[BITList] A track record

[John Feltham]

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Coiley,  John Arthur  (1932-1998), museum curator, was born on 29 March 1932 at 3 Pilgrim Hill, West Norwood, London, the only son of Arthur Henry George Coiley (1896-1993), a share transfer clerk and later a company registrar, and his wife, Stella, nee Chinnock (1901-1985), a secretary. He was educated at Beckenham and Penge county grammar school and Selwyn College, Cambridge (1951-7), where he graduated BA (1954) in metallurgy and PhD (1959) with a thesis on the application of electron microscopy to metallurgical analysis. His marriage to Patricia Anne Dixon (b. 1932), a grammar school teacher, was solemnized at the Unitarian Memorial Church in Cambridge on 30 June 1956; they had a daughter and two sons.

Coiley is known principally for his role in establishing the National Railway Museum in York, the first national collection to be located outside London. His interest in railways started with a schoolboy enthusiasm which matured at university into a deep and abiding knowledge. The photographic skills acquired as part of his doctoral work sparked a lifelong hobby photographing railways in Britain and abroad. His early career was not, however, connected with railways. He worked as a research scientist, initially at the UK Atomic Energy Authority at Harwell (1957-60); a move to private industry, at first in a research capacity at Aeon Laboratories, Egham (1960-65), led to a post as development manager at Fulmer Research Laboratories (1965-73). Throughout this entire period Coiley's amateur interest in the history and contemporary practice of railways continued to grow, some of his photographic work being included in a compilation shared with four fellow graduates, Images of Steam (1968, 2nd edn, 1974). A love of mechanical things was also apparent in the interest he shared with the rest of his family in motor rallying. His experience, mostly in the 1960s, as a navigator in competitive events left him with a taste for fast driving in ordinary traffic which often surprised those who had previously known only the unfailingly polite and seemingly mild-mannered man.

In 1973 Coiley was appointed an assistant keeper at the Science Museum, bringing together in what was to prove a gloriously successful combination his interest in railways and the managerial skills he had acquired in professional life. The controversial decision to locate the National Railway Museum outside London had just been taken, and Coiley was at the heart of preparations to move the greater part of the Science Museum's railway collection to York. There it was to join in a newly converted engine shed the collection of historic railway locomotives, rolling stock, and other items large and small built up by the private railway companies and their nationalized successor.

Appointment as the first keeper of the National Railway Museum in 1974 at the age of forty-one opened the most important and productive phase of Coiley's career. His unflappable manner, quiet diplomatic charm, and enormous drive disarmed critics of the move out of London and ensured that the museum opened on schedule on 27 September 1975, the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway. The museum was an instant and outstanding success, attracting more than a million visitors a year. Its innovative coverage of the history, technology, and contemporary practice of Britain's railways rapidly gained it an international reputation, which was further enhanced by Coiley's long-standing involvement in the International Association of Transport Museums, of which he was president from 1983 to 1986.

Coiley remained in charge of the National Railway Museum until his retirement in 1992. Acquisition of adjacent land and buildings in the 1970s provided space for storing much of the collection, which was judiciously expanded as the modernization of the railways continued to displace equipment. Although the general public perhaps most readily appreciated the static and working displays of large, beautifully restored locomotives and rolling stock, less spectacular history found a place among the many smaller items on show. Out of the public gaze, a reference library and archive, a huge photographic collection, and a more modest one of railway art and graphic posters provided for the needs of scholars and enthusiasts alike. In the last years of Coiley's leadership the museum expanded and renewed many of its exhibitions, in the process giving a greater emphasis to the railways' social and human side.

In retirement Coiley continued to live in Farnham, near Knaresborough, West Riding of Yorkshire, and maintained a close and supportive relationship with the museum through the organization of friends and volunteers he had helped to establish shortly after his arrival in York. He died, aged sixty-six, from a heart attack at Chur railway station in Switzerland on 22 May 1998, while leading a group exploring the delights of the Swiss railway system. Cremation on 1 June 1998 was followed by the burial of his ashes at St Oswald's Church, Farnham.

Colin Divall 

Sources  The Independent (28 May 1998) + The Times (6 June 1998) + The Guardian (5 June 1998) + Newsletter, 84 (1998) [Friends of the National Railway Museum] + private information (2004) [Mrs Patsy Coiley] + b. cert. + m. cert. + WW (1987)
Likenesses  photographs, 1974-92, National Railway Museum, York · photograph, 1992, repro. in The Times [see illus.]



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