A Railway Reunion after Sixty Years

On Saturday 24^th September we met up with John Dyer at Winchcombe station on the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Steam Railway. In 1962, John had left Wallasey Grammar School for a career in the RAF, eventually finding his way to retirement near the heritage line.

Between September 1960 - when most of us started at “big school” - and John’s departure at Easter in 1962, he was the leading light in the school’s railway society, which he had inaugurated a few years before our arrival. With the support of Maths teacher, Jack Dugdale, and John’s right hand man, who we knew only as “Abbott”, as well as with further encouragement from a string of teachers who provided the necessary “responsible adult” role on our trips to railway locations - made in the school’s name and with us all in our school uniform - John was instrumental in fashioning our life-long affection for the steam railway, which we still celebrate with just such get-togethers as this one.

John arranged shed visits by sending off for the required permits and working out feasible itineraries, in between organising our regular meetings in the blacked-out geography classroom, where b/w British Transport Commission films were shown on reel-to-reel projectors after school. I have consequently felt indebted to John for his industry and application, taking on a lot of responsibility for us when we were out and about, and at a time that he was a senior pupil at the school.

In more recent times, after I had made contact with John again after a gap measured in decades, he furnished me with a multitude of photographs he took at the time and over the few years before we became fully involved as enthusiasts. I have used these photos in my blogs over recent years, with John’s blessing, for which I am also very grateful.

John accompanied us on a return trip to Cheltenham during our recent Saturday afternoon together, and we had the chance to reminisce about the railway society and some more general school experiences. John still contributes actively to the running of the GWSR. To join up with John in Gloucestershire, we had travelled from Merseyside, Yorkshire, Cheshire, Avon and Nottinghamshire, not forgetting that we had come further south than usual in order to belatedly celebrate another John’s big birthday - so “Cheers” to the two Johns.