50 Years of Phoenix Celebrating 50 years of the Phoenix Railway-Photographic Circle Edited by Jim Knight & Wyn Hobson
Silver Link Books
© Text The Phoenix Railway-Photographic Circle 2021
Contents
© The copyright details for each image are shown in italics at the end of each caption All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Silver Link Books, Mortons Media Group Ltd. First published in 2021 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978 1 85794 591 1 Silver Link Books Mortons Media Group Limited Media Centre Morton Way Horncastle LN9 6JR Tel/Fax: 01507 529535 email: sohara@mortons.co.uk Website: www.nostalgiacollection.com Printed and bound in the Czech Republic
Foreword
5
1 Promoting alternative railway photography 2 Into the light 3 Sight lines 4 Landscape 5 Bridges 6 Shadows and silhouettes 7 Going away 8 Sunset, twilight and night-time 9 Glimpsed 10 Passengers and bystanders 11 Staff 12 Whatever the weather 13 Urban and industrial 14 Phoenix into the future
6 18 26 34 44 54 62 74 84 92 102 112 124 132
And finally…
144
Front cover: Northern Trains CAF-built unit No 195128 passes through Grange-over-Sands, on the Cumbrian Coast Line, on 6 March 2020. Nigel Capelle Back cover: A Class 91 on a southbound East Coast Main Line service at Eaton, south of Retford, Nottinghamshire, is silhouetted against a colourful sky just after sunset, 21 November 2012. Steve Arthur
Foreword by Jim Knight, Co-Editor, and Chair of the Phoenix Railway-Photographic Circle
I
t is my great pleasure to present this book on behalf of the Phoenix Railway-Photographic Circle (PRPC). Though it is PRPC’s first book for some 40 years, the Circle has gone from strength to strength in the interim, and as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Circle’s formation in 1971 it is an appropriate moment to share a representative selection of images by members both present and past. Our three previous publications appeared in the 1970s and early 1980s. There are 35 current members of the PRPC, and all of them, together with some former members, have contributed images for this book – there are more than 50 contributors in total. My thanks are due to current and former members alike for allowing their work to be included. The creation of the PRPC is explained in the opening chapter. A. Wyn Hobson, founder and now Life President of the Circle, recounts the story, which is illustrated with images taken by members in the 1970s and early 1980s. The themed chapters that follow present images from across the half-century; they will hopefully stimulate thought and ideas in the reader. Each image is captioned and credited. Many thanks are also due for the knowledge and assistance provided by Wyn during the process of image selection and the publishing
of this book, and for the support of the editorial team, Martin Higginson, Russell Saxton and Dafydd Whyles. The PRPC continues to be a vehicle for promoting alternative approaches to railway photography, in order to explore setting, circumstances, and detail concerning the operation of railways. While the Circle is predominantly formed of members from the UK, we also benefit from the input of members from other countries, who add to the variety of scenes captured, and provide a welcome opportunity to engage with colleagues across the world. Taking photographs of railways is not a difficult task. Producing memorable and striking images, however, is a different matter. The digital world offers much to the presentday photographer, and a profusion of advances have been, and are being, made in camera technology and post-production software. The processing of images, often performed with limited resources in the darkrooms of the past, or dependent upon the efforts of a photo lab outside the photographer’s control, can now be performed entirely by the photographer. Thus, the skill-sets and innovation needed to create ever more revelatory pictures are constantly evolving. I believe we should continue to push the
boundaries of railway photography, and our final chapter covers some of the latest work by members – a presentation of recent alternative compositions, use of modern technology, and new processing techniques. We hope you enjoy this book. Please do visit our website, which is regularly updated with new images, at www.phoenix-rpc.co.uk. Jim Knight March 2021
Chapter 1: Promoting alternative railway photography by Wyn Hobson, founder of the Phoenix Railway-Photographic Circle
T
he Phoenix RailwayPhotographic Circle was the product of a time of change. The end of steam traction on British Rail, in 1968, had left many railway enthusiasts feeling that there was very restricted scope for pursuing their hobby. Among the majority, there was little or no enthusiasm for the diesel and electric traction that had taken over rail services; and few photographers felt that turning their cameras towards the new types of motive power was worth their time and money. Since 1967 I had been a member of the Railway Photographic Society, a long-established circulatingportfolio group, and by early 1970 it was clear to me that its portfolios contained less and less new work (mostly depicting industrial or overseas steam), and more and more shots from the 1950s and early 1960s that in pre-1968 days would not have been considered to be of a high enough technical standard for inclusion. To the majority of members, anything was preferable to photographing diesels.
English Electric Type 4 Nos 412 and 419 pass Dallam, just north of Warrington, with the 14.00 Glasgow Central–London Euston train on 22 March 1971. John Cooper-Smith
Promoting alternative railway photography, by Wyn Hobson, founder of the Phoenix Railway-Photographic Circle 7 I had the idea of setting up a new circulating-portfolio society, to bring together photographers actively interested in diesel and electric traction. A further aim stemmed from the other major change affecting UK railway photography in the 1960s. This had begun with the publication of Colin T. Gifford’s ground-breaking album Decline of Steam in 1965, followed by two photo-features under the title ‘The New Approach’ (curated by Ian Krause) in the magazine Railway World, and by the album Steam Portfolio, edited by Geoffrey Kichenside, which appeared in 1968. The photography explored unconventional viewpoints and composition, unusual combinations of light and shade, and varied juxtapositions of trains and the surrounding environment, in a variety of weather conditions – thereby presenting an enriched record of the ways we saw steam traction in its last years in Britain. In the spring of 1970 I was in the middle of what today would be termed a gap year, doing clerical work in London. I contacted another recent recruit to the Railway Photographic Society, John Cooper-Smith, then a student at one of the big London teaching hospitals, and put to him my idea for a new society. At first he inclined more towards exploring the possibility of setting up a new section of the RPS, rather than a completely separate entity; so I put that proposal to Maurice Earley, the founding Secretary, offering to run the new section for him if he wished. He, however, was unwilling to create a further complication in what was already a logistically
It is Christmas Eve 1967, and snow is falling at Sheffield Midland station as Class 45 No 101 (which became 45061 under the British Rail TOPS locomotive class renumbering system adopted in 1973) gets the road for a relief working to London St Pancras. The steam escaping from the heating system adds to this atmospheric scene. Les Nixon
complex operation, with three geographically separate circles that also circulated inter-circle portfolios. So, with John Cooper-Smith in agreement, I decided to go it alone. In the late summer, as I prepared to return to university, I circularised just over 60 photographers who had had photographs of diesel and electric traction published in the three leading UK railway enthusiast magazines
over the previous few years, inviting them to join a new photographic society that would be specifically concerned with the photography of modern (i.e. non-steam) forms of railway traction. I expressed the view ‘that such a society could have a major role to play in fostering this branch of the art, since its practitioners are few relative to the total number of railway photographers, and since
8 Celebrating 50 years of the Phoenix Railway-Photographic Circle the railway journals tend to confine themselves to reproducing pictures which have news-value, as opposed to photographs of a pictorial or experimental nature.’ In a circulating-portfolio system, the box that forms each portfolio is sent by post from member to member round the whole circle or a section of it; each member enters a specified number of prints (having extracted those prints of his that are returning to him after completing a round), and writes comments on his fellow members’ entries on the criticism-sheets provided. Further comment and discussion are carried on in a notebook. Submitting one’s work for comment and analysis by others, however, is not something that appeals to everyone; thus it was a group of 14 photographers who came together in 1971 to form the Phoenix Railway-Photographic Circle. By the end of the year, members’ thoughts were turning towards the idea of producing a photo-feature to be submitted to the magazine Modern Railways, and this appeared in the December 1972 issue, generating a small handful of applications to join the Circle. Meanwhile, nine members decided to set up a portfolio for the circulation of colour transparencies, and this started on its first round in the same year. Our ambitions next coalesced around the idea of producing a whole book of diesel and electric rail traction photography. This presented a much greater challenge: hitherto, no book of that kind had been published in the UK. Which publisher could be persuaded to shoulder the attendant risk? The answer came, unexpectedly, in 1973, when a publisher in Truro brought out a 96-page volume entitled Diesels on Cornwall’s Main Line, to join a dozen or so books of steam traction photography already produced or projected. We Above right: No D1001 Western Pathfinder is stabled at Westbury traction maintenance depot on the evening of 7 November 1975. Geoff Gillham Right: It is 10.40 on 28 March 1973 at London’s King’s Cross station, and ‘Deltic’ No 9016 Gordon Highlander erupts. The locomotive will reverse the length of the station and cross the complicated pointwork to access the King’s Cross fuelling point. The identity of the foreground ‘Deltic’ was not recorded. Peter Shoesmith
Promoting alternative railway photography, by Wyn Hobson, founder of the Phoenix Railway-Photographic Circle 9 swiftly threw our hat into the ring, and the upshot was the publication of Modern Rail Album, edited by me for the Phoenix RailwayPhotographic Circle, in 1974. A second album, BR Diesels and Electrics around Britain, followed two years later. Each of our ventures into print led to a further increase in membership. This, and the financial and other considerations attendant on producing complete volumes, made it advisable for us to institute a system of Annual General Meetings, to discuss and agree current projects and ideas for new ones; our first such meeting was held in Birmingham in November 1974. It was also agreed to hold future AGMs in the spring, and to meet less formally in the autumn, by invitation of a different member each year, at his home. In due course, these latter meetings came to include a prearranged visit to a railway site, such as a traction maintenance depot, to explore photographic possibilities. By now, three priorities had emerged among the growing membership of the Circle. Some pursued the aim of developing new pictorial approaches to the photography of modern traction. Others, conscious that their interest in photographing diesels and electrics made them a small minority among the remaining UK railway enthusiasts, had leapt at the chance of becoming part of a society of likeminded practitioners. In both groups, there were several who saw the Circle as a way of getting their photographic work into print, and who were very focused on publication. Experimentation with non-conventional
No 33002, working the 10.10 Bristol Temple Meads-Portsmouth train, is framed in one of the arches of the Kennet & Avon Canal aqueduct, near Bradford-on-Avon, on 4 July 1983. Geoff Gillham
10 Celebrating 50 years of the Phoenix Railway-Photographic Circle
On 15 July 1975 ‘Deltic’ No 55003 Meld accelerates past Belle Isle, on the climb out of London’s King’s Cross, heading towards Copenhagen Tunnel, while a Class 31 descends towards Gasworks Tunnel and the terminus with an outer-suburban commuter service. Meanwhile, a Class 501 DC electric multiple unit passes above on the North London Line, working a Richmond-London Broad Street service. John Glover
Promoting alternative railway photography, by Wyn Hobson, founder of the Phoenix Railway-Photographic Circle 11
A Class 45, heading a Sheffield-London St Pancras express on the Midland Main Line, passes the impressive semaphore signal gantry at Cricklewood as it nears its destination in May 1978. Les Nixon
12 Celebrating 50 years of the Phoenix Railway-Photographic Circle approaches made a rather hesitant start (most of the pictures in our 1972 photo-feature were fairly middle-of-the-road by today’s standards), but slowly gained ground in the Circle’s portfolios; moreover, BR Diesels and Electrics around Britain embodied a further move away from the traditional sunlit front-three-quarter view. In the years immediately following its publication, we searched for an opportunity to produce a larger book of photographs, on paper of better quality, and if possible including colour work. The prospect of interesting publishers in this last objective remained remote, given the costs involved; also, finding a theme that would maximise the scope for pictorial innovation while attracting the general railway enthusiast was a problem that generated much discussion. At length, however, we learned that a long-established and prestigious publisher was developing a transport list for the first time, and in due course our book proposal to them was accepted – albeit containing black and white photography only. Trains of Thought, published in 1981, represented a considerable advance on our previous publications, both in artistic terms and as regards quality of production. The volume received favourable reviews, including one in the Times Literary Supplement. However, it was not a commercial success. The UK publishing industry was moving into a period of recession and retrenchment, and the publisher lacked the financial resources to expand its sales effort into specialist railway enthusiast outlets. The long-term result was that other publishers remained nervous of publishing albums of primarily pictorial moderntraction photography. The way the market for books on diesel and electric traction was developing was an important influence in this regard: the trend in the 1980s was towards albums whose captions were very substantial, embracing No 47420 is framed by two ex-Great Western Railway lower-quadrant signals as it leaves High Wycombe with the 17.42 Birmingham New Street– London Paddington service on 12 April 1980. John Vaughan
Promoting alternative railway photography, by Wyn Hobson, founder of the Phoenix Railway-Photographic Circle 13 detail on mechanical and engineering features, service patterns and performance, and relevant historical matters. The function of the photographs was to illustrate the factual content, and nothing more. Pictorial photography – which one of our founder members defined as a picture that shows not only the subject, but also what the photographer feels about it – was off the agenda. Our response was to diversify into other outlets. There were more magazine photofeatures under the Phoenix banner, most notably in the short-lived Railway Photography & Video (October/November 1986 – including, at last, some of our colour work, as well as substantial extracts from members’ criticism-sheet comments on the photographs reproduced); the American Trains Illustrated (May 1991); Railways Illustrated (January 2004 – an all-colour selection); and Rail Express (December 2016 – another all-colour selection). Phoenix members also continued to contribute individually to books and magazines, occasionally succeeding in getting less conventional images into print. Members contributed pictures to a publication by the Institution of Railway Operators in the early 2000s. In the new century, we reached a wider public audience by means of exhibitions. The No 50019 Ramillies is seen approaching Banbury with the 11.30 London Paddington–Birmingham New Street service on 28 February 1981. On the left is Banbury South signal box, which continued in use until 2016. John Vaughan
first was held at the National Railway Museum in York (2005-06), moving to the Scottish Railway Museum, Bo’ness (2006-07), then to Pecorama, Devon (2008-09); we also mounted a series of well-received exhibitions at the ‘Brief Encounter’ museum in Carnforth railway station (2012, 2014, 2016 and 2019, with another projected for 2021). Without a doubt, however, the most important development in the PRPC’s first half-century was the arrival of digital photography. The technology made it possible
to take almost limitless numbers of images, then delete those not wanted at the press of a button, without incurring the expense that a similar proceeding would have entailed with celluloid film. Colour photography became almost as cheap as black and white, and the increased ISO speeds that became available opened up extensive possibilities of photographing moving trains in low-light conditions such as twilight. As a result, experimentation became easier, and the PRPC substantially widened its exploration
14 Celebrating 50 years of the Phoenix Railway-Photographic Circle
A pair of Class 37s hauling a train of steel coil, probably heading for Corby Steelworks, stir the interest of passengers at Melton Mowbray in October 1985. Peter Shoesmith
A hybrid two-car diesel multiple unit forming a stopping service is framed by a bracket semaphore signal as it approaches the station at Penmaenmawr, on the North Wales Coast main line, on 28 July 1975. Wyn Hobson
of pictorial possibilities in railway photography. The first print of a digital image was placed in a Phoenix portfolio in 1996. The Circle’s first website was created in 2004 and an online gallery of members’ work, accessible to the public and including digitised selections from the box portfolios, was created in 2007. A separate online gallery, accessible to members only and enabling comments to be added, was started at around the same time; and in 2011 this became
a fully-fledged online parallel to the portfolios of prints and transparencies, eventually superseding the transparency section. It also made it easier for nonUK-based photographers to become members and participate in some of the Circle’s activities. Also around this time, Facebook and Flickr groups were created, to expand online awareness of the PRPC and its work. Digital technology has also had an effect on methods of publication, making small print-runs economically
Promoting alternative railway photography, by Wyn Hobson, founder of the Phoenix Railway-Photographic Circle 15
It is 09.05 on the bright, cold morning of 6 December 1980 as the low winter sun catches No 25043 and its train in bay platform 4B at Crewe station. Parcel trolleys abound, and a couple of AC electric locomotives wait to ply their trade out on the main lines. A guard strolls along the platform, his duties perhaps complete for the time being. Wyn Hobson
16 Celebrating 50 years of the Phoenix Railway-Photographic Circle feasible to an extent that was not possible with traditional printing techniques. Since 2016 we have availed ourselves of the services of small digital printing companies to produce calendars using some of our members’ best work, and an occasional Journal containing photography and articles by members. An internal ‘Photographer of the Year’ competition contributes material to both
publications. The Journal is also available as a free online download; the first issue attracted just under a thousand takers. At the end of its first 50 years the Phoenix Railway-Photographic Circle operates in an aesthetic climate that is perceptibly different from the one that existed in the railway enthusiast world at the time of its founding. The enthusiast magazines regularly publish
A London Underground ‘C Stock’ train approaches Ladbroke Grove station, on the Hammersmith & City Line as a Hammersmith-Barking service on 15 March 1982. The former Great Western Railway signal box is just visible on the right, with the A40(M) road beyond. Tower blocks of the Silchester Estate, North Kensington, dominate the backdrop. John Glover
photo-features that present artistic approaches that would have been anathema to most survivors of the end of steam traction in 1968. Moreover, this variety is not confined to photographs of diesel and electric traction: in contemporary steam-train photography, also, there is a growing search for new juxtapositions of train, environment and light. At the PRPC’s 2015 Annual General
This group photograph was taken on John Vaughan’s camera by a passing railwayman during a Phoenix visit to Hither Green traction maintenance depot in South East London on 9 October 1982. Some of those pictured have contributed to this book; they are John Vaughan, Colin Marsden, Brian Morrison, John Glover, John Whitehouse, Kevin Lane, Les Nixon, Peter Shoesmith, Geoff Dowling, Philip D. Hawkins and Wyn Hobson.
Promoting alternative railway photography, by Wyn Hobson, founder of the Phoenix Railway-Photographic Circle 17 Meeting, a small majority voted to allow the submission of steam traction photographs in the members-only online galleries, on a trial basis for a year. Entries were to be limited to one per member in each gallery, and were to adhere to the Phoenix ethos of being ‘more visually interesting than the conventional front-three-quarter shot’. The 2016 AGM agreed to run the experiment for another year, and at the 2017 AGM it was resolved to make the new arrangements permanent. I pointed out that the original ban on steam photography had been imposed to prevent the presenting of mediocre steam traction photographs from members’ archives, in preference to engaging with the modern scene. The need for this precaution had by now disappeared. Our search for new views of trains in landscapes of all kinds thus continues, on a broadened basis, forward into the next half-century. In the meantime, this chapter showcases some of the founding members’ work from the first few years of the Circle. Subsequent chapters are themed, and look at different techniques that members and former members have employed to achieve images of quality. The final chapter looks at recent images from members, which push the boundaries of composition, processing and use of modern technology; brief explanatory summaries accompany these photographs.
During the Hither Green visit of 9 September 1982, Wyn Hobson is seen in an engine shed pit (by permission) photographing a pair of Class 33s. Peter Shoesmith