Our March meeting - The Atmospheric Railway Pumping
HouseTop of FormBottom of Form
Val Forrester
started her talk by paying tribute to her late husband Richard Forrester. It
was Richard, the keen industrial historian, who saved our Brunel Pumping House.
He’d always been an innovator, for example, he built an autogyro in the roof of
their first flat and made a flymo type lawnmower in a dustbin lid. When they first
visited the Pumping House, he took Val into the cavernous room that once held
the massive steam-driven pump. The floor was covered with a deep layer of…
guano; from all the pigeons.
“Would you like to
live here?”
She agreed, because she really liked old
buildings and, if Dick said he could replicate the atmospheric railway system,
she knew he could. But unlike the Victorian William Gibbs, (the son of an
Exeter surgeon, who made his fortune from the import of guano from the
Pacific), Dick Forrester didn’t make a fortune from the guano floor-cover.
He converted the
top of the tower into a flat, which included the promised, very beautiful
kitchen. Valerie and Dick moved in with
their two sons. Valerie described the problems of simply going in and out of
the flat, let alone bringing home the weekly family shop; when the only access was
- up a ladder! The family managed like this for some time until Dick built the
staircase.
Dick’s clever
design, for his ride-on model of an atmospheric
railway, used ordinary household vacuum cleaners to create a vacuum in a
pipe. The pipe ran from one end of the building to the other. His flat-bed
truck ‘train’ was propelled along by atmospheric pressure. Visitors were keen
to ride the train for the whole length of the building. That exciting working
model is remembered fondly by the thousands of visitors to the Forresters’
Atmospheric Railway Museum in the Brunel Pumping House.
In response to the
many visitors who enquired where they might get a cup of tea, the Forresters
opened a café in the tower, and served cream teas. Valerie concluded, “ I like
to think that we brought something more to Starcross; that we made it worth a
visit”.
Campaign to save Railway Carriage Camping at Dawlish
Warren
Keen railway
historian Adrian Wood kindly led the discussion. The site will close after
August. The Great Western Railway Staff Association have managed to continue to
operate the camping carriages for 23 years after the privatisation of the
railways. All but one of the carriages now needs replacing. Could the trend for
holidays in the UK in quirky accommodation and glamping be exploited;? Perhaps
one of the local holiday camps might wish to add railway carriage camping to
their site? Or perhaps they might purchase the original site to provide another
aspect to their existing campsite? Rail Holiday in Cornwall provide holidays in specialised glammed-up
railway carriages. They wish us well
with our campaign, and have offered their advice when we need it.
Historic England
have explained that portable railway carriages are not within their remit, so
they had to refuse my application to list the site. (although they are keen to help if they can) This rules out
Heritage Lottery and other similar funding. Historic England advised me to
contact our district council. Teignbridge
Planning referred
