Museum/Shop boost. E.O.Railway

I have, over the last month, been arranging a number of visits to the former north woolwich museum. As a result of these visits we kindly been given a number of items as a donation to the railway. With the help of volunteers we have been able to load and transport these items to Ongar for safe keeping until such time they can be safely displayed at the stations and in the proposed museum at North Weald.

Last week I got the authorisation that we were waiting for and we were given the entire booking office from north woolwich station including the counter, cupboards, draws etc. What makes this more interesting is all of this came out of the old Bethnal Green railway station and is all genuine LNER. It was very carefully dismantled around 1982/3 and was refitted in north woolwich station ready for the the Queen mother to open the museum in 1984. I have also been reliably informed that prior to the opening by coincidence the Flying Scotsman was having some maintenance done on the locomotive at the nearby Stratford railway engineering works arrangements where made to make sure the locomotive was serviceable on the day of the opening.

So on the 20th of November 1984 the royal carriages being pulled by the legendary Flying Scotsman steamed in to north woolwich station with the Queen Mother on the foot plate where she insisted that she wanted to be when arriving at the newly refurbished station now transformed in to a unique museum.

Sadly the museum is no more. Empty, lifeless, its soul completely gone. Each time that I have returned there has been less and less. I have just been back to the museum at north woowich today, along with Richard, to dismantle the former booking office ready for transit back to the Epping Ongar railway where it is hoped that it will either be fitted in to one of the stations or in our future museum to recreate a genuine LNER booking office.

We managed to complete the excercise and it was dismantled very carefully with no damage to the cabinets, doors or counter top.

On behalf of the EOR I would like to thank the staff at the former museum for all of the items donated. It is hoped to have these items on display when we re-open. I would also like to thank all the volunteers who helped who, without their assistance, this would not have been possible.

We have one more visit to make to collect some more items and a railway buffer stop. By the time this goes out to print P-Way should have dismantled it and a crane used to lift it out of the station to be transported back to Ongar.

We are moving towards a new era it will take time but with as many volunteers turning up as we can get the closer we will get to that magic day where we will have steam back on the EOR. We need you to help at the railway in anyway you can so why not pop along. There is always something to do.

Ron Abercrombie

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