Railway & Transport Club
We meet at 7:30 pm (new time from January 2023) on the 3rd 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.
Future Programme
Note meetings are at 7.30pm in the Bradbury Centre (Hall or Luke).
| 18 February | ‘San Francisco Transit. The history of cable cars, street cars, trolleybuses and Metro’ - Dave Chick and Dave Hall This may be a little different from our usual fayre, but these two transport experts will tell us with illustrations about their recent first hand experiences of the city. |
| 18 March | ‘Rails in Wales’ - Shaun Bradbury An illustrated talk about Wales with material shot in June 2024 when Shaun visited most of the narrow gauge railways and a few standard gauge lines, as well as the Great Orme Tramway. |
| 15 April | ‘The history of the Isle of Wight railways’ - Stuart Duddy Stuart, one of the Directors of the Isle of Wight Steam Railway, will tell us the fascinating history of the once extensive railway system on the Island. |
| 20 May | ‘Train Engineering Incidents’ - Cliff Perry Cliff had a long career in the railway industry. He brings a wealth of technical expertise to us tonight. |
| 17 June | ‘Railfuture’ - Richard Stow and Andrew Mccallum Railfuture is the organisation which has campaigned for improvements to the railway including re-opening lines. |
Meeting Reports
June 2024: After visits to the West Country in our previous two meetings, we came nearer home to Hampshire in June when Gordon Adams gave a talk on Eastleigh from Railway Junction to Railway Centre. Gordon began by pointing out that in the early nineteen century Eastleigh was so small that it was not shown on maps. The first station to open there in 1839, at the junction of lines to Southampton & Portsmouth, was called Bishopstoke. This changed to Eastleigh & Bishopstoke in 1889 and finally to Eastleigh in 1923. A number of postcards showed the station as it was during the early 1900s.
In 1891 the London & Southwestern Railway opened a Carriage & Wagon Works there. Gordon showed photographs of many of the products of the works, including a 1910 LSWR coach now to be seen on the Bluebell Railway (illustrated). In WWI the works was involved in the design and building of a number of ambulance trains. Then, in WWII the construction of landing craft for the Normandy invasion was among the work carried out there.
A large locomotive depot opened there in 1903. This was followed by the transfer to Eastleigh from Nine Elms in London of locomotive building. All this caused the population of Bishopstoke and Eastleigh to rise from 515 in 1871 to 7779 in 1901. In the three years from 1861 to 1864 it almost doubled from 3600 to c7000. We saw photographs of the various types of locomotives built there up to 1948 when, following nationalisation of the railways, the works carried out repairs there.
Gordon finished by describing the work that has taken place there since privatisation of the railways. This includes the overhaul of preserved locos. The applause at the end showed how much we had enjoyed a thoroughly entertaining and interesting talk.
John Soer
Annual Report (March 2024)
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