Evening Visit WSR Museum 7/7/09

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July 09

Visit to the West Somerset Railway Gauge Museum, Bishops Lydeard Station, Tuesday 7th July 2009

As is customary for July we took advantage of summer weather and longer daylight hours for an evening outing, rather than an indoor meeting (Thus, not surprisingly, it rained for the first part of the evening!)

This year, on 7th July, 21 members and friends visited the Gauge Museum, situated on the Station Platform at Bishops Lydeard on the West Somerset Railway, where we were shown around by the curator Ian Coleby (who, incidentally, will also be the speaker at the Societies December 2009 meeting).

We heard about the history of the largest exhibit on site- ex GWR sleeping car no 9038, one of three built in 1897 to carry First Class passengers between Paddington and Fishguard for the Irish ferry. The coach was in service until 1931. In 1933 the body was sold and became part of a bungalow, spending the next fifty years under a tiled roof. In 1985 this historic vehicle was rescued and came to the West Somerset Railway for restoration.

With a restored GWR underframe and much interior woodwork donated from a coach (No 9039) by the Great Western Society at Didcot, the coach has been restored to 1925 condition by the West Somerset Steam Railway Trust. We saw at first hand the excellent restoration job, both inside and out, on this coach. Besides the sleeping car we saw a fascinating array of former station signs, nameplates and took our turns at operating the signal levers in a small working signal box.

A number of the former posters promoting Weston-s-Mare as a holiday destination were notable on show.
Our thanks to Ian and his colleague for taking the time to open the museum especially for our visit, and give us a guided tour. Our evening then continued with a visit to the Norton Fitzwarren triangle work site, by which time the cloud and rain had thankfully given way to sun!. See separate report for this visit.