I used to collect old train postcards and had over 2000 of them. This one from the late 19th Century I kept because it’s a beautifully taken sepia print.
The scene is a posed one and is of the Royal Train that no doubt hauled Queen Victoria around the Great Western Railway of England.
The locomotive has the royal coat of arms attached to the wheel splasher and is appropriately named ‘Queen’. I guess the picture was taken in the late 80s or early 90s.
Our first visit to Japan was in 2002 and we were fortunate to be able to visit the wonderful railway museum in Kyoto. So this is one of my early digital photographs.
This was an attempt to make a more abstract interpretation of the wheels and motion of a steam locomotive that resides in the Glasgow Riverside Museum of Transport.
Glasgow built steam engines for many world railways.
I believe that this steam locomotive came from the scrapyard that we saw in yesterday’s post, so after rusting and mouldering for many years in South Wales, and after thousands of hours of restoration work it is seen in pristine condition on the Severn Valley Railway in this photo from the 80s.
Another scanned negative, itself restored, and seen for the first time.
Barry Scrapyard in South Wales was where many of my favourite steam engines ended up when the decision was made to replace steam with diesel and electric locomotives in the late 60s. Fortunately the owner of the Scrapyard decided that it was easier to cut up redundant wagons and the locomotives remained here for many years until preservation groups raised the money to restore a large number of them, making the UK one of the best countries for preserved steam railways.
This photo was taken in 1977.
This is a view of a departure from Bridgnorth, Shropshire, England on the Severn Valley Railway that was taken on black and white film in the 1980s. I have recently been scanning some of my old negatives, so this is the first time this picture has seen the light of day.
A picture taken in about 1961 of a south bound departure from Lichfield Trent Valley Station in the days before the West Coast Mainline was electrified.
This location was a popular destination for me and although I visited here frequently with a school friend Mike Sambrook on his motorbike, I think on this visit I travelled by train.
A view of one of the old semaphore signals that stands at the end of the station platform at Embsay station on the Yorkshire Dales Railway, Skipton, Yorkshire.
This is one of my favourite photos taken in 1961 at Snow Hill station, Birmingham.
The photo took me a long time to restore as the negative was badly scratched but I feel that the effort was worth it. I am always surprised at how much detail can be extracted from these old pictures and am pleased that the sky plays an important part in the success of the image.
The small boy gives the whole scene a sense of the excitement of the 60s as steam came to an end on the railways of Britain.
An evocative scene taken in the locomotive yard at Wankaner Junction, Gujarat, India in 1997.
These engines were working the service to Morbi and shared with Chittorgarh the distinction of being the last two steam services on mainline railways in India. These engines were all gone by the year 2000.
Wonderful animate machines of true grit….
Life, Photography, & Other Mistakes 