Two sites sounded out for proposed Doncaster railway attraction

Two sites are being sounded out with a view to housing a Doncaster railway museum.
Trustee Dave Rogerson with the famous Doncaster Grammar School collection of rare rail artefacts. Some of the collection will go on display in Doncaster's Frenchgate Shopping Centre next month. Picture Scott MerryleesTrustee Dave Rogerson with the famous Doncaster Grammar School collection of rare rail artefacts. Some of the collection will go on display in Doncaster's Frenchgate Shopping Centre next month. Picture Scott Merrylees
Trustee Dave Rogerson with the famous Doncaster Grammar School collection of rare rail artefacts. Some of the collection will go on display in Doncaster's Frenchgate Shopping Centre next month. Picture Scott Merrylees

Trustees of a major collection of memorabilia have confirmed they are looking at sites with a view to creating a permanent exhibition in the borough.

Trustees of the Doncaster Grammar School Railway Collection want a permanent place for their huge haul of artefacts. They say the town which built the world’s two most famous steam engines, the Flying Scotsman and the Mallard, needs to get in touch with its history.

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Dave Rogerson, Grahame Boyes, Fred Curtis and Peter Sargiesson are looking for a place where they can bring the extensive collection together.

The Doncaster Museum and Art Gallery and Cusworth Hall have some of the items, but Mr Rogerson said it needed to be housed in the one place.

“We need something very much bigger and more specialist,” he said.

The industry was a key part of Doncaster’s past, and that won’t change, he said.

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“Modern Doncaster was largely created by the railway, its present prosperity is partially dependent on the railway and its future will probably continue to include a large input from the railway,” Mr Rogerson said.

“However, there is no extensive telling of the story locally.”

A couple of possible locations for a museum have been identified, but Mr Rogerson was not revealing their location.

The collection has about 2,000 items, including signals, signalling instruments, engine whistles and name plates from all over Britain.

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It was established in the 1930s by the Doncaster Grammar School’s railway society.

It was vastly expanded in the 1950s by the society’s secretary Tony Peart.

Over the years, members collected signs, nameplates, lamps, signal posts and thousands of other items of railway memorabilia, building up an archive of items from the golden age of steam.