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Front cover of Backtrack Magazine, April 2021 Issue
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Backtrack Magazine, April 2021 Issue

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Contents Listing - Articles & Features in this issue
Freight Working in Kent
Around Croydon
A Grand Tour of East Anglia - The 1956 'Best Kept Station' Competition
Railway Observations from a Seiside Winter - Part Two: 1965
The Rise and Fall of Ilfracombe Station - Part Two 
The Brighton's Atlantics
Going round the South Wales Sheds
Coffins by Corpse Van: Some Hearse Carriages of Britain's Railways
Fatal Accident at Birkby on the North Eastern Railway
No. 6254 City of Stoke-on-Trent
A Locomotive Spending Spree, 1921
Modernising the London Midland Region
Book Reviews
Readers' Forum
 
Cover: London, Brighton & South Coast Railway H2 4-4-2 No.32424 Beachy Head at Newhaven locomotive depot in April 1958. (K. Cooper/Colour-Rail.com BRS220)
Article Snippets
Article Snippets
Every picture tells a story - but where?
In a guest editorial ROGER BACKHOUSE highlights an important issue with current relevance - what provision should we make for the future of our photograph collections? Benjamin Franklin once observed that the only certainties are death and taxes. Depressing subjects, to which we can add that unfortunately one day a photographer's collection will have to be disposed of. Many who photographed transport in the 1960s and 1970s are now getting on in years and those images may be a wonderful record of long-vanished scenes valuable for nostalgics and historians. Where would Backtrack be without photographs made available by individuals and from collections like Colour-Rail?
Sadly, many railway photographers and those who recorded train sounds don't provide for the future of cherished collections. I knew of a Herefordshire enthusiast who travelled with me on the last train from Kington to Leominster but his photographs of county railways vanished after his demise-a sad loss for railway history and for Herefordshire's heritage. That depressing story can be repeated elsewhere. It is scary that those pictures of 'Deities' taken when they were advanced technology are now records of the past. As the railway scene changes rapidly more recent pictures soon become important records. This is therefore a plea for all those with railway photographs, whatever their age, to plan their future.
The recent dispersal sales of the H. C. and R. Casserley collections have highlighted the need for preservation. Although it is usually undesirable to break up collections, at least those sales ensured buyers knew the historical significance of the images. Hopefully buyers will make them available, affordably, to wider audiences. There are several options. It is important to make a will and perhaps a 'letter of wishes' to determine where collections should go to guide executors and family members. Their time may be limited so you can help by organising now. Unfortunately making a will is something people put off but it makes handling an estate far easier. Don't think "I haven't enough to make a will". Having a will-and letting it be known where to find it helps all families. Dying intestate makes many difficulties for those left behind. If your photographs are held on computer you should make passwords etc available. Photographs that cannot be accessed might as well not exist and are lost forever.
Looking ahead is helpful. Some commercial archives have advertised for collections in Backtrack, notably Colour-Rail and Transport Treasury. My friend Graham Vincent has bequeathed his collection of 28,000 slides taken from 1964 onwards to Transport Treasury. All were taken on Kodachrome film and have lasted well. He first offered the collection to the National Railway Museum but the deal fell through, though the museum has his sound recordings which he transferred to CD for the archive. Luckily, Graham was meticulous in recording details of where and when his photographss and recordings were taken, a great help to archivists and future historians. Kidderminster Railway Museum has built a large, well organised, collection of photographs and accepts donations. The late John Marshall, railway author, left it his extensive collection. Unlike some national collections the Museum charges reasonable reproduction fees, an important factor in making collections useful.

Other specialist societies usually welcome donations. There are societies covering most pre-grouping companies and their successors besides interest groups like the Signalling Record Society. The Great Eastern Railway Society is one following GE lines through to the modern scene. Ireland is well covered by the Irish Railway Record Society which accepted some of my rather grainy railway images taken around Dublin and Belfast in the early 1970s. The Welsh Railways Research Circle is a flourishing group holding an archive near Newport and with particular skills at publishing and researching photographs of Welsh locations. Tony Miller, Archivist at WRRC, says that the group acts as a squirrel. "We tend to welcome any offer with open arms. You never know what might turn up. Even pictures of run of the mill subjects or unusual events might answer long-held questions or fill a gap in the collection." He likes photographs with people especially if they can be identified. As he says, "These are the people who actually ran the railways". Tony notes that local knowledge held by WRRC members means they are often adept at identifying locations not recorded by the photographer. He notes that it is advisable to transfer copyright ownership to the recipient. Scanned images are easier to handle but modern techniques enable high quality images and duplicates of original slides and photographs to be scanned and stored digitally. Although never a die-hard railway photographer, I had slides from the 1960s to the 1990s scanned recently and offered originals to various archives including the WRRC. Almost all accepted images. It was a pleasant surprise to find that my long-forgotten 1971 Ffestiniog Railway pictures with 'deviation ists' at work were considered interesting enough to be published in the Heritage Group Newsletter with others appearing in the WRRC Newsletter.

Please consider County and Metropolitan Borough local history libraries and archives for strongly local pictures. Staff are highly professional and value appropriate images. On a 1980s Lincolnshire trip I photographed signal oxes from the train, as well as New Holland Pier and the Humber ferries before closure. Lincolnshire Archives were appreciative, saying they had few such images in their collection. Besides photographs enthusiasts might have relevant books, papers or memorabilia. Could you give them to local museums and archives? My 1990s slides of Cornish trains and buses went to Cornwall Archives. They were pleased to have them, saying they don't hold many recent images and that trains and buses are not commonly photographed. Perhaps transport photographers don't think of local archives for their collections but they would help local historians by doing so.
Preparing for the future is something many of us put off, but by taking action now you can ensure the existence of an archive you developed, one that will be appreciated by historians in years to come. Please don't delay.

Roger Backhouse
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