STEAM CAMERAMAN
THE RAILWAY PHOTOGR APHY OF TOM WILLIAMS
Tom Williams’ passion for trains and photography led to a collection of superb images spanning three decades following the Second World War. Fraser Pithie meets up and ref lects with his schoolfriend, Phil Williams, who has been painstakingly restoring his late father’s colour photographs.
Newton Abbot’s ‘Hall’ No. 4905 Barton Hall pilots its much younger ‘Modified’ cousin, Laira-based No. 7905 Fowey Hall, south out of Newton Abbot towards Aller Junction on a Saturday, Bristol to Plymouth relief working. No. 4905 will most likely detach at Dainton. The line on the right is the branch to Torbay and Kingswear. Although these locomotives were separated in age by almost exactly 20 years, they both ended their days at John Cashmore’s scrapyard at Great Bridge, being broken up within two months of each other during the summer of 1964. Photograph taken on September 14, 1957.
THE sight and sound of the Great Western Railway attracted Tom Williams (T E Williams) from a very early age.
Born in 1930, Tom was a regular visitor to the GWR’s station at his home town of Stratford-upon-Avon as he grew up. He was a lad who quickly showed himself as having a keen eye for detail, obtaining second prize in a wartime competition for aircraft recognition.
The GWR’s main line between Birmingham and Cheltenham ran through Stratford, with the Royal Engineers’ Central Engineer Park at Long Marston, some five miles south-west. Consequently, any time spent at the town’s station or the lineside was guaranteed to be rewarded with an impressive array of passenger and freight traffic.
Wartime restrictions
Growing up in the 1930s and 1940s, few people had the funds necessary to purchase such luxury items as a camera, and with the war came severe restrictions on photography. Being also skilled with pencil and paper, Tom was content in his early youth by sketching locomotives and track layouts, but with his grandfather and father both possessing a pre-war ‘box’ camera, his mission after he left school was to borrow or buy one for himself.
In 1947, Tom initiated what was to become a brilliant collection of railway images that effectively catalogued the late 1940s, the 1950s, and the 1960s. Tom’s penchant was for the Western Region, which, where he lived, covered the South Midlands, Stratford, Birmingham Snow Hill and Wolverhampton (Low Level) and Stafford Road.
Fellow Stratfordian and railway historian, the late John Jennings, a generation younger than Tom, described his photographic work as “the one single catalyst that fired our enthusiasm and sealed our life-long commitment”.
Apart from two years of National Service in the RAF, Tom had a day job at Flowers’ brewery, one of the largest employers in Stratford-upon-Avon until its eventual demise following its acquisition by Whitbread and the relocation of operations to Cheltenham.
Gloucester stalwart Collett 0-4-2T No. 1440 approaches Tramway Junction, past Horton Road locomotive shed, with a single auto trailer for all stations and halts to Chalford. The train is just about to traverse the Horton Road level crossing prior to swinging south along the Golden Valley. Despite having spells at Exeter, Oswestry and Banbury, No. 1440 always seemed to return to Horton Road, from where it was withdrawn for scrapping less that six months after this photograph was taken, on July 21, 1963. Note the ‘saddle’ behind the chimney, indicating No. 1440 is fitted with a top-feed boiler.
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