Museum award
GLENFINNAN Station Museum won a Heritage Railway Association award this month for its importance to West Highland railway history.
GLENFINNAN Station Museum has won a Heritage Railway Association award for its importance to West Highland railway history.
In the company of 200 people from the heritage railway sector in the UK and Ireland, representatives of Glenfinnan Station Museum discovered they had won the annual award for small groups. The judging panel had visited Glenfinnan on April 1 last year.
Every February, the Heritage Railway Association and editors of the four leading railway magazines hold an awards dinner to recognise members who have performed particularly well over the year.
The Glenfinnan museum was presented with its prize at this year’s awards ceremony at the Burlington Hotel, Birmingham, on Saturday February 10.
The award is a replica brass panel from a coach provided for Queen Victoria by the Great Western railway company. It was won by Glenfinnan Station Museum for its unique and hands-on introduction to West Highlands railway heritage.
Other nominees in the group were the Bahamas Locomotive Society Learning Coach at Ingrow station; West Lancashire Railway for its 50th anniversary celebrations; Rother Valley for the new connection at Robertsbridge; and Telford Steam Railway for its Polar Express event.
Accepting the award on behalf of the museum were John Barnes, museum founder, Hege Hernaes, museum curator, and Nick Jones, volunteer signalman and creator of the museum’s pioneering ‘virtual signalling experience’.
The Heritage Railway Association is an umbrella organisation representing the majority of the heritage and tourist railways, railway museums, steam centres and railway preservation groups in the UK and Ireland. The association represents its members’ interests to government and provides professional advice to its members.