
We were lucky that Saturday turned out to be dry and cold. Final preparations took place between 8.00 and 11.00. Happy children started to arrive with Mums and Dads in tow ready for Festive fun! At the craft stall ably prepared by Andrea - Lesley and Sue Astles helped the children create some lovely decorations for the tree. Stencils for these kindly supplied by Simon. Always popular the Model Railway Club's working layout was manned by Martin and Mike. Providing happy festive music were Altrincham based trio SPINDRIFT back by popular demand! Spindrift very generously gave all their donations to FOGS! We thank them for this! It was nice to see Jacqueline out front serving up refreshments ably helped by Paul Kiddy. On the raffle with an array of prizes incuding a Ist prize of a Northern Travel voucher, were John LeG and Bunty later helped by Eric. John's excellent organisation of the raffle makes for later easy identification of winners! Eric as always was much in demand for various tasks and his magic zapper for switching on the lights was again a hit with Ian, our guest!
Joining us from Northern were Senior personnel including Paul Spencer, proudly showing us his new son!, Mark Barker - his second visit in two days! and Theo with his family too. Ian Bevan, Northern Rail's Managing Director arrived before 11.00 to be greeted by Theo and Neil. He brought with him his wife, mother and daughter. We were delighted to welcome them! Ian then had a tour of the station in its festive mode with Neil. Ian kindly found time to have a word with everyone including our station ambassador, Keith Biddulph and Steve from Marple on duty in the ticket office. And to compliment Paul's excellent promotional poster! Neil formally welcomed Ian to the station at around 11.25 and Ian then gave a very generous speech acknowledging the progress that had been made at Glossop and his pride with the recent awards' successes. Photos were then taken around the tree.
Then SANTA!! Arriving on the 11.49 train Santa made a dashing sight in his resplendent red costume. Over 80 children plus Mums and Dads followed him down the platform as he rang his bell of welcome. Santa then spent over an hour seeing each child giving them a goody bag and a tangerine! - contents kindly donated by Northern Rail. Ably helping Santa were Matthew and James stars of Partington's Theatre current Christmas production. On hand to record these happy monents with Santa was John K and camera. Photos will eventually appear on this website.
At around 1.00 Santa bid his farewells as FOGS' elves worked on for another couple of hours to transform the station back to its normal routines. But the Christmas magic of the decorations lives on making it a festive place to visit/travel through!
FOGS would like to thank fellow friends Babs - Hattersley, Joy - Hadfield, Kim, Tom and Alan - Reddish South for coming along to support us. Look out for articles reviewing the event in The Glossop Chronicle and Glossop Advertiser.
HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND BEST WISHES FOR THE NEW YEAR FROM ALL AT FOGS!!