Tribute to Middy's Gareth
By: Web Editor
WE at the Mid-Suffolk are having to come to terms with the tragic death of Gareth Oates. He was an 18-year-old volunteer who lost his life on the railway at Marston near Huddersfield on 2 March.
The Mid-Suffolk's tribute to popular volunteer Gareth Oates.
He assisted in the carriage and wagon departments, and of late had expressed an interest in the loco department.
He had been promoted from cleaner to principal cleaner, and, in that role, had spent a day just before Christmas firing, a day he said was the happiest of his life. The day of Gareth's funeral, 11 March, was also the day on which the level crossing linking the North Norfolk Railway to the national rail network was formally opened.
The centrepiece of the ceremony was the Britannia Pacific No 70013 Oliver Cromwell which was the first to use the crossing.
Our friends at the North Norfolk Railway arranged for the driver of Oliver Cromwell to sound a loud blast on the locomotive's whistle as the train sped through Stowmarket station on its way back to London.
When the last train ran on the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway on 26 July 1952, the locomotive was adorned with a laurel wreath.
On Easter Sunday, we ran our first train of 2010. As our tribute to Gareth, we too adorned the locomotive with a laurel wreath, and gave a blast on the whistle as the train entered the station.
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