In June we had a visit from Camberley Philatelic Society from Alan Matheson displaying ‘An Overview of German Philately 1939-1945’ and John Hayward with ‘The Iron Ore Line.’
Alan’s display showed us many covers including allied military mail with some being intercepted and censored by the Germans. Covers from the different military zones, British, French and Russian, were also displayed, some with local and private issued stamps and others with overprints as in some zone’s stamps were unavailable.
In the second half, John gave a fascinating insight through postal and social history to the most Northerly railway in the world, called the Northern Line running from Kiruna, Sweden to Norway. The train shipped iron ore from one of the largest iron ore mines in the world on a railway built by Swedish navvies from 1902 to 1905. John showed covers and some philatelic covers with special postmarks from the train itself. Because of the large amount of money being made from the iron ore, they even moved the town Kiruna 3km away as there was a threat that continuing mining could cause a collapse of the town.
A fascination afternoon.
