UPDATED Tuesday, 25 February 2025
Following the recent coverage of Alstom’s launch event for their Greatest Gathering, we are understandably getting enquiries as to what the Midland Railway Society will be doing to mark this bicentenary.
We will be holding Open Days over two weekends – 5th/6th July and 13th/14th September – when we will open the doors of the Midland Railway Study Centre to visitors and, literally, put on a show.
Each weekend will have its own theme – In July it will be “How the Railway Came to Derby” and in September “Railway People — Your Ancestors or Not“.
We will be putting out displays of ephemera, photographs and documents from the Study Centre collections relevant to each theme and there will be Midland Railway Society members on hand to welcome visitors. They will be talking about the material on display, the wider theme and railways in general. In the area known as The Studio there will be stalls and stands for heritage railway partners and other relevant organisations to come and talk about their activities as well as sell books etc.
Also in the Studio a small presentation area (will be provided where a rolling (silent) display on the weekend’s theme will run and and twice each day there will be a live illustrated talk on the event theme lasting 45min to an hour. Meanwhile upstairs in the Railways Revealed gallery the Model Railway volunteers will be operating Kirtley Junction all day each day, and putting on their own displays of their craft.
ADMISSION IS FREE and all are welcome.
Away from Derby, we are delighted to be working with the modern Train Operating Company, C2C, who are the current incumbents of what we would think of as the London Tilbury & Southend Railway. The really pleasing thing is that they appreciate this fact too, and so their contribution to Railway 200 will be to embrace their own heritage… which is of course where we come in. I will be the first to admit that as a Society, we could be accused of not fully embracing the LTS part of the Midland Railway’s history. Thanks to Roy Burrows, however, the Collection contains a wealth of material – over 1,110 items including objects, paperwork, ephemera, and photographs. Our initial meeting with C2C has identified several areas where we can support their plans with historic material, including loans for an exhibition they plan at Fenchurch Street during the summer, with open days at West Ham depot and their new driver training simulator at Southend. Hopefully, one or more of these events will also allow us a physical attendance with our stand as well, hopefully recruiting a new crop of LTS enthusiasts to our ranks…?
Then the ‘big one’ – The Greatest Gathering from Friday 1st to Sunday 3rd August at Alstom’s Litchurch Lane site in Derby – originally the Midland Railway’s Carriage & Wagon works dating from 1874. Again, as I type this, things are uncertain. We will be attending this event as part of the (still being planned) History Zone. More details to follow. Again, we also look to our partners, Derby Museums, but still, their own plans for the event remain fluid. As best as I can say right now, they will be attending with their “Makory” (a converted former mobile library), which is effectively a mobile museum. I strongly anticipate that we will be deeply involved in this, using our extensive collection of relevant material to create an exhibition illustrating the history of Litchurch Lane. [The featured image for this Post for example]
The weekend of The Greatest Gathering will be a hugely important event for the whole of Derby, bringing in thousands of visitors – something the City hasn’t been slow in appreciating. Consequently, there are plans for related events over the weekend at the Silk Mill. Again, the plans remain fluid, but I am sure the Midland Railway Society will be involved in some way.
Either way, it will be a really interesting weekend.
As soon as dates and details for any of these plans are confirmed, I will be earnestly, nay desperately, begging Midland Railway Society members to get involved. Ideally with sleeves rolled up and ready for duty, but at least in attending and making the events something for us all to be proud of and remember for a long time.
