The Railway & Canal Historical Society
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Photographic Collections

The Railway & Canal Historical Society cares for collections of historic photographs covering its areas of interest.

Waterways Photographs

The Railway & Canal Historical Society waterways photographic collection runs into thousands of images of the British scene. There is a postcard collection mainly depicting the inland waterways around 1900, and a photographic collection covering historic features of the canals and associated tramroads mostly from 1950 onwards.

Railway photographs

Ventnor, Isle of Wight, September 1965; former London & South Western Railway class 02 locomotive W31 CHALE in foreground (R A Cook collection ref RAC105/26) Not to be reproduced without permission from The Railway & Canal Historical Society

The Railway & Canal Historical Society has some railway photographic collections within its care and currently available to researchers.

• Greville collection: around 1000 prints collected in the 1950-70s of closed stations. Some are from commercially available sources, but many were taken by M Greville himself. Print size is small and quality is variable.
• Cook collection: around 1500 prints/negatives, mostly taken by R A Cook and of railway subjects, but there are some of tramroads and canals.
• Spence collection: around 500 prints/negatives, taken by J Spence from the 1930s to 1970s.
• Goddard collection of photographs of closed railway stations (post-Beeching).
• Some material from the collection of Cecil J. Allen.
• Baxter Collection: early railways (tramroads).

To find out more...

Much of the collection is not fully catalogued. A programme of cataloguing and digitising is under way with the aim of having the full collection available for viewing on the Society’s website. This does, however, mean that many of the photographs are currently held by the volunteers undertaking this work.

Electronic scans and prints are available, the price depending on whether the images are for private use or commercial publication.

For further information, contact Peter Brown <rchs@peter-quita.demon.co.uk>.