Promoting engineering and technology, encouraging and supporting those contemplating a career in engineering or technology
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Welcome to the Norwich Engineering Society, an active forum dedicated to fostering the exchange of ideas and experiences among all those passionate about engineering — past, present, and future.
For over a century, we have focused on the people behind groundbreaking innovations and their visionary concepts. Our mission is to enlighten, support, and develop our members in Norfolk and beyond. We achieve this through unique engagements, dynamic events, informative seminars, and insightful publications.
By championing the diverse disciplines within engineering, we ensure its continued evolution and relevance in an ever-changing world.
The President, Dorian Hindmarsh, opened the AGM with a welcome to all the attendees, both those present and those who had joined online. He then went on to give a brief outline of what the Society had been up to in the last year and how enjoyable year it had been despite the last minute changes to the programme. He thanked in particular those Members who had rallied round and filled the gaps. He concluded his thoughts with thanks to both the Secretary and the Treasurer for all their efforts on the administrative running of the Society.; in particular, getting the Membership lists clarified after the troubles caused by the covid pandemic.
After the President concluded his report, both the Secretary and the Treasurer gave their annual reports. Both were well received by Members present both in person and virtually. One of the major matters reported by the Treasurer was that the finances of the Society were in sound health. In particular, the Treasurer proposed that subscriptions should be the same for 2026-2027 as in 2025-2027. This was agreed by all present. After the Council Officers reports the meeting proceeded to elections. The President reported that there had been no proposals submitted for alternative Members of Council but that a current Member of Council, Tony Meacock, had decided that time had caught up with him and that he would not be putting his name forward for Council in the upcoming season. The President thanked Tony for all the positive contributions he had made to the good running of the Society. The President then proposed that the remaining Council Members and Officers served for the next season. This unanimously accepted by all Members present.
The second part of the AGM was taken up with two presentations by Members. The first was by the Presented and the second by former President Tony Meacock. The talk by Dorian was a memorial to his father, Paul, who spent most of his working life as a freelance photographer with a speciality of the industrial scenes in the Newcastle upon Tyne area. However, his relaxation was in model railway engineering; the part of his life that Dorian concentrated on. He told is that his father was meticulous and everything was constructed to an extremely high standard. Dorian brought several examples of the work by Paul for the audience to admire
The presentation by Tony was not so much a talk as a series of amusing video clips with a somewhat tenuous at times link to engineering.
Donard opened his talk with an introduction to the basic electrochemical processes involved in the chemistry of batteries. He explained the basic electron exchanges processes of the REDOX reaction. He then discussed real practical batteries such as the Daniell Cell and the lead acid battery; some being safer to use than others owing to the nature of the chemicals involved.
Donard then moved on to describing the railway line that ran very close to where was born and brought up; the Bray to Dublin line. He did this because it was on this line that one of the first battery powered trains ran successfully between the wars in the 1930s. One of the major reasons was that after the Great War Eire was awash with cheap electricity because of the success of the River Shannon hydro- electric scheme and the Eirean government was looking for useful applications of electricity to use capacity. Some thought was given to electrifying the Irish Railway national system but they baulked at the apparently excessive capital costs of either the overhead supplies or that of the third rail systems.
As it happens a certain Dr Drumm, an Irish physical chemist had been investigating the chemistry of electrochemical batteries in Dublin. He had discovered that if Zinc was used instead of Fe in an Edison cell much faster charging and discharging rates could be achieved and what is more were much safer to use because of the less corrosive chemicals involved. Indeed Dr Drumm realised that the discharge rates were such as to provide currents big enough to drive powerful electric motors; sufficiently powerful enough to drive railway carriages. Indeed his work came to the attention of the Irish Railways board who commissioned several electric railcars based on his battery technology to run on the Bray to Dublin railway.
This line was chosen as the Drumm battery was very efficient and could contain enough energy to run the full length of the line under all weather conditions with only a partial recharge needed at each terminal. Because of the rapid recharge rate of this type of battery this could be achieved in a matter of a few minutes. This system ran successfully from the early 1930s to the beginning of the WWII. Difficulties then arose because of the availability and cost of both Zn and Ni particularly Ni which was in much demand as a strategic material. Because of this and a policy decision of the wartime Irish railways to unify on burnt oil steam power the Drumm trains were sidelined and eventually scrapped.