Join us now from £18.50 for membership lasting until the end of next year and receiving five magazines in total, starting with the winter 2024 issue and receiving all four quarterly issues next year.

To help support the Trust’s conservation and restoration activities, why not join us?

If you wish to join us now, we offer you membership until the end of next year. Tim Deacon, our Membership Secretary, will welcome you with the winter magazine and you’ll  receive all four quarterly issues next year.

When ordering membership, any other items you require from our online shop can be included at the same time; there is no need to order them separately.

Click here to purchase membership – or use the drop-down ‘Sales’ menu.


Membership benefits

PE 315 front cover

All members receive a copy of our quarterly magazine, the latest edition of which is the winter issue. There’s plenty of great reading material and photographic content, including:

Pilot engine working at Templecombe (part 1). Stemming from the 1950 rule book statement that ‘no engine must propel a train upon any running line, but must draw it…’, an extra engine had to be provided to make the stop at Templecombe with the result that the journey time for the five-mile journey between Henstridge and Wincanton was typically 40 minutes.

Bob Curtis describes the complexities of this costly operation and provides in tabular form, all daily movements into and out of Templecombe’s upper platform in the 1950s including the pilot engines.

Re-creating the S&D in the Trainz simulator. Thomas Parker’s latest work in constructing a digital facsimile of Bournemouth West station.

Rare Territory Mystery. Peter Russell examines a mystery photo of an S&D location and finds it is from the A350 road bridge south east of Blandford.

More on the US Army’s POL depot at Masbury. Following on from a previous article, John Palmer provides more information on the wartime Petrol, Oil & Lubricants depot that was connected to the S&D main line.

Recalling the S&D trackbed in the 1980s. A Trust member who was brought up in Bath looks back to the 1980s with a comprehensive selection of colour photos – a time when the trackbed was much less accessible than it is now.

S&D Locations. Broadstone. Nothing remains of the station but the former Railway Hotel still stands.

Washford – over the years. Photos from the Trust’s near-50 years on the Washford station site.

Feedback & Information Requests.

– Centre-spread photo. In connection with the pilot engine article, the photo – taken on 9 November 1961 – shows Standard Class 3 tank No. 82002 having just pulled the 3.35 pm Templecombe to Bailey Gate train out of Templecombe upper platform and having stopped at No. 2 Junction.

– Trust and general S&D news.

– Four-page pull-out sales supplement.

44 A4 pages including the sales supplement.