Bessie’s painted ballast raises £5800 to aid Samaritans

RAIL worker Bessie Matthews has managed to raise £5834 as part of the annual July Samaritans fundraiser, ‘Samarathon’ in which the aim is to walk, jog or run 26.2 miles of a marathon during the month.

Bessie, formerly a depot driver for a TOC in Hampshire is planning on transferring to Freightliner as a heavy haul shunt driver.

Having walked 322 miles last year, Bessie wanted to do something a little different and hit upon the idea of writing the name on a small pebble of every person who donated.

She would carry them around in a rucksack every day in July. When work colleagues gave her some small ballast pieces however, Bessie came up with the idea of painting railway scenes on them and selling them.

The self-taught artist painted 31 scenes of different types of traction and auctioned them via eBay, promoting them via her Twitter account where she has more than 5000 followers.

The 31 pieces of ballast artwork raised £3362, while the names on pebbles who made individual donations raised a further £2471.