THE day after the National Railway Museum failed to celebrate its 30th birthday, a reader complains it has failed to recognise one of its founders.

John Scholes was the museum's first curator, appointed in 1973. But he stepped down due to ill health in June the following year - three months before it opened to the public. He died in 1977.

The museum he helped to devise has gone from strength to strength, tripling in size, attracting millions of visitors and claiming the title European Museum of the Year 2001.

But there is nothing anywhere in the NRM acknowledging his pivotal role.

Alan Ridsdill, of Bolton Percy, worked with Mr Scholes when he was curator of the Castle Museum between 1948 and 1951.

"I should like to see some recognition of the work John did for the NRM. It wouldn't be up here if it wasn't for him," says Alan.

After leaving the Castle Museum Mr Scholes ran the British Transport Museum at Clapham, London.

It competed strongly for the right to become the National Railway Museum, but when that honour came here, Mr Scholes came too, with lots of Clapham's best exhibits.

"There should be a big plaque there dedicated to John," says Mr Ridsdill.

WHAT would John Scholes make of the present NRM? He'd be impressed by its scale and ambition, but not by its exhibits. "I'm no railway enthusiast," he once confessed.

Whether he'd approve of free entry is another question, as he believed in the museum as a commercial enterprise, saying: "You're laying on entertainment for people, so it's right that they should pay for it in the same way as they do for other entertainments."

While at the Castle Museum, he proposed putting some of the exhibits in Clifford's Tower, once a roof had been added. That was in 1948. English Heritage also proposed putting a roof on Clifford's Tower. In 2005.

AS promised, more tales from a Minster guide. John Robson, who has been showing visitors around the great church for 18 years, says the greatest compliment he ever enjoyed was from an Italian man: "I like-a you. You are so simple."

An American tourist demanded to know his view on women priests. John pointed out that he could talk about the history and the architecture, but questions of doctrine were outside his remit. The American persisted.

So John put his pager behind his back and activated it. "I am wanted at the inquiry desk," he said as the bleeper sounded, and rushed away without offering an answer.

He remembers showing a party of schoolchildren around the 700-year-old Chapter House, decorated with many carvings of animated faces. "One little girl came up to me and said: 'I have found one that looks like my teacher!' She was probably right, but it wasn't very polite to say so." Especially if she was referring to one of the monkey gargoyles... More tomorrow.

LEONARD Rivett of Woodthorpe, York, an honorary Minster chaplain, called up. He knows all about the Minster monument to Archbishop William Thomson, which includes a dog carved at his feet, as mentioned in the Diary on Monday and Tuesday.

An onlooker told the Reverend Rivett that the dog, Scamp, was a fox haired terrier. Which was quite a coincidence as at the time he owned a fox haired terrier called... Scamp. Leonard added: "We talked about this then he said: 'do you remember him?'

"The archbishop died in 1890!"

Updated: 10:52 Wednesday, September 28, 2005