RPG ZOOM Meetings!
RPG Members Meetings using Zoom
To allow members to ‘meet’ each other we will be running a series of quarterly on-line meetings using the Zoom platform. These meetings will nominally be restricted to RPG members, but members of other organisations with overlapping interests may also be invited from time to time. Other individuals may request a link to attend a particular meeting and such requests will be dealt with on an ad hoc basis.
These Members’ Meetings will be scheduled for the months of March, June, September and December to link with the publication dates of the RPG Journal (Railway Philately). Most meetings will involve a guest speaker, and it is hoped to include some speakers from abroad who we would not normally get the chance to hear. Some meetings will be just for members to meet each other, chat, and get to know each other, and some meetings will also provide RPG members with an opportunity to give short presentations based on their own collections or railway philatelic interests (*).
How to attend an RPG Members’ Zoom Meeting
To join an RPG Zoom meeting you will need a link to that meeting. Each such meeting will be advertised well in advance, and the link to each meeting will be emailed to members approximately a week before the date of the meeting.
RPG Members’ Zoom Meetings – Draft Schedule
- Monday, 13 December, 2021 – Guest Speaker: Railway Letters, The Service & the Stamps
This Zoom display presented by Yvonne Wheatley will commence at 7.00 pm with examples of how urgent letters were sent by rail before 1891. The Post Office realised they would have to introduce a Railway Letter Service, and this display continues with details of the efforts to produce stamps for the service, followed by examples of the stamps and their usage. Railway Letter Stamps were phased out in the 1930s, and the display will conclude with examples of alternative means used to pay for railway letters. Details of how to join the Display will be made available later.
- March 2022 – Guest Speaker: (arrangements under way)
- June 2022: This is currently planned to be a Members’ Meeting – details to follow
Of course, we would have liked to make these meetings available to all RPG members but, obviously, you will need a computer and access to the internet to be able to attend these Zoom meetings (which some members do not have).
RPG Committee Meetings using Zoom
We have also employed Zoom for RPG Committee meetings. As some of our RPG Committee members live as far apart as Cornwall and Scotland, it has always been extremely difficult to arrange a ‘physical’ Committee meeting (even when such gatherings were allowed!). We have now been able to have regular Committee meetings successfully using Zoom. In fact, we have found that running Committee meetings using Zoom is by far the easiest and best way to do it!