chairing the quiz and a thank you to Alan Wesson and Paul Snelling for also setting a round each.
Annual Quiz
Our meeting in December was the branch annual quiz which as usual was chaired by Godfrey Gould with both Paul Snelling and Mike Wesson both chairing one round each. 9 members took part split into 3 teams of 3. The first round was a miscellaneous round but was centred on Steam age questions which didnt help the youngest of the teams get off to a good start this was followed by a round of Surbuban stations with Ilford Road on the Tyne and Wear Metro proving the stumbling block for all the teams, the last round before the refreshment break was on Pregrouping Locomotive works.
Thursday 22nd November 2007
He then treated us to sections on Military Trackwork and Military Signalling to illustrate how the Royal Engineers and Royal Signal Corps rebuilt and operated military railways following liberation. In between he showed a selection of wartime posters. Two of note was an advert for Land Army girls and another entitled "She's not so dumb" which elicited some wry smiles from senior members who had served King and Country. Mike is to be thanked for providing a fascinating evening on a very little known subject.
Military Port No 1 & The Faslane Military Railway
Mike Walshaw
In November Mike Walshaw presented Military Port No. 1 and the Faslane Military Railway. Commencing building in November 1940 the port was completed within 15 months, no mean feat. A connection was made from the West Highland line to the port by a steeply graded line, through a yard with 7 lines and thence down to the port and Bay station. Here a number of sidings served the 6 ship berths, lighter berths and MT berth. The port turned out to be of only relatively minor use although it was extensively used for the invasion of Dunkirk and for VIP's, such as Churchill, sailing to America. Lack of ship repairing facilities didn't help. By 1947 it was decided that it was of no further use and was leased to a ship breaker. In 1957 the area was taken over by the Navy who built the submarine base we know today. Mike covered the area very comprehensively in every aspect despite being unable, naturally, to find any photographs taken in the war years.
October 2008