One of the most remarkable aspects
of 1953 was the running of double-
headed Great Northern Railway Ivatt
Atlantics on the East Coast Main Line
to commemorate the centenary of
Doncaster Works. Getting away from
the south end of Grantham station on
September 27 that year are‘Klondike’
No. 990Henry Oakleyand large-
boilered 4-4-2 No. 251. Happily, both
engines survive, although they have
not worked in recent years.The impressive bulk of Bulleid/English Electric 1Co-Co1 No. 10202 shown to good
effect as it waits to leave Brockenhurst station on the ex-London & South Western
route from Southampton to Bournemouth in 1952.Southern Railway Atlantic No. 2038Portland Billgleaming in the sunlight at
Brighton. Although the original members of this class were scrapped, a new
example is currently nearing the final stages of construction at the Bluebell Railway.incredible place for rail enthusiasts at that time for
it had major GWR and LMS engine sheds side by
side and I used to get permission from the school
housemaster to go round them on Sundays when
there weren’t so many movements. Consequently,
I got quite pally with some of the drivers and that
stood me in good stead later when I wanted to
take photographs on the depot.”
It’s a good job those drivers never got to hear
about a schoolboy prank he was involved in at the
station, though. Confesses Humphrey: “A pal of
mine somehow got hold of a fog detonator and
when no-one was looking, he nipped off the
platform end and strapped it to one of the rails
leading through the station. We quickly hid
behind a wall and waited for the first train to run
over it.
“I can still hear that bang now! I don’t know
what happened afterwards... we didn’t hang
around to find out!”Such capers can be seen in hindsight as
irresponsible, but how many can honestly say they
never did anything as a schoolboy they wouldn’t
have dreamt of doing as an adult?Experimenting
Humphrey’s first dabblings in photography
came at the end of the hostilities in 1945 when
he was given a VPK (Vest Pocket Kodak) camera
that took 127-sized film, but after experimenting
with it for a few weeks, he came to the conclusion
that it wasn’t man enough for the job. “One day I
spotted a rare Voigtländer camera in a Shrewsbury
shop window, but even though it was
second-hand it’s price of 11 pounds 5 shillings
was far more than I could afford with my pocket
money savings. It was German-built and I reckon
it had been ‘acquired’ during the war by a British
soldier who’d then sold it to the shop to make
some cash after returning from the front.“At that time and even for a year or two
afterwards, decent cameras and even rolls of film
were extremely difficult to come by in Britain, but
my father had served in Russia at the time of the
First World War and appreciated the importance
and strategic value of photography, so he agreed
to lend me the money before someone else
snapped the camera up.”
Humphrey’s new pride & joy took 6x6
negatives on 120-size film and he wasted no
time using it to record railway scenes in the
Shrewsbury area. One intriguing incident he
witnessed occurred when a Stanier ‘Princess Royal’
Pacific – No. 6207Princess Arthur of Connaught–
was accidentally driven over a weight-restricted
bridgewhilebeingworked light-engine in the
town. After a few choice words shouted by men
in the sidings, the driver quickly threw the
104-ton Pacific into reverse and retreated to safer
ground.LINESIDEINTHE‘40sAND‘50s