Biography

One of my many other interests (hobbies) is in British Railway history. In the above photograph we see one of three very small standard-gauge (4ft 8.5in.) 2-4-0T locomotives built by Manning, Wardle Ltd., in the 1870's for the London and Blackwall, Millwall Extension Railway, which was fully opened for passenger traffic from Millwall Junction to North Greenwich & Cubitt Town in July 1872 (the latter station served a small ferry across the River Thames to South Greenwich, later replaced by a foot tunnel. The line closed to passenger traffic in May 1926 during the 'General Strike,' however, part of the line is in use today by the Docklands Light Railway firstly to a terminus at Island Gardens (on the old site of North Greenwich station) and then under the river to Lewisham. I had proposed to build a scale model (in Scale 7) of the station area of North Greenwich and the approach viaduct but it became a far too large a project for an 80 year old!

My old '0' gauge model of Brockford & Wetheringsett Station is on permanent display at the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway Museum at Brockford Station, near Stowmarket, Suffolk. See their website www.mslr.org.uk for additional details.

In addition to the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway Society I am also a member of the Great Eastern Railway Society, the Midland Railway Society and the North London Railway Historical Society. Full details of these may be obtained from their individual web-sites.

I have been licensed since December 1967 and the station has been located in Sale, Cheshire where I was a member of the South Manchester ARC until 1973; then with a move to Mansfield Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire where I became a member of the Mansfield & District ARC until 1980; then to Cheshunt in Hertfordshire where I became an active member of the Cheshunt & District ARC until June 1982; then a return to Mansfield (in 'Robin Hood country') alongside Sherwood Forest.

Equipment

My 'Radio Shack' (described in some dictionaries as a rude cabin) is the small 'bedroom' (10 foot by 8 foot) of an 1960's three bedroom terraced house within a small estate to the south-east of the town of Mansfield within Sherwood Forest, some 12 miles north of the City of Nottingham in the East-Midlands of England.

My main station equipment is the Yaesu FT-991 with the matching speaker SP-10 and the original FT-101 (one of the earliest to reach this country) and FC-902 500W ATU and with matching speaker.

The available space in the rear garden (33 feet by 30 feet) is where the main antenna, a 'fan' dipole at a height of 33 feet with the wires forming a near horizontal V back to the house. This works well on 40, 20, 15, and 10 meters, complete with a Colinear for 6m 2m and 70cm which is mounted on top of the 10m telescopic pole.

In November 2023 I had 87 'Turns-on-the-Coil' (or rather 'Coils-on-the-Turn') and am still active with local history research, British railway history research, cycling, and when I have some additional 'spare' time (and space) some railway modelling and of course the gardening with my dear XYL Ann.

73 de Peter G3XDS