Catalogue description The P W Pilcher collection of railway photographs

Pilcher was one of the first photographers to successfully capture images of moving trains and his work provides a fine record of the pre-grouping railway companies, with particular emphasis on the LNWR and Great Northern. He also covered the engines of the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway and the GWR, and continued photography into his seventies, producing images of the LNER and LMS.

Pilcher photographs held in the Burtt collection are listed and reference prints are available in the Reading Room. LPC photographs are not credited to Pilcher, but are listed by subject.

Pilcher, Percy William, 1866-1937, teacher and railway photographer, of Shrewsbury, Shropshire

• Railway transport

Pilcher's first railway photograph was probably taken in 1882, for lists of his collection record images of a GWR broad gauge express at Bath and a Great Northern engine at Boston taken in this year. His contemporary at Bath and at Cambridge was another well-known railway photographer, Tice F Budden, who is also represented in the NRM Collection, so it is not impossible that they knew each other.

Pilcher died in 1937 and his collection was at some point fragmented. Part was sold to the Locomotive Publishing Company in the late 1930s and some material was acquired by Frank Burtt. These segments are now reunited, as both the Burtt and LPC collections are held by the NRM.