Narrow gauge powerhouse Paul leaves a lasting legacy
TRIBUTES have been paid to Paul Walkinshaw, the driving force behind the restoration of Lincolnshire Coast Light Railway (LCLR) flagship Peckett 0-6-0ST No.1008 of 1903, Jurassic, the treasurer of the line's charitable Historic Vehicles Trust (HVT), and owner of Heywood replica 0-4-0 Effie on the Cleethorpes Coast Light Railway (CCLR). He died on May 7 aged 59.
Paul was born in Grimsby, the younger son of Jack and Jill Walkinshaw. Jack was a marine engineer and a keen model engineer, and a founder member of the Grimsby Model Engineering Society. Paul, soon learning from his father, produced his first steam model, a 3½in gauge locomotive of the type known as Tich, while still in the sixth form of Wintringham School in Grimsby. He became a member of the Saracen's Head group of model engineers and exhibited at the Spalding Model Show.
Paul's father had a boat at the Humber Mouth Yacht Club and as a sweetener to get Paul to help crew it, he would drop him off at the LCLR's North Sea Lane station to catch the train to its terminus at South Sea Lane.
Paul's interest, however, turned to the LCLR rather than the water and he became a youthful volunteer.
Involvement
He studied mechanical engineering at Nottingham Trent University as a sponsored student with British Steel and did much of his practical experience at its Appleby Frodingham site in Scunthorpe.
Meanwhile, Paul's involvement with the LCLR continued to grow. He became a shareholder, then a director of the LCLR Co Ltd while aged in his early 20s. In 1983, when the HVT was founded to conserve some of the more historically significant vehicles which had become surplus at the line's Humberston original site, he became treasurer. HVT chairman Richard Shepherd described Paul's contribution to the LCLR as “huge and invaluable”.
Traction engines were another of Paul's steam interests, and he was the owner of a Fowler 4nhp tractor,
Iron Ada, for several years, taking it to steam rallies in Lincolnshire.
Paul's fascination with working steam power also took him around the world, to Ecuador, Bolivia, Cuba twice, America, Burma, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and India, and on the Khyber Pass Railway in Pakistan, where armed troops provided protection against hostile tribesmen.
During his travels in Burma, in Rangoon, he met his partner, Barbara Reid. He also travelled extensively in search of working steam throughout Europe, to Romania, Poland, Ukraine, France, Germany, Austria and Spain.
His passion for historic vehicles extended to classic cars – a Morris Minor known as Maxwell which he renovated, and a Triumph Stag,
Glenda.
After working in the frozen food industry, Paul was employed for many years by Scottish transport and logistics company Christian Salvesen as an engineer and plant manager. He took early retirement due to ill health brought about by an industrial accident.
For the last 22 years of his life, Paul and Barbara lived in Northborough, near Peterborough, where he had a large workshop which enabled him not only to pursue his model engineering, but also cabinet making, which he had studied after retirement, at West Dean College in Sussex. Those who knew him described the standard of his workmanship as “superb”.
Paul was also a volunteer with the Citizens Advice Bureau for many years and worked part-time as an archivist for the erstwhile Lincolnshire Museums Service.
Passion
His railway interests encompassed membership of the Heywood Society, which studies the minimum gauge railways devised by the late Sir Arthur Heywood and owning the Effie replica, for which he built a wooden tender to increase water capacity. It was typical of Paul's generosity that he gifted the locomotive to the CCLR shortly before his death.
He had also bought a Motor Rail Simplex diesel which had survived inundation in the East Coast floods of 1953, ending its working life at the former Skegness Brickworks. Paul donated it to the Historic Vehicles Trust and was involved in the project spanning more than 20 years to restore it to working order, for which the railway was awarded runner-up status in two categories in the Heritage Railway Association Annual Awards 2021, as reported last issue.
On the LCLR, he was one of a select group of drivers who could handle a 1926 bow-frame Simplex, also
“Jurassic will remain as a memorial to Paul's vision, determination and skill for generations to come.”
called Paul, which requires ‘careful' operation. Paul drove Paul on the Royal Train ran by the LCLR when the Princess Royal visited the line in 2017, and the photograph of them sharing a joke is one of the enduring images of his long involvement with the railway.
Paul also constructed a new metal body for another of the LCLR's Simplexes, Wilton, to replace the wooden body with which it had been fitted after acquisition by the LCLR from Humberston Brickworks.
Paul remained closely involved with the LCLR after its initial closure in 1985. He would drive three hours from his home to the Museum of Army Transport in Beverley, where the trust's collection was housed to work on the wagons.
Friends teased that this was only to enjoy the particularly good lunch available in its canteen!
When the LCLR relocated to the Skegness Water Leisure Park around 1995, he regularly made the journey there to help towards the reopening in 2009.
Jurassic, however, was his passion. Supplied new to a Warwickshire cement company, it was acquired by the LCLR in the year of Paul's birth.
He organised and oversaw its extensive overhaul to working order between 2015 and 2017, again the subject of a Heritage Railway Association runners-up award. Jurassic will remain as a memorial to Paul's vision, determination and skill for generations to come.
Paul's funeral was held at Alford Crematorium on June 1. He had requested that his ashes should be scattered at the LCLR.
He is survived by his partner Barbara, his brother Steven, and all the members of the LCLR family.