Member Presentations and Quiz

Presenters: Chris Ignatowicz and Geoff Brocket

Meeting Held at Shenfield Parish Hall

Our booked speaker for 18 March 2019 was unavailable, so, at short notice, an improvised programme was implemented, in the form of a Members’ Slide Evening and a Quiz.

Our treasurer, Chris Ignatowicz, had us all racking our brains when he announced that the title for his short presentation was to be ‘From Venice to Rome by Narrow Gauge’. He had us all fooled. It turned out that Wenecja and Rzymu are the Polish versions of the Italian cities in question linked by narrow gauge, and we saw pictures of quaint locos, including a Pacific and 600mm gauge oddities in a TPO and snowplough at the museum.

Another stalwart, Geoff Brockett, followed on with one of his collections of high quality photographs covering special and unusual workings. His in-depth and inside knowledge enables him to capture many examples of locos and rolling stock turning up in surprising places – fortunately not surprising to Geoff. Most of his pictures in this presentation were taken around London, but Geoff roams far and wide and we were treated to rail tours, infrastructure trains, ECS – new stock deliveries and positioning workings. It is perhaps surprising how much non-revenue working there is. Many and varied were the combinations of locos and stock that were featured in all manner of corporate colours.

The evening was completed by a quiz that enabled members to display their encyclopaedic knowledge of trains and railways, which they did with much good-natured rivalry among the teams.