Membership
To help support the Trust's conservation and restoration activities, why not join us? It costs from just £14 per year and comes with many benefits, see below. Andy Young, our Membership Secretary, looks forward to welcoming you with a copy of our latest magazine. Click here to purchase membership - or use the drop-down 'Sales' menu.
When ordering membership, any items you require from our online shop can be included at the same time; there is no need to order them separately.
Membership benefits
All members receive a copy of our quarterly magazine, the latest edition of which is the winter issue. Despite the situation with Covid-19, the magazine is packed with great reading material and photographic content, including:
- Bridging the River Stour. Over nine miles, the original Dorset Central Railway crossed the Stour four times. Jonathan Edwards starts a fascinating two-part article which looks at these substantial structures, three of which required re-building within 30 years of their construction.
- Personnel of the Somerset Central Railway and the Bristol & Exeter. Following on from a recent article about relations between the Somerset Central and the Bristol & Exeter, Steph Gillett has a close look at some of the people involved.
- 1960s summer Saturday single-chimney 9Fs: Ivo Peters wrote “All 9Fs transferred to the S&D over the years were of the double-chimney type. So if you saw a single-chimney 9F on the S&D it was obviously ‘borrowed’!”. Here, Steph Gillett finds more information and pictures illustrating the work of the three 'borrowed' locomotives.
-Timing of trains – Somerset & Dorset; an addendum. Davis Wrottesley, a retired railway manager who spent 30 years in timetabling, wrote in issues 281/2 about the complexity of the train services at Bath Green Park and how these could have been planned. In this article, he re-visits the subject in the light of information that has appeared since and considers night-time operation and platform dwell times.
- S&D stations part 23 – Wimborne. We might not think of Wimborne as a part of the S&D, but before the Broadstone cut-off opened in 1886, it was a focus of S&D activity – as David Grimwood describes.
- The S&D Joint Railway and its locomotives. Reproducing a series of articles published in 1900-02 as the S&D approached its zenith.
- Royston Larcombe – a tribute. Following the news in the last issue of the death of this well-known former S&D fireman, we include the tribute from his funeral.
- Eight pages of Trust and general S&D news. Including photographic coverage of the move in August of the Trust's S&D 7F No. 53808 from the West Somerset Railway to the Watercress Line.
- Four-page Trust sales supplement.
44 A4 pages including the sales supplement.
Benefits include:
- Our magazine, Pines Express, four times a year. A wide variety of articles is complemented by photographs from the Trust's extensive archive.
- Access to pdf copies of every Bulletin/Pines Express ever published. That's 299 issues!
- The Trust's Annual Special Train; with extra low fares and hauled by the Trust's restored S&D 7F, 53808.
- Free museum access
- Online & Postal Sales.
- Participation in events and restoration work (see the volunteering page).
- 20% off when buying downloadable S&D images and audio recollections in our online shop.