FOR the past nine months, Crediton-based charity The Folklore Library and Archive has been creating a new and unique collection of heritage materials about Devon’s railways, which was launched at an event on Saturday, March 22 at Crediton Library.

Project Manager Tracey Norman said: “We were fortunate to obtain a very generous grant from Great Western Railway’s Customer and Community Improvement Fund last year, and have been working to preserve ‘hidden’ heritage – personal archives of photos, film and video, documents, and the most precious archive of all – our memories. The oral histories we’ve gathered offer a very personal insight into our interactions with the railway.”

The archive features memories from passengers, railway workers, volunteers and campaigners, along with associated images, film and artefacts, making it a unique collection.

It will be formally unveiled in a celebratory event featuring exhibits from Crediton Museum, Prof. Robert Stone (Birmingham University), the Railway Studies Library, The Museum of Dartmoor Life, the Dartmoor Railway Association and Ian Dinmore’s The Railway Archive.

There were interactive exhibits, allowing visitors to hear extracts from some of the oral histories in the archive, to record their own contribution, and to explore the online archive itself.

There were also talks from Prof Stone and Dr Paul Cleave (Exeter University), plus a performance from Turning Tides, who run Crediton Station Café, and who catered for the event.

The event was also part of the national Railway200 celebrations, marking the railway’s 200th anniversary.

The charity’s Archivist and Founding Curator, Mark Norman, said that the Folklore Library and Archive was thrilled to be able to make this new collection of heritage materials available to everyone via its online collections.

He added: “As with all our material, this is free to access, for the benefit of all.”