Jim Fraser

Jim Fraser from the Bristol Group repainting the 'Portmadoc' platform name board - John Ryan, Jun-1970.

1920 - 2012

Jim was on the committee of Bristol Area Group for forty years from its formation in 1962, being its first Chairman. He first visited the railway in 1949. He was an accomplished photographer and several of his pictures of the closure period have been published (for example his picture of a derelict Minffordd Station in 1951, illustration No 24. in John Winton's "Little Wonder"). He missed the 1951 Bristol meeting but paid at least one more visit before the initial trains of the revival ran in 1955.

In 1962, Jim and others recognised the need to bring members of the Ffestiniog Railway Society in the Bristol area together to coordinate travel by volunteers to N. Wales, arrange members' meeting, talks about the railway and provide publicity at model railway shows. This resulted in the founding of the Society's Bristol Group. He was involved with many Bristol Group homework projects, creating fencing and warning boards and in working parties at the Railway, among other things to install these items. The workshop used by the Group for its regular weekly meetings to progress homework projects was Jim's garage. At his death he was one of the longest serving members of the FR Society.

In the early 1970s he trained as a guard and enjoyed that position for a number of years.

Jim was born in Exeter but moved to Bristol before World War Two where he joined the Bristol Aeroplane Company and was involved with design work. He worked on planes from the Beaufighter to the Concorde. He was also an accomplished model maker and a keen cyclist.