PETER JAMIESON, BORN 1939
RAILWAYS & ARCHITECTURE
The architect Peter Jamieson, one of the founders of London-based MJP Architects, has had a lifelong interest in narrow gauge railways. This enthusiasm dates from a family trip to Wales when Jamieson, aged eleven, came across the grass-covered rails and tumbled slate wagons of the abandoned Festiniog Railway. A keen collector of railway memorabilia, Jamieson ‘salvaged’ the number plate of a wagon - to return it sixty years later. He was also as a child a keen railway modeller, making working electric model steam engines out of cardboard and soldered tin. Only the wheels and motors were bought. In this memoir Jamieson describes his volunteering at the Festiniog Railway through his teens and early twenties. This required many convoluted cross-country trips to Wales by train, bus, and bicycle, by long-wheelbase Land Rover (with mattresses in the back), and in one case by ancient Rolls Royce.
This life story was contributed to Lives Retold by Peter Jamieson in April 2024.