Roy Matthews

Roy dedicated his retirement to the restoration of the Bluebell Railway's Metropolitan Railway carriages, and was in fact the only member of the BASH project to have worked on the four carriages consistently for all 15 years.

As a young man he flew Tiger Moths, Harvards, Ansons, Wellingtons, Lincolns, Meteors, Twin Pins and Britannias, but the most remarkable type for an RAF pilot must have been the Washington, their version of the Boeing 29 Super Fortress ... Roy wasn't too keen on them, though.

He was in early 90s when he died on 22 October 2018.

The four Metropolitan carriages, the restoration of which Roy had treated as his retirement project. (Photo by Tony Pearce, taken during a photo charter on 29 July 2007, the day after their official relaunch into service.)