From June 17th to July 17th, Radstock Museum will be hosting the travelling exhibition
compiled by the Somerset and Dorset Railway Trust, which is based in Washford.
While the exhibition is at Radstock Museum, objects from the S&DRT museum collection at Washford will be on display, alongside exhibition panels, which explore the origins of the railway through to its closure and legacy, including archive photographs. The ‘S&D 50: Gone But Not Forgotten’ exhibition is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the closure of the S&D Railway in March 1966.
This Saturday, 18th June, the museum will not open until 1 p.m. due to the S&DRT holding its AGM there, but in the afternoon, there will be informal talks relating to the S&D and Kate McStraw will also present a pop-up event about her ‘Curator of Memories’ project. Kate has been commissioned by the Somerset and Dorset Railway Trust to create a small-scale, touring performance/artistic piece about the S&D histories/stories. The piece is a 10–15 minute performance focused around memories and stories connected with the S&D – gathered from a mixture of interviews with ex-S&D staff and people who have travelled on the line, as well as existing archive materials, such as books and newspaper articles. These memories are
visualised in a ‘Museum of Memory’ – a curious travelling exhibition/installation, which contains an array of jars, each housing an object associated with each story.