Shildon Railway Institute was absolutely bustling on Sunday 30 June as former employees of Shildon Works and many more descended from wagon workers, as well as many others simply interested in Shildon’s great railway story, descended upon the venue to enjoy a special 40 year retrospective of the works closure.
Entitled “Shildon Works 40” the exhibition and reunion event had been organised by committee members from the Institute in collaboration with leading co-ordinators Shildon Heritage Alliance CIC, Allan Ellwood and Paul Tweddle, who between them hold a significant collection of works memorabilia. According to the organisers though, what made the event as special and spectacular as it turned out to be, was the additional contributions of items belonging to former workers or their families who had allowed them to be displayed on the day, to whom the organising team wish to publicly offer their thanks. The Brusselton Incline Group also showed off their work, some of which involves part of the former works site, and the Locomotion museum at Shildon had added interest to the exhibition through the loan of information boards that had been produced for their own event, held the day before, making this a truly collaborative exhibition.
From the moment doors opened at noon, the main hall at the Institute filled up with visitors who discovered not only the artefacts and items on display, but each other, in some cases meeting again for the first time in decades. Several had travelled up from Doncaster, to where many Shildon workers relocated after the works closure, and one visitor had travelled from the United States, taking the opportunity to enjoy the day whilst visiting family.
The atmosphere throughout the Institute building was electric, as personal connections between visitors were re-made and both fond memories and funny stories were exchanged. Some of the stories quite naturally related to former workers and managers who were no longer with us, making their memory as much a part of the occasion as the things on display. The organising team said that they had been very careful to ensure that the day was not presented as a ‘celebration’ and was more a commemoration or retrospective on the shared experience and comradeship of Shildon’s workers up to that fateful day in June 1984 that metaphorically shook the town to its core. Despite the milestone anniversary being the reason for the event, the general atmosphere made this far from a sad occasion, which tells you a lot about the resilience and spirit of Shildon folk.
The current Chair of the Railway Institute, Dave Reynolds, who is also a volunteer Director of the Shildon Heritage Alliance CIC spoke to us of the pride he felt in the work that the small organising team had put into making the day happen for folk to enjoy. “The stories of the Institute and the Works are inextricably linked, not forgetting the BR Sports Field of course. For many years I think we’d lost touch with that a little. Other than the name over the door, you didn’t get a sense of it when you visited the Stute. That need to reconnect to our collective heritage is why we started collecting memorabilia again, and re-initiated our library focusing on local, regional and national rail and industrial history. Events like that on Sunday show that doing this is valued. We’re not trying to be a museum, but we are surely an appropriate venue to showcase the cultural and industrial heritage of Shildon’s railway families. A hundred years ago, the folk who ran the Institute understood that. We’ve already started bringing some of that back and have plans and hopes for more long term heritage displays in the future.”
Many visiting the event also took the opportunity to purchase a copy of a special limited edition A4 colour booklet all about the Works which had been produced especially for the event, which is possibly a first since British Rail Engineering stopped producing their own promotion material about Shildon and may become a collectors item itself in future. A few copes are still at the time of writing available direct from the Institute for only £5.
The Institute and SHA CIC are planning to promote Shildon’s heritage by parading the Shildon Works banner at the Durham Miners Gala on 13 July. They have invited any proud Shildonians who would like to walk through the city with the banner to join them.