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A Jubilee To Remember!

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The Platinum Jubilee weekend brought the best out of Swanage and Rotary was right there to help the weekend go with a bang!

From preparing food and delivering it to the site of the Street Party on Friday 3rd June (at 6:30am!) to stewarding both ends of the High Street to manning the Corfe Castle event on Sunday 5th June, Swanage and Purbeck Rotarians were hard at it to ensure that all the hard work that had been done by the Platinum Jubilee Committee, under the leadership of Linda Welsh, went like clockwork.

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As ever, the unflappable Sue Whitton was at the forefront of the Rotary element of the organisation, with David Pike jumping to the rescue when it was discovered that the street party was short of bread and ham!

The event was extremely well organised with as many people in the town on the Friday as many people could remember.

Celebrations continued in Corfe Castle on the Sunday with the gathering at the Millennium Sports Field in West Street, where people were invited to bring their own picnics. Entertainment was provided.

It was certainly a weekend that will remain long in people’s memories.

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Down on the Farm!

The club’s final meeting of May was an outing to Cedar Organic at Rempstone Farm in Corfe Castle. Rotarian Mo Andrews reports.

The farm is run by a couple of passionate organic farmers who have chosen to become organic as they believe it to be the only way of assuring environmental considerations and sustainability.

The visit was very successful, with clubs members hearing all about the background and principles of the farm and seeing many of the animals.

The visit included a trip round the farm in its purpose-built tour carriage. As you can see from the photograph, this was hugely enjoyed by everyone present and really helped to show the efforts that the farm have gone to in order to achieve their aims.

 

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Right On Track!

Our speaker at this week’s meeting was Dr Mike Walshaw, an electrical engineer who volunteers as a signalman at the Corfe Castle signal box on the Swanage Railway. Mike came to talk to us about Project Wareham – the project to link Swanage back to the railway network.

Mike has been involved with the project since 2011. It was the Poole to Wool resignalling project that offered the “chance of a lifetime” possibility to recreate the link back to the network but over five million pounds had to be raised to give the project any chance of success. Network Rail did not contribute any money to Project Wareham but did fund the main line upgrades, eventually commissioned in 2014.

Amongst the challenges faced by the project was laying 6 1/2 miles of signalling cable from Corfe Castle to Wareham and the erection of a flat pack cabin at Norden Gates. Contractors were employed to undertake some of the works with volunteers assisting where they could. Mike himself was responsible for the design and installation of part of the signalling system – the token system, a system used on single track lines which dates back over 100 years to the early days of the railway.

Other challenges that had to be overcome were strengthening parts of the trackway itself (the embankments), replacing old and worn rail and creating a road/rail interchange and a new level crossing at Norden.

The talk was a fascinating insight into the efforts made to successfully enable the line to be reopened back to the main line at Wareham earlier this year, and Rotarian David Huntley thanked Dr Mike for coming to tell us all about it.