Early October speaker: Bruce Taylor
Bruce will be speaking on Wellington Railways history. (See the details below.)
- Tuesday 8 October
- starting at 7.30pm
- in the Kapiti Uniting Church Hall in Weka Road, Raumati Beach.
- Everyone is welcome with a gold coin koha.
Bruce is a retired secondary school teacher of history. He is a railway enthusiast and writer and is involved in a project to digitize over 300,000 images of New Zealand railways held in the archives of the New Zealand Railway and Locomotive Society.
“The title of my talk will be ‘Wellington’s Railways — an illustrated history’. I will be picking up from where I left off last time when I spoke to the Kapiti Historical Society in 2020 covering the Kapiti and Johnsonville lines. This time I will be focusing on the history of the Wellington Railway Station, the Hutt Workshops, the evolution of the Hutt Valley line and the Remutaka [Rimutaka] Incline and Tunnel. And a little extra on the end of cardboard and paper tickets!
I will build my talk around many historical and contemporary photos from the archives and some from my own collection. These photos provide fascinating glimpses of our past.”
Next two speakers
Wednesday 30 October: Tim Costley will talk about his time in the Air Force before becoming a politician. Note that this is on a Wednesday and will be held in the church itself, not in the hall.
Tuesday 12 November: Jock Phillips will talk about Maori and Royal tours “which is an interesting study of how Maori responded to visits by the Royal family and tells us a lot about Māori attitudes to royalty”.
Let us know if you have any suggestion for speakers and talks next year. As well as Mark Compain in 2025, we will have Mike Styles speaking on the history of dyslexia research and awareness.
Best wishes from
Roger Childs, Gordon Dickson and Larry Keim