It’s funny isn’t it how when you start to look through albums of photographs, or in my case previous years image files on the computer, your memory takes you back many years prior to the photograph you’re actually looking for.  I was searching for the image of a Black 5 at Buckfastleigh in March 2007 and when I found it my mind was taken back to Platform 1 at Birmingham New Street Station where, at the head of a train for Coventry, Rugby and possibly London Euston stood a grimy and weather beaten Black 5.  Even in that condition, common in the latter days of steam, they could give many another class of locomotive a good run for their money.  I had the good fortune to accidentally return to Birmingham via the Lickey Incline behind one somewhere around 1959 or 1960 and although one of the inevitable Lickey Bankers was on the back end, boy did we take it in style.  For many years now it’s been my best loved class of locomotives – such wonderful lines, such everyday hard working beauty.

But then that’s my problem.  I was born in Birmingham and my allegiances were always split between the G.W.R. at Snow Hill Station and the Midland and L.N.W.R. at New Street Station.   At Snow Hill the Kings, Castles, Halls, Granges and moguls were to be seen along with a multitude of panniers and prairies panting up the slope from Hockley with through freights or local passenger services.  Whilst at New Street it would be Royal Scots, Patriots, Jubilees, very occasionally a straying Duchess, the ubiquitous Black 5’s and a fair selection of Fowler and Fairbairn tanks.  Another problem was that my bedroom window overlooked Chester Road Station on the line from New Street to Sutton Coldfield and Lichfield; and in the summer months on a Tuesday night the car sleeper service from Sutton Coldfield to Stirling sped past often in charge of an L.M.S. pacific.

A 22 mile bike ride took me to the Trent Valley line – the main avoiding line for Birmingham – where the expresses from Euston to the North roared past at maximum speed and where every train spotters’ heart quickened when Princesses (Prinnys) and Duchesses appeared, with a feather of steam from the safety valves, in what was to be their final years on express duties.  My Ian Allen ABC Combined Volume filled rapidly with neat biro lines under the numbers, a ‘c’ against those cabbed (6026 King John twice!) and an ‘s’ against those we had seen on shed from within the shed.

My greatest regret of course is that in those halcyon days I wasn’t the least bit interested in photography neither as a hobby nor a career – something else I arrived at in later teen years purely accidentally – and I didn’t even possess a camera.  But in those days of my early teens it never occurred to me that a photographic record of something that was fast disappearing would be so important.  What a photographic collection my Saturday train spotting days would have produced!  I would arrive at Snow Hill Station with two shillings and sixpence pocket money and see how far and to where, a child’s return ticket would get me.  Sitting atop a high embankment overlooking the triangle of Worcester’s locomotive depot became a favourite spot; ah those were the days, memories, smells, sights and experiences to be treasured.  And then there was the journey from New Street to Wolverhampton High Level through the Black Country - one of the scenically worst journeys in Britain it was said - but I loved it, it was what industry, people and railways were all about!

However I digress, my early train spotting adventures were not originally the main purpose of this page.  But just as a smell or a sound can take us back to our early years so can a photograph, even if taken in the present.  In 2004, after thirty eight years of shooting on film, I discovered digitable photography as I like to call it - although the earliest images on this page were taken in 2005.  Someone lent me one of those awful ‘hold it out in front of you and hope for the best’ cameras but even so I was amazed at what could be done and with an increasing interest in steam railway photography I began to develop my style.  Progression through a series of cameras which could not cope with what I wanted to achieve was fast and in 2008 I acquired the Nikon professional gear I now use.

So enjoy these few images, maybe they will bring back a whole host of memories for you too. And as a PS I should say that at the time of writing this I ought be out photographing 6024 King Edward’s return to hauling the Torbay Express – but I’ve shot it to death for a couple of years now, something we would never have said in the late 50’s or early 60’s!