ALAN MOORE OBE
A tribute to a great philanthropist.
ALAN MOORE CBE, unquestionably Britain’s most generous railway philanthropist, died on April 22, aged 84.
After a remarkably successful career in banking, he retired in 2003 as deputy chairman of Lloyds TSB plc, which enabled him to support any number of railways with loans, matched funding and outright gifts.
Alan’s national service, spent learning Russian in Bodmin, led to a lifelong interest in the Southern and Great Western routes there, and his subsequent support for the Bodmin & Wenford Railway included provision of an engine shed, workshop, staff facilities and carriage shed, along with funding locomotives or their overhauls, including GWR 2-8-0 No. 3802, 2-8-0T No. 4247, 0-6-2T No. 5619, panniers Nos. 4612 and 6435, and ex-SR/BR Beattie well tanks Nos. 30585 and 30587, Drummond ‘T9’ No. 30120 and Bulleid ‘Light Pacific’ No. 34007 Wadebridge.
No single person knows the depth or breadth of his generosity, as he was modest to a fault. It went far beyond locomotives; he helped to fund carriages as different as the oldest surviving GWR bogie coach (special saloon No. 248, from 1881) for the Bodmin & Wenford, the 1924 Gresley ‘Quad-Art’ set for the North Norfolk, and the 1947 ‘Devon Belle’ Pullman observation car that he helped bring back to Swanage from San Francisco.
When Tyseley’s sponsorship of the overhaul of City of Truro’s boiler for its centenary fell through, Alan stepped in to fund the work at The Flour Mill, and when Sheringham station was at risk from a supermarket development, he lent the money that was urgently needed. He was also the first donor to the National Railway Museum for the purchase of Flying Scotsman.
Living in Leighton Buzzard, his final gift was supporting the new Pages Park station, which helped the Leighton
Buzzard Railway win the Heritage Railway Association award for outstanding contribution to preservation in 2017.
Alan’s wife Margaret died before him, but he is survived by daughter Kathryn, granddaughter Katie and his son Andrew. Fittingly, his funeral on May 11 was attended by representatives of the Bodmin & Wenford, Leighton Buzzard and Swanage railways.