A LIFE REMEMBERED: Paul Taylor - February 9 1971-August 9 2022

Career railwayman and charity fundraiser Paul Taylor died in the early hours of August 9, after a three-year fight against prostate cancer. He passed away peacefully at his home in Peterborough, with his wife Tracy by his bedside.

Paul joined the railway in the late 1980s and moved through the ranks within the sectorised BR. In 2001, he joined the fledgling GB Railfreight operation, which then had just seven locomotives and a handful of staff. He was hugely popular and well-respected as a manager and railwayman.

I first met Paul probably in around 1992, on a DC Tours trip with Class 20s. But I certainly got to know him very well after I became a writer on RAIL in 1996.

In the 26 years since, I’ve worked with him on projects such as the programmes for his three four-day GBRf charity trains, and I helped him publish his book, his memories of those trains - which raised money for research into prostate cancer.

He’d bounce ideas off me. He’d listen to my ideas (and usually tell my why they couldn’t be delivered). He accompanied me on some GBRf jobs, although he needed little persuading when it was a day on a Railhead Treatment Train with a pair of Class 20s around the Southern Region. He gave me access to the railways many can only dream of, and facilitated things (knowingly or otherwise) that were personally very close to me.

But it was for his charity fundraising that Paul will be best remembered. He started running rail tours to raise money way back in 1992, with DC Tours. But it was his efforts with GBRf (he raised more than £500,000 for good causes) that is his real legacy.

Paul was a truly lovely guy always happy for a chat, always up for a curry, always up for a laugh. He really did work hard and play hard. I know it’s easy to wax lyrical about someone when they have passed away, but I genuinely mean it when I say he was one of the best. He was one of those select few people who transcended from business associate to true friend.

He didn’t shirk a challenge, and his knowledge of the workings on the railway was truly phenomenal.

Just over three years ago, in July 2019, we had just travelled from Motherwell back to Birmingham on a GBRf staff train behind two Class 50s, a locomotive class he loved dearly. We were waiting for our train back to Peterborough when he told me about his diagnosis. I was shocked, although his optimism at the time was that he was going to have a good chance of beating it. Sadly, that has not been the case.

He told me just three weeks before he married Tracy in a place close to their heart, the Isle of Wight. I’m truly gutted for her loss, so soon into what should have been a fantastic and lengthy marriage.

When I last saw him a few weeks back, he was incredibly frail and I feared the worst. I had hoped to see him again, but when

I mentioned coming over, he just wasn’t well enough for visitors.

On what transpired to be our last ‘chewing the fat over a brew’, I remember leaving his house, seeing him stood at the door waving me off, and as I cleared the corner I had a good cry because I genuinely feared this could be the last time I’d see him. Sadly, it proved to be.

Finally, Paul made me get my prostate checked. As I say, he’s already left a legacy. But if you haven’t chaps, please get yourself checked over - it’s worth it.

PIP DUNN.