Lifetime Achievement Award for NNR chair
THE chairman of the North Norfolk Railway Steve Allen received his 2022 Heritage Railway Association/Railway Magazine Lifetime Achievement Award on April 19.
Steve was unable to make the HRA’s awards event in Birmingham on March 19, so
RM editor Paul Bickerdyke presented Steve with his trophy at the NNR’s Weybourne station on April 19.
Steve won the award for more than four decades of dedication and hard work that have helped see the line grow from a basic operation to today’s highly successful tourist and heritage line.
“In accepting the award, I do so more on behalf of the many hundreds of people I have had the pleasure of working alongside at the NNR over the past 46 years, than for myself,” he said.
“I must call out the efforts in particular of the late Clive Morris, who headed the Quad Art restoration project; the late Roger Heasman, who delivered the first restoration of the ‘B12’ in 1995 (including working with the works in eastern Germany); and Hugh Harkett, the NNR’s current managing director, who steered us through the Covid crisis and out the other side.
“I started volunteering as a 15-year-old carriage restorer in late 1976… and never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would become chairman by the time I retired.”