Museums & their staffs

Bywell, E.M.
Died aged 80 in 1954: former editor North Eastern Railway Journal and from 1922 first curator of York Railway Museum. Loco. Mag., 1954, 60, 84

Davis, H.W.
Hon. Curator Newcastle-uon-Tyne Museum. See review of catalogue. Locomotive Mag., 1955, 61, 66

Goaten, F.
Dunn (Reflections): On the 31st August 1948 my wife and I spent a most enjoyable afternoon in the large exhibits section of The Railway Museum at York, of which Mr. F. Goaten, a disabled permanent way man, was in charge and who went round with us. He had been badly smashed up when a motor inspection trolley on which he was travelling became derailed and landed in a lineside ditch on top of him. After he came out of hospital he was given this post and has taken a very great interest in the exhibits under his care. His knowledge was remarkable and he was always as eager to gather any information he could from visitors as to tell them what he knew. Neither he nor I, for example, knew for certain how the boiler of the L.N.W. engine Columbine was fed with water as Goaten said she had no injectors and there was no feed-pump visible, so to settle it he lent me a pair of overalls and I went underneath. There was a feed-pump driven by an eccentric on the driving axle. Unfortunately Goaten's injuries had left him with a certain deafness and it was necessary to raise one's voice when speaking to him. Accordingly when I was telling him somewhat loudly that if ever he wanted to get under the skin of a Great Western man, all he had to do was to ask what had happened to the Lord of the Isles (after being preserved at Swindon along with the North Star from the abolition of the broad gauge in 1892, both were scrapped in 1906 because the ground they stood on could no longer be spared) * another visitor who was within earshot kept giving me such glances that I felt sure he must have hailed from Swindon himself! That the G.W. in later years bitterly repented their action was evidenced by the fact that in 1925 they had North Star reconstructed using a large number of parts, including the driving wheels and axle which for some reason or other had escaped destruction nineteen years previously. Similarly, one of the brass. driving axle box covers of the Lord of the Isle has, since 1925, become a treasured relic of the Great Western Railway.
The next morning we spent in the small exhibits section where there was a vast and interesting collection of all manner of tickets, , timetables, buttons, notices, lamps and suchlike items which formed the paraphernalia of the early railways. These are housed in the former refreshment room of the original York railway station, the large exhibits being in the old engine works at Queen Street.
"Similarly the Shrewsbury and Chester Rly. 2-2-2 Engine No. 14 which for many years had been preserved in Stafford Road Shed Wolverhampton was broken up for scrap during the 1914-18 War.

Swan, Captain E.W.
Former Hon. Curator Newcastle-uon-Tyne Museum. See review of catalogue. Locomotive Mag., 1955, 61, 66