Catalogue description Locomotive & General Railway Photographs collection

The first photographs acquired by LGRP were F W Brewer's negatives of the GWR, in 1939. The Second World War then intervened, but 1946 marked the beginning of a great period of acquisition. One of the most significant collections to be incorporated into the growing library was that of the eminent Dr Tice F Budden. (Further references to Dr Budden are to be found in other NRM collections). Nearly 1,150 of his negatives were absorbed and catalogued, and copy negatives were taken from prints in his albums. Other famous names that came to be represented in the LGRP collection were H L Salmon, C J L Romanes and J E Kite, whilst J B Sherlock, H R Norman and C L Mowat sold photographs of stations on the GWR, LSWR and in Scotland and Ireland. Stations in the 1940s and 1950s are also represented, from the archives of the Railway & Technical Press, but the quality is not as high as the earlier images.

Registers list all the negatives in numerical order, with brief details of locomotive type, wheel arrangement, company, date and location. Published lists produced by Ian Allan Ltd, are divided by railway company, locomotive type or location. Reference prints for most of the images are on access in the Reading Room although not all negatives are represented.

Locomotive & General Railway Photographs

• Railway transport

Charles Clinker, historian of the GWR, was so deeply disturbed by the destruction of collections of early railway photographs by F E Mackay and E Pouteau, which he set up LGRP with the intention that "history should not repeat itself". In June 1939 Clinker went into business with V Stewart Haram, who was to run the 'sales section' and W Vaughan-Jenkins who managed the photographic side of the new organisation. Clinker's role was to make contact with early railway photographers and persuade them to pass over their negatives to the care of LGRP, which would then sell prints to enthusiasts.

The original partnership came to an end in 1951 when Vaughan-Jenkins sold his share of the business. The archive then passed from owner to owner, including the publishers David & Charles, Real Photographs and finally, Ian Allan Ltd, from whom the museum purchased the collection and the associated rights in 1992, with the aid of the National Heritage Memorial Fund. In 1948 Clinker had expressed the hope that that his archive would come to the [then] 'York Railway Museum' and so it is perhaps appropriate that it has taken up final residence at the NRM.