Early Days of Normanton and Pontefract RMS

The society was formed in 1965 in the small village of Altofts with about 10 members. Weekly meetings used to be held in the back room of the house of the chairman and secretary this being the same property as they were father & son respectively, Mr.W Warburton and Jack. At that time most of the members worked or wanted to work on the Railways or were retired 65+ railway men. One of the oldest members was Willy Eden who worked on the railways all is life progressing to locomotive driver, a top class well paid job in the 1930's and 40's. The youngest member was 13-year-old Kieth Shenton keith is no longer a member of society but now works for BR as a loco driver. No subscriptions were asked for

at that time we just discused railways in a general and admired propriety items which add recieved a thick coat of varnish Our retired loco driver Wiily Eden did some scratch building of locomotives out of old bean tins etc using tin snips and files, he made quite a good job of them too The contents of the meetings were noted by the Secretary, who used an old reel-reel tape recorder and played them back which brought plenty of moans and grunts and laughs. The society was not really progressing but we had plenty of fun with one common interest Model Railways.

The Wakefield and Leeds Society's and York Railway Circle were holding annual exhibitions at the time and member Alan Cresswell decided it was time that Normanton Society held an exhibitionThe whole thing was organised and in 1969 our 1st exhibition was held the out come was a surplus to expenditure totaling £68.00. Shortly after we obtained our first clubrooms above coop buildings in Normanton town centre I used to hitch a lift with the late Jeff- Spencer Jeff never passed a driving test and owned a brand new Reliant Robin van. He never used a clutch or brakes drove everywhere at 60mph and changed gear usuing both hands His old dog sitting inthe back sliping and sliding everywhere the sound of claws sliding on fibreglass and the engine doing 10,000 rpm ringing in my ears. i was terrified but have laughed about it many times since. He add to have a new clutch after only 6 weeks of driving and the dog had scratched all the paint of the van floor.

Eventually the building we had our clubrooms in was demolished for new development and at this time we were fortunate to obtain a small room above the Miners Arms Public House in Altofts we were settling in quite well started a club layout but once again were thwarted the pub changed hands and the new landlord literally kicked us out . It was at this time that we came very close to folding no clubrooms no exhibition panned down to 4 hard members at the eleventh hour however we were successful in obtaining a small room on Normanton Train Station. Are first few exhibitions were held at the normanton baths hall used for swimming in summer and dancing in winter a falce floor wras fitted over the swimming area. Mick Cook of york fame was having problems holding down stock on is layout i think it was Dorlish Warren a 00 gauge western layout at that time has people walking past caused the floor to sway and it got quite rough at times we decided to apply for the town hall at Ponefract for future exhibitions it was of generous proportion and a larger exhibition could be held. We were getting quite ambitious at this stage the local authority insisted that if they were to agree to use useing this venue we would have to include pontefract in the Society name this we agreed to and hence we became The Normanton and Pontefract RMS.

John Clark

www.nprms.org