Geoffrey Claydon CB LLB M.Inst TA CMILT

A personal tribute from Andrew Braddock, LRTA Vice-President

It is with great sadness that I write these few lines following news of Geoffrey’s passing, at the age of 94 on Monday 30 June 2025.

Geoffrey joined the Light Railway Transport League as it was then as a teenager in the late 1940s and was able to participate in several tours of his home city Birmingham’s tramway network in its final years. Encouraged by W A (“Cam”) Camwell, he became involved in the work of the League and eventually served as Secretary and later Chairman of the LRTL Council. He was instrumental in the transition of the League’s Museum Committee into what became the Tramway Museum Society, serving in due course as TMS Secretary, Chairman and President.

In similar vein, Geoffrey ultimately became President of the Light Rail Transit Association (as it was renamed in 1979) in 2009. When he stood down as President in 2012, during my time as LRTA Chairman, it was decided that we should appoint Geoffrey as the Association’s first Patron in view of his 50-plus years as a Council Member – a post he filled until his death.

Geoffrey Claydon made a life-long contribution to the tram and light rail industry and commanded the respect of all who engaged with him. With a passion for the subject from a very early age, he was well known in tramway circles for more than seventy years and during a distinguished career in the legal profession – largely in the Civil Service – was the architect of the legislative changes that included the passing of the Transport & Works Act and the various regulations that succeeded the Tramways Act of 1870. Much of Geoffrey’s time was dedicated to the LRTA, the TMS and the Heritage Railway Association, through which he was a Board Member of UKTram and gave advice on the creation of that body’s new constitution.

I first met “GBC” in the late 1960s when he very kindly helped me with plans to restructure the National Trolleybus Association (of which I was Chairman at that time) into a company limited by guarantee, and we became firm friends and later partners in the work of the LRTA over the past sixty years.

Always the sole of discretion, with a unique ability to calm heated debate and get the best out of a variety of bodies made up of volunteers (or indeed politicians and Government officials), Geoffrey was a Bachelor of Law (LLB) and following his distinguished career as a senior civil servant was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB). He was also a Member of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport and of the Institute of Traffic Administration.

May he rest in peace, ideally travelling by tram to meet old friends for a gourmet dinner rounded off with a bottle of Port!

3 July 2025