All photographs are by the author or his brother
In August 1959 Richard, aged 16, and I, aged 18, embarked on two weeks away from home, ostensibly to walk as many disused railway lines as possible, an aim I now bitterly regret. We should definitely have concentrated on live activity instead, with the wealth of ancient motive power that was still available. Richard had a newly-purchased Ilford Sportsman 35mm camera with limited depth of field at anything over 1/50th of a second. I only had a Box Brownie.
Richard had spent the previous week in CCF (Combined Cadet Force) camp near Weymouth, so he caught a train to Bristol and there changed into the through coach to Glasgow attached to the 8.00am PlymouthManchester hauled by ‘County’ 4-6-0 No.1004 . Meanwhile, I travelled from Cheltenham to Hereford via Ross-onWye (the route featured in October 2022) and joined
