School Railway Clubs and Societies

[30909]

In the thread "First Memories of London Terminus" there have been a number of posting going a little off topic recalling trips made with Clubs or Societies. An interesting topic on its own perhaps deserves its own thread.
I'll kick off with my junior school's club on a visit to Purley Signal Box in 1958. Until 2020 all those in the attached photograph met once a year with a few other class mates.
On the trip to the Box we had with us a Ferrograph Reel to Reel Tape Recorder to record our impressions and interviews with the signallers for transmission on our school's weekly internal radio programme.

 

[30907]

I don't have photographic evidence, but (the school...) 30907's Railway Society was pretty active. Indeed I was only this evening regretting that I hadn't gone on a 1965 trip round certain steam-worked Surrey/Sussex branches which were about to close.
Apart from a shed visit to Nine Elms, my first outing was to Barry, which went via Bristol TM where the schoolmaster in charge (there had to be one) blagged our way into Bath Road as he had "spotted there when he was a lad..."
I recall trips to the KWVR and SVR in their earliest days and one to Boulogne and Calais....and a number of signalnox visits including London Bridge (old).

 

[Ianigsy]

My school had a Transport Society, although its only regular fixture was a trip to Blackpool Illuminations in a Chester Corporation bus (I believe there was one kept as a pet in the 1980s) with a stop for a fish and chip supper on the way home.

 

[30909]

Our club had a rather twee title of "The Train Trotters Club" as it was known that in the holidays and occasional Saturdays several of us would, armed with our Ian Allans, travel as a group to Tonbridge, Clapham Junction, or Victoria via Redhill, Woking or Waterloo via Guildford for a day of spotting, none of this would be condoned by parents, schools, or society today. Our school looked out on the Redhill to Reading line and 30909 was for a time a Guildford loco and regularly passed by to Redhill often in the first hour of school.

 

[Lucan]

I was in my school railway club. We once organised visits to three of the main London sheds, Cricklewood, Hornsey and Old Oak Common, when there were still steam locos. It is hard to imagine today, but 20 schoolboys, 15-16 yo, had an unsupervised free run in the depots, climbing in and out of stabled locos with banked fires, walking over tracks, and not an orange jacket in sight. I'm sure that people were generally more circumspect in those days and at the same time more easy going.

We also did our own presentation on the closed Merton Abbey station, not far from us. Two or three of the boys had trespassed around it to work out the whole track plan (it had a significant goods yard), and we made a slide of the diagram. Wish I still had a copy. As it happens, Geoff Marshall walked through there earlier this week for his YouTube channel.

 

[WesternLancer]

Occasional threads by @Arglwydd Golau have featured pics from I think his father's school railway club trips in the 1930s and before IIRC - as per link below. I must say I have found these fascinating to see and read about
eg - perhaps this one from a bit later than school era but just the one I found

Photo query

It's been some time since I posted one of my father's old photos....here's one taken in 1936/7 when he was at Oxford, I'm assuming it's on the outskirts of London. Must be easier than a level crossing in the Reading area! Loco is an unidentified GWR 'Bulldog'

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[GRALISTAIR]

I went to Kirkham Grammar School and was secretary of the school Railway Society. We got copies of Modern Railways and I arranged for showing of railway films in the lunch break. We would make trips to Kirkham and Wesham station and signal boxes.

Cannon Slade Grammar school also had a club that did mini bus tours of sheds and I managed to go one of their tours. Likewise I manged to go on one of Preston Grammar Schools mini bus shed tours to Tinsley, Wath etc.

 

[High Dyke]

My secondary school had a model railway layout in the Art Room. The boards were suspended from the ceiling and we lowered it on club days to operate.

 

[30907]

My secondary school had a model railway layout in the Art Room. The boards were suspended from the ceiling and we lowered it on club days to operate.

Mine somehow managed to acquire rights to a large basement room with a concrete floor and poor ventilation; at some stage H&S must have put a stop to it .
We also produced a magazine, run off on the school Banda machine; I believe our master in charge was known for the number of (Banda) masters he signed for....

Occasional threads by @Arglwydd Golau have featured pics from I think his father's school railway club trips in the 1930s and before IIRC

(30)939 St John's Leatherhead IIRC.

 

[6Gman]

We had a school railway society which organised a couple of trips each year - one was always a London trip between Xmas and New Year. We always did Stratford plus one other depot, followed by free time wherever we liked. Would never be allowed now!

We also had a school model railway society. We built a (near) scale model of Rugeley c.1920 which exhibited at various exhibitions in the 1970/80s (Buxton, Manchester, Stourbridge) and at the Crewe Heritage Centre in the late 1980s.