News

Notice of AGM 2024

Agenda for Annual General Meeting of the Friends of Chorleywood Signal Box (FoCSB) to be held on Thursday 8th February 2024 at 7pm at 17 Greenbury Close WD35QT.

The meeting will also be available on ZOOM.  Contact the secretary for the zoom details.

(This meeting was delayed from October 2023 to allow more sales of the Committee’s book over the Christmas and New Year festive period)

1. Apologies for absence

2. Approval of previous minutes

3. Report from Officers

4. Status on sales of the book

5. Presentation and adoption of accounts

6. To consider the following motion to disband the Association – Motion: this meeting agrees to give the Committee the power of disbanding the Association once all remaining copies of the book have been sold or earlier if the Committee agrees.

Owen Edis
FoCSB Secretary 

Newsletter Autumn 2023

Dear Member,

First of all, I must apologise for the lack of a Summer Newsletter.

In part, this was due to the fact that nothing much has happened if you discount the hard work Hugh and Owen have been putting into selling the book but the main reason is that my wife has been in hospital and I have spent every afternoon sitting by her bedside. I am happy to say she is home now.

AGM

We have just held a Committee meeting and discussed the future of the organisation.

With the failure of TfL to assist with our plans to make use of the signal box and thus nowhere to build the layout we planned that is two of our three projects hitting the buffers.

As a result, it is planned to wind up Friends of Chorleywood Signal Box once we have sold all copies of the book written by Hugh.

Thanks to the sterling efforts of Hugh and Owen, most of the stock of A4 copies of the book have been sold however we need to sell all, or most, of the copies before we can wind up the organisation and close the bank account.

We do need to sell the remaining copies and collect money from some of the retail outlets who hold stocks of the book and the total of both groups is in the region of 120 copies.

It was agreed that the Christmas period was going to be beneficial in reducing the number left and thus it was agreed by the Committee to recommend to the members that we should defer the AGM to Thursday the 8th of February 2024. I will be ringing the retail outlets at the beginning of January to either seek payment for the stock they hold 

The meeting will be held both at Owens house in Chorleywood and also by Zoom and we do hope you will attend, either in person or by Zoom.

We do need a quorum to vote to wind the organisation up and to agree to close the bank account so I do hope you can help in this respect by putting the date in your diary.

SUBSCRIPTIONS

We have not been asking members to pay subscriptions since earlier this year having decided that membership will continue until the next AGM so if you get this e-mail, you are still a member.

MEMBERS BOOK OFFER

Members are reminded that they are entitled to a copy of ‘Rails to Chorleywood…and Beyond’ at the cost price of £5 plus postage (The retail price is £12).  Please contact us to request your copy.

March 2021 - New appeal for Chorley Wood Signal Box

Last autumn we asked residents for suggestions about the possible use of the empty signal box at the south end of our station’s down platform. This prompted suggestions that included an educational museum for children and adults alike. This could focus on the railway and how it affected the development of Chorleywood.

Next a committee of wide local representation was established by Martin Trevett and Owen Edis. This included members from CRA, CPC, TRDC, RDRA, CU3A and A&CMRS (see in full below). Since then five Zoom meetings have been held from which good progress has been made in establishing a Constitution, appointing officers, obtaining a bank account, and setting up this website.  Most recently a representative from TfL, the owners of the Box, has joined in the meetings. We are hoping for a second site visit in April (when allowed) that will involve other London Underground specialists including the curator of LU Museum.

Ideas for the museum are to have display boards with historical photographs and posters showing the original development and changes to the railway.  This would include original track plans with a possible operational model of the station and goods yard (now occupied by the station car park). Also information about past events, reference books, memories of those who served on or watched the railway over the years, and displays of any railwayana that can be made available.  We may even include some sounds from steam days. 

But before we can do this, the inside of the box needs refurbishing and safe access arrangements need to be installed bearing in mind it is situated on a working railway. It is estimated that these works would cost in the region of £15,000.  So our next step is to seek donations and obtain grants from whatever sources we can.  To get started we have sent out a Just Giving (Crowdfunding) notice hoping to initially raise £5000 from interested people. 

This link will take you to the Just Giving page.   Please contribute. 

In the meantime, if you have any photos, interesting personal experiences/memories of the railway to describe, or appropriate items of railwayana, please contact the project secretary at 07713862738 or secretary@chorleywoodsignalbox.co.uk.  Much of this will go on the Gallery, Memories and History pages on this website some of which will be displayed in the museum when it comes to fruition.

Abbreviations:

CRA = Chorleywood Residents Association
CPC = Chorleywood Parish Council
TRDC = Three Rivers District Council
RDRA = Rickmansworth and District Residents Association
CU3A = Chorleywood University of Third Age
A&CMRS = Amersham and Chorleywood Model Railway Society