2013 Archive

16th January                 AGM                         Members' slides, etc

20th February               Alan Corwood          Railway Memorabilia

20th March                    Ian Bennett              The Maurice Deane Collection (selecting S&D and local area)

17th April                      Simon Foote           The 08:35 from Waterloo

15th May                       Mike Clemens        The Jim Clemens selection. Film from 1950/60s

19th June                      Peter Gray               Steam in South Devon 50s/60s

17th July                       Malcolm Ranieri     Narrow Gauge World

18th September           David Hartland       Rain, Steam and 78 rpm.

16th October                David Gulliver         More travels across Europe in search of steam

9th November (Saturday)         Our annual Model Railway Exhibition

20th November            Peter Triggs             Steam, steam and a little exhaust

11th December            Graham Bean          Even more of Graham's mis-spent youth

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At our February meeting we were pleased to welcome local collector Alan Corwood who spoke on the subject of Railway Memorabilia.

Alan has a particular interest in carriage prints – those framed pictures which in years gone by filled the space between the seat headrest and the luggage rack in carriage compartments.  He brought a number of these with him, together with a varied selection of other items from his collection.  We were able to inspect and handle thousands of pounds worth of railway antiques, ranging from locomotive number plates to toilet roll holders, with pretty much everything in between – cast iron notices, enamelled station signs, oil lamps, clothing, reference books and even the camera with which he took his first railway photographs many years ago.  Alan educated us with his knowledge of the artifacts  their uses, design and manufacture and entertained us with his anecdotes regarding their acquisition and their relevance to mileposts in his life.  After all, as he stressed, “it’s all about nostalgia”.

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In March we welcomed Ian Bennett who presented a generous selection of photographs from the Maurice Deane collection. Maurice Deane was a bank manager with the Westminster Bank who had a love of railways. His particular delight was the Western Region of British Railways, and in the 1950s he would take himself off on a Sunday – he had to work Saturday mornings – and with a good quality Leica camera, take superb photos of the trains. As the end of steam traction loomed in the 1960s, he travelled more widely and recorded many of the branch lines and backwaters that were soon to disappear. He amassed a collection of over 5000 slides, and after his death a few years ago, two friends took over his collection and began to transfer the slides to digital format. This involved editing each picture to remove marks, thumbprints, mold and colour failure to render a clean and crisp image in bright and true colours.  

From this archive Ian had selected views of the Somerset and Dorset line from Bath to Shillingstone in Dorset, then a range of photos of the local branch and main lines and a couple of sets from further afield, for example, the Havant branch with their tiny “Terrier” locos and the Isle of Wight system with its distinctive “O2” locos. Weymouth’s tramway also appeared, the only site in England where the main line travelled along the roads. Specially equipped locomotives – they were required to have a large bell – would pull boat trains down to the port, travelling along the quayside to meet passenger steamers there. The audience were often able to contribute additional information about the scenes shown. In particular one gentleman clearly had a very detailed knowledge of Weymouth’s operation. He pointed out a wooden box which stuck out over the road from one of the buildings alongside the railway. This, he said, was the back wall of the offices of the Railway in Weymouth, and when they wanted to install toilets in the upper floor they built this cantilevered projection out into space, as they were unwilling to give up any of the rooms inside. He described the purpose of many of the odd fittings that could be seen in the photos, such as the occasional tall piles which extended above the quayside. These were installed to protect the casings of paddle steamers on very high tides: without them, the paddle boxes might have rode up over the edge of the quay and damaged the vessel on the falling tide. 

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At our April meeting Simon Foote took us on a fascinating journey from London Waterloo, down though Basingstoke, Southampton and Bournemouth to the seaside at Weymouth. Excellent slides of steam trains that ran on this route in the 1950s and 1960s, later photos of similar locomotives preserved today and much detail of the line and infrastructure were presented. Unusually, Simon had many sound recordings to create a wonderful atmosphere of the period. The talk was greatly enjoyed by a good turnout of members and visitors. 

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Jim Clemens was a rail enthusiast and travelled the country at every opportunity filming trains in the 1950s and 1960s. His fascination with both railways and cine film has left us with an important archive record that is comprehensive and detailed.  At our May meeting his son Mike gave us a talk with just a small selection of the many hours of filming that he did. We were shown  the line from Waterloo via Basingstoke, Salisbury and through the local area, past Exeter and on to Barnstaple, Bideford and Cornwall, run by the Atlantic Coast Express. There was footage from Wales and Scotland, a section taken on holiday in Portugal, and a fascinating copy of a commercial information film showing the journey from Open Cast Mine to Blast Furnace of iron ore in the northern United States in about 1928. The scale of this operation was surprising and some of the machinery looked like a science-fiction production. 

Mike Clemens has done an amazing job of transferring all the archive on to digital media, and DVDs are available for all lines, and types of traffic. The quality of the picture on the films is very good with little scratching and vivid colour, bearing in mind the 8mm film stock was small in the first place, and each run of the film used only one half – the film was reversed after the first side and used again on the other. The talk was entertaining and we very much hope to see Mike again in the not too distant future.

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Our December meeting featured "Even More of Graham's Mis-spent Youth".   Once again we followed Graham around the engine sheds of north-west England, with endless Black 5's being watched by kids in short trousers eating jam sandwiches!  Graham finished with a series of photos taken in North Wales earlier in 2013, which surely marks the start of his forthcoming series, "Graham's Mis-spent Middle Age!".  

The Club held its 11th Annual Model Railway Exhibition in Thorncombe on 9th November. The show was opened by the Rt. Hon. Oliver Letwin, MP for West Dorset and a Cabinet Minister. 

There were some 17 layouts and exhibits with a range of gauges, periods and geographical location. There was even a model from Middle Earth – Simon Addelsee’s Hobbiton End. The standard of exhibits was very high thanks to the hard work of Graham Bean, the Exhibition Manager. Nearly 400 people came to see the show, a remarkable fact given the best efforts of Sat-Nav to send people down farm tracks round the village.

Visitors were invited to vote for their favourite layout, and it says much for the quality of 

all the layouts that when these came to be counted, the piles of slips were all much the same height. 

The winner of the Best in Show Prize was Paul Davis with “Tennessee Extraction Co.”, an On30 layout depicting an American Industrial area set in the 1940s. The winner also receives the Jeff Tennant Memorial Trophy. 

Runners-Up were “Malix”, a Swiss mountain scene with a typical spiral track to gain height, and “Corris” a delightful Mid Wales narrow gauge layout that has featured in the model railway press. “Corris” also won the Chairman’s Prize for the highest standard of skill, presentation, operation, imagination and interaction with the visitors. 

There were several traders offering new and secondhand railway models, railway memorabilia, books and other goodies. There were display stands for the OO9 Society and Peco, and a stand from David Luesby from Yeovil, who runs a group for youngsters to learn more about the hobby if they want to progress from train sets.

Our grateful thanks go to Buffers Model railways, our Sponsor, and provider of the prizes; Peco from Beer, who support us generously, and printed our programmes for no charge; Footeprint of Bridport who printed the posters; Phillip Smith who engraved the exhibitors plaques for us; St. Mary’s School, who let us invade most of the school building and move all the furniture and equipment; and finally the ladies in the kitchen – Brenda, Pauline, Vivienne, Ann and June – who slaved away all day keeping the visitors fed and watered. 

The School let us have more space than ever this year, a fact which the visitors remarked on, saying there was plenty of room to move around, and see the layouts properly. We are also grateful to Thorncombe St. Mary’s Church, who very kindly let us use their car park.

There's a short video of the show here.

Our 2014 MRE is scheduled for Saturday 8th November; please save the date.

 Full List of exhibitors

1   Beaminster                           Chard MRC  (Mike Garth)                 00           West Dorset   1960-65

2   Brimscombe                         Shirehampton MRC (Tony Davies)  N            BR(W)  1950s/60s

3   Rosedale                               Phil Dawling                                        0

4   Earl's Court                           Terry Tew                                             00           BR(M) / BR(W)   early 1960s

5   Hobbiton End                        Simon Addelsee                                5.5 / 9mm   Middle Earthfantasy

6   Corris                                     Rod Alcock                                         OO9         Mid Wales  c 1930

7   Malix                                       Mervyn Kendal                                    H0m         Switzerland 

8   Park End Tramway               Bob Pritchard                                     00             1950s - present

9   Red Mountain Quarry           Richard Slate                                      0n9  

10 Ryan's Mill                             Alan Eadle                                          SM32       1920-30

11 Scilly Point                            Geoff Broadhurst                                009           1920s-30s

12 Spenridge Road                  Steve Spencer                                    00              Wareham/Poole  BR blue diesel

13 Tennessee Extraction Co.  Paul Davis                                           0n30          USA    1940-50

14 Tormouth Quay                    Graham Bean                                      00              1950s/60s

15 Yard Shunter                        Ray Norwood                                       00              BR (S)1948-60s

16 Yeoton Wharf                       Nick Salzman                                       3mm / 14.2/21   North Devon   1873-1892