Railway & Transport Club

We meet at 7:30 pm (new time from January 2023) on the 3^rd Tuesday of each month, except July, August and December.  Contact: John Soer or Jim Dunning.

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 topics, including heritage and steam railways, with the opportunity for refreshments and time for a chat.

Note meetings are at 7.30pm in the Bradbury Centre.

In March the Chairman, John Soer, gave a presentation on the Midland Railway line between Bristol and Birmingham.  This was initially formed of two separate companies, though they worked “as one”, – the broad-gauge Bristol & Gloucester and the standard gauge Gloucester & Birmingham.  The chaos caused by the break of gauge is shown in the well-known cartoons in the Illustrated London News in 1846.  The two companies were taken over by the Midland Railway in 1846, so thwarting the GWR who had offered poorer terms than the Midland. 

John took us along the line and its branches looking at the various types of traffic.  Of particular note was the Lickey Incline near Bromsgrove.  This is the steepest continuous length of line, at a little over two miles, in the country.  Trains needed extra engines to help push them up the incline: of particular note was one specially built to do this which worked from 1919 to 1956, covering over 800 thousand miles, going up and down the incline (apart from an annual trip to Derby for overhaul).  Our journey ended at Birmingham New Street – not John’s favourite station.

‘The Lynton and Barnstaple Railway’ was the subject of Mike Pearce’s talk in April.  After the opening of the railway between Exeter and Barnstaple in 1854, there were several attempts, none of which got beyond the planning stage, to build a railway from Barnstaple to the villages of Lynton and Lynmouth which were popular with holiday-makers.  The determined support of the publisher Sir George Newnes saw that a Bill for the construction of the line was passed in 1895, with the opening taking place on 11^th May 1898.  In order to save money, the line was built as a narrow gauge (about 2ft) and followed as far as possible the contours, giving a very sinuous route.  It still rose from 15ft above sea level at Barnstaple to 1000ft at Woody Bay before terminating at Lynton, 700ft above Lynmouth.  Mike illustrated a journey along the line by means of tinted postcards from the early 1900s, and then photographs of the 1930s.

In the second part of his talk Mike described the various steps take to restore some of the line since the formation of the L&BR Association in 1979.  A short section at Woody Bay opened in 1995.  Since 2006 it has been possible to make a one mile return trip from Woody Bay to Killington Lane.

John Soer

During 2023 we held ten meetings covering a wide range of transport topics.  Our meetings, at which the average attendance was slightly greater than that in 2022, attract a number of people who are not members of the church.  A number of our speakers do ask for a donation to a particular charity as a fee.  In addition, we have been able to donate £80 to the Railway Children Charity through the sale of magazines etc.

John Soer