Born in Northern Ireland where I spent my first 50 years, I have been a railway enthusiast since 1968, although I only started serious photography in late 1970 with the purchase of my first 35mm camera. However, I found the image quality on 35mm was not great so changed to medium format black & white in mid-1975 with the purchase of a Mamiya C220. Why black & white? It was cheap and I could save money by doing my own processing.
In July 1980, I bought my first Mamiya M645 which became the first in a long procession of 645s. I still use one today, but switched to 6x4.5 colour slides in 1988 and mostly stopped taking black & white in 1998 – although I always have a few rolls on an expedition as the weather is generally uncertain.
The bulk of my photographic collection concentrates on the CIÉ /IÉ and NIR systems and consists of some 5,000 black & white negatives plus several thousand 35mm and 6x4.5 colour slides. However, there was a major change in my railway interest from 1990, when I first visited South Africa for steam. Since 1990, I have travelled to Africa, India, Pakistan, China, Cuba and much of eastern Europe in search of the last active steam locomotives. Additionally, I “discovered” the USA in 1995 and travelled there frequently for diesel traction until 2004, when the Bush administration decided to treat all visitors as criminal suspects subject to an arrest procedure on arrival. Hardly what one would expect from the “land of the free”! Diesel photography also extends to Canada, Malaysia and much of Europe – I will photograph anything railway, even trams, monorails and DMUs.
I moved to western Scotland in 2003. While remote with nothing but 156s, this hardly matters as photography is now largely confined to continental Europe as the UK and Irish scene leaves me cold. It’s all some form of railcar and it’s all plastic – and in the UK, Network Rail and “plod” have decided photography is illegal (although it is not), which just means a level of “hassle” unacceptable at my age.
So, please start your journey through my collection with the Irish albums, which recall those care-free days when the systems had variety and staff, despite the “troubles”, treated enthusiasts as eccentric but harmless. Then move on to the foreign collections, perhaps to the steam albums and then the overseas diesel and electric sections. But I should mention there is still a lot of work for me on these albums, they need to be sorted and captioned and there is still much early materiel to be scanned. So treat this as a work in progress which I will complete over time.
Thanks to all who have already commented on my work – it is much appreciated. To all, please enjoy what I have – little can now be repeated in a fast changing world and each is a snapshot of something which will never pass our way again.
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