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‘Wish-list’ acquisitions boost for Cumbrian railway museum

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By Geoff Courtney

THE owner of one of the country’s newest regional railway museums is celebrating the acquisition of two local railwayana items that have been on his wish-list for many years but had come onto the market only recently.

They are a venerable Maryport & Carlisle signalbox nameboard and a totem sign from the terminus of the Carlisle & Silloth Bay Railway, each of which will be on display in the museum throughout the coming summer season.

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Peter Rooke opened the West Cumberland Railway Museum in St Bees, on Cumbria’s coast south of Workington, nearly three years ago, shortly after retiring from his job as a civil engineer.

Closed for business: LMS Class 8F No. 48005 heads an Up freight train through Bullgill in October 1965, more than five years after the station closed to passenger traffic. A nameboard from Bullgill signalbox, which is just visible beneath the 2-8-0’s smoke on the left, recently surfaced at auction and was bought by Peter Rooke for display in his West Cumberland Railway Museum. CUMBRIAN RAILWAYS ASSOCIATION /037e19

He had been a collector of local railwayana for 20 years, and decided to set up the museum in a former police station in the village’s Main Street to display his large collection.

Among the exhibits are pre-Grouping posters, enamel and cast iron signs, signalling items, paperwork, and nameplates from industrial locomotives that worked at Whitehaven harbour and local collieries.

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Somewhat smaller, but rather older, is an 1847 Cockermouth & Workington Railway guard’s watch which, when bought by Peter at a GW Railwayana auction in November 2015, was described by auctioneer Simon Turner as “one of the rarest railway timepieces ever to surface.”

Read more in Issue 252 of HR – on sale now!



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