Network SouthEast Railway Society

The Network SouthEast Railway Society is a vibrant and evolving group of enthusiasts whose interests lay in the nationalised British Rail services in London and the SouthEast under the guise of the Network SouthEast business sector which operated track, trains, stations and signals from it's formation in 1986 until disbandment in 1994 in readiness for privatisation.

The Society collects and preserves artefacts relating to this fascinating period of transport history, as well as material relating to Southern Region Mk1 based stock in order to help us in our active preservation of the NSERS Ltd's Class 421 Phase 1 4CIG unit 1753. To find out more, please see the 4Cig 1753 page.

This site is regularly updated and is currently undergoing some fairly major changes. If you'd like to keep up-to-date with new material, please see our blog.

We hope you find our website informative, and thank you for visiting us.

 

Latest News

 

 

Launch of NSERS Special Edition of Classic NSE Posters

 

Following the success of the special edition mugs and badges commemorating the last day of the slammers at Lymington in May, thoughts turned to the next ‘special’ that the society could create.

After a lot of soul searching, Ian Shepherd came up with an idea to produce a series of postcards depicting the best and classic images of posters produced during the NSE era. It was decided that our best choice would be to make them a limited edition of 400 sets of 6 cards in a presentation envelope with an insert giving a brief history of Network Southeast. Each envelope would bear a serial number.

Following much debate a choice of six posters were made from our own collection.The posters were passed to Printech in Brighton who did an excellent job of reducing them to postcard size without loss of detail. A specially designed envelope was agreed, together with the insert went into production. Thanks to Ian’s inside knowledge of the postcard collectors market, we considered that a run of only 400 would give the collectors market an impetus to buy. We also consider that this quantity will ensure that the presentation packs will soon become collectors’ items. Ian provided a brief description of the issue date and reason for the poster which is printed on the reverse of the card. In addition, we decided to add a limited run of 100 individual cards of each of the six postcards, the intention is to make these available a single cards at events etc.

 

 

The presentation packs have already received a favourable review in a leading postcard collectors magazine. We expect that the packs will be sold out very quickly so if sets are required please place your orders as follows:

Presentation pack of six cards plus insert in a commemorative envelope - £6 + £1.50 p.& p. per pack
Loose postcards are priced at 80p each card plus £1 p.& p. for up to every 4 cards purchased or £1.50 for a set of the six postcards.

Orders with cheques made out to NSERS for the appropriate amount to be sent to:

NSERS Postcards
100 Whitley Road
Eastbourne
East Sussex, BN22 8ND

Please allow 21 days for delivery.

Please make sure that there is a contact phone number and / or e-mail address together with your address. Orders will be processed on a first come first served basis.

Chris Osman
Chairman

 

 

Nene Valley weekend 2/3 Oct 2010

The society arranged to visit the Nene Valley for their Gala weekend and agreement was reached to have a stand at Wansford on the Saturday and Sunday. Saturday started at 07.30 at Wansford with a surprising number of people already awaiting the departure of the first train at 08.20. The stall location was established by Chris and Jayne Osman, tables and stock soon started to appear. Soon after, Ian Shepherd, along with Dave East who had set out at 06.00 from Ipswich, arrived in the van which he had brought goodies up from Shoreham the previous evening.

NSERS Stall at Wansford on Saturday

 

Once the stall was fully dressed with our goodies, we were visited by many enthusiasts waiting for their train / loco to depart / arrive. On arrival of the first train from Peterborough, we were joined by Scott Holmes. Scott and Dave East had brought along some items which he had procured from e-bay adding variety to the merchandise. Sales were steady throughout the day which kept spirits high, along with regular top ups of tea and coffee.

 

Ian Shepherd has 'binned' got by Chris

 

On Sunday the weather turned quite miserable, with rain and a cold wind dampening our spirits. There was far fewer visitors with space on all trains; this resulted in much lower sales than hoped. However, not all was lost, a Network SouthEast litter bin had been spotted, semi hidden near the footbridge. Neil Bird who had joined us, soon was negotiating with the Nene Valley team to transfer said bin to our collection of NSE memorabilia. Further enquiries revealed yet another bin that was not required which soon joined the first one!

During Sunday, we all managed to take a ride on a train of our choice, although by afternoon, it was raining hard we still enjoyed a trip behind a classic diesel.

Overall, a good weekend with a reasonable amount taken in sales and two new members joining our society.

Chris Osman

Chairman

NSERS visit to the National Railway Museum York Sep 11th

Despite being advertised to members well in advance, a very small party of just 5 members (including 2 living in York) arrived to take advantage of the NRM hospitality to study the Search Engine archive of NSE related items not normally on view to the public.

The Search Engine staff had made available a selection of NSE posters together with a large collection of publicity material for starters!

The publicity material consisted of all things that could be imagined, from the sector maps, special events, new services, local advertisements to name just a few.

In going through the material we soon used up the six hours available to us. We all discovered gems that we had little idea existed and many items which we had never seen before, We were amazed at the diversity of material laid out before us.

By the time we had to call a halt to our visit, we were astonished to discover how little of the collection made available by the NRM we had actually gone through.
It is obvious that further visits need to be made to peruse more of the treasures held by the NRM.

Our thanks to all the staff that made the material available to us, especially in providing us with a list of all the NSE posters recorded as in their archive.

Finally, thanks to Dave East who arranged the visit. Dave hopes to arrange further visits in the forthcoming months so look out for information appearing on the website / facebook page.


Chris Osman
Chairman

 

Society Events

Date	Event
Provisionally 11th June 2011	Railtour from London Victoria to Fenchurch Street. Click here for details.

 

Events are subject to change and more may be added in due course. Please continue to check.

Please confirm if you are attending any event at 1753, as provisions can be made for arranging transport, etc to and from the East Anglia Transport Museum or public transport interchanges.

©Network SouthEast Railway Society 2006-2010

The NSE logo, brand name, typescript and styles are used by kind permission of the British Railways Board Limited (Residual)