Meeting 13 May 2008
Great Western Miscellany
Presented by Canon Brian Arman
Awaiting photo here
Photo caption here. Photo by Chris Challis
On Tuesday, 13th May, the Fraternity met at Wells Town Hall for its final evening session of the current season. Our speaker was Canon Brian Arman who was making his 10th successive annual visit to us. His wonderfully illustrated talk on this occasion was entitled 'A Great Western Miscellany' and we were delighted to see on the screen a wide selection of photographs, many of which Brian had only recently discovered and which had not been widely seen by an enthusiast audience before.
Many featured locomotives and scenes on the Great Western Railway (and its originally associated companies - the Bristol & Exeter, the South Devon, the Cornwall and the South Wales Railways) - in the latter years of the broad gauge era from the 1870s until its final abolition in 1892.
Brian then turned his attention to photographs of accidents on the GWR system from the 1870s until the Second World War. These included the most serious accident on the broad gauge - at Norton Fitzwarren in 1890. Brian commented, however, that it was a reflection on the various safety measures which the Great Western introduced from about that time, that there were only two serious accidents on the system during the half century ending in 1940.
The final part of Brian's talk featured photographs taken at Swindon, both in the Railway Works and elsewhere right up until the end of the steam era in the 1960s. A vote of thanks was given by John Uncles.