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What has the museum lost?
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What has the Museum Lost?
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Below: A copy of plans being drawn up in 1999 to expand the museum in conjunction with the surrounding land owners .
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Lost!! £40,000 plus £40,000 in fund matching (total £80,000) for a valuable extension to the museum including what would have been one of the best trolleybus circuits in a museum in Great Britain. Below a possible extension of the railway circuit to the Children's Play Area and to the new land behind the depots.
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The siding under construction that could have been the start of a sizable extension to the miniature railway. A set of traffic lights were available for the controlling of the trolleybus circuit. Had the trolleybus circuit been extended to the "potato shed" then the trolleybuses would not have had to go around the overhead circuit as many times and so frequently across the possible railway extension.
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Lost!! Another project lost was a possible street scene facia. Doncaster Museum and Art Gallery kindly donated a shop front for this project, but was broken up and the idea never came to fruition. The door was used in the railway shed which I believe still exists but the shop front most certainly does not something that may not please Doncaster Museum if they knew about .
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Lost!!
Above Left: Members like Pat Ashton seen here creosoting the new track next to the new point work in March 1996 and helped to clean the toilets, donate and plant many flowers, bushes etc. save part of the 1922 trambody, help with displays etc….
Above Right: Visitors enjoying something else other than a red trolleybus, a green trolleybus or a yellow trolleybus ...It seems that it was a "railway too popular and overshadowing the trolleybuses" is the accusation. Tell that to the present day visitors!
Below: A railway that was an attraction for all and quite happily operated alongside the trolleybuses well that's what we wrongly believed it to be.
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The SMR railway group and its members, the railway and their positive contribution for the other aspects of the museums development have been strangely left out of the official history of the museum on their web-site and articles in various contributing society newsletters, what railway?
Our members have since moved onto many new directions not only at Thorne but to the East Anglia Transport Museum, Crich Tramway Museum, and the Stockholes Farm Railway a very short distance from Sandtoft. A total new direction in 2006 for three SMR members to help re-vitalise the Thorne Moorends Community Radio project to help get the radio station back on the air. Perhaps one day their will once again be a miniature railway or even a small tramway like we had once planned. as an attraction at Sandtoft. I would hope lessons have been learnt by those who seemed to choose to destroy the miniature railway that we once operated so successfully between 1983 - 2000
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Lighting up the Grand! Our members also members of the Friends of Doncaster Grand Theatre helping to set up the lighting for a visit by members of Doncaster Metropolitan Town Council and the Doncaster Civic Theatre on the 4th October 2006.
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Our member Stuart who used to drive the trains at Sandtoft and then at Thorne is now a regular driver of the trams at the East Anglia Transport Museum. When not driving the trams Stuart is their main traffic control manager. Stuart has come along way since driving the miniature trains at Sandtoft in 1996. Well done Stuart!
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© All rights reserved: Bob Ashton 2008
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