Railway & Transport Club

We meet at 7:45 pm on the 3^rd Tuesday of each month, except August.  Contact: John Soer.

The Club has over 40 members and enables men and women of all ages to share their common interest.

We meet in the Bradbury Centre of the Methodist Church, in Rose Street (Peach Place), where members enjoy a wide range of good quality presentations on transport related subjects, with the opportunity for refreshments and time for a chat.

We hope to resume ‘normal service’ in the Bradbury Centre in September.

Our meeting on 15^th June was a presentation by John Soer, on Zoom, titled ‘Railway Postcards’.  John began by outlining the stages in the development of the picture postcard, as we know it, from the first issue by the Post Office in October 1870.  There was a mania for collecting picture postcards in the first twenty years or so of the twentieth century, and the railway companies saw this as an opportunity to advertise their services, with some of the larger companies publishing up to 1000 different cards.  There were cards showing the places that could be visited, the railway hotels, shipping routes and even bus services.  Many of the railways commissioned the leading artists of the day to design posters, some of which were also published as postcards.

It is perhaps surprising that a small fraction of these cards showed railway engines.  However, there were companies who specialised in producing photographic postcards of the railways, and we saw examples of these.  John ended by taking a trip along the line from Reading to Waterloo, showing how the stations looked in the early part of the last century.

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The club does owe a great debt of gratitude to David Morgan for hosting these meetings on Zoom.  We hope to resume ‘normal service’ in September.

John Soer

Despite Covid-19 we did manage to hold five meetings in 2020 – January, February, and the last three months of the year.  Special thanks are due to David Morgan for hosting the last three of these on Zoom.  These did provide a small outlet for those finding the lockdowns difficult.  Despite the small number of meetings, we were able to raise £100 for the Railway Children Charity.   

John Soer