I was about thirteen when my interest in railways really developed, and coming from a large household, with money not coming in regularly, nor plentiful, I could never afford to take photographs. The cost of the film and processing was prohibitive, and we didn’t have a particularly good camera – and that wouldn’t necessarily be entrusted to me anyway! There was the occasional picture in ‘The Cornishman’ newspaper over the years – a couple of examples are shown here – but very little else.
This picture is of the derailment of ‘PATHFINDER’ at Ponsandane, with a ‘Western’ passing “with five inches to spare”. Passengers were “warned to keep their heads in; good thing too! More of this can be found on the Cornwall Railway Society website. 7#####Z01-MIS-CUTNG-CRNSH
I think this was in ‘The Cornishman’ newspaper because a tree was blown down between Penzance and St Erth, halting rail traffic for a few hours. 7#####Z02-MIS-CUTNG-CRNSH
I somehow persuaded my Mum to let me borrow the family camera and use up the film in it; only the second time I’d used one. It looks like there was a problem with light penetration (probably due to me opening it up to check it was advancing OK – the camera had little circular windows the number showed through, but most numbers were missing. I think it was only every third numeral that was shown), but by now I’d learned to hold it steady-ish and point it in roughly the right direction. With the family’s artistic flair – I was a graphic designer for most of my career – I was getting better at composition too.
Like many boys of my age, I kept a scrapbook of snippets of pictures and information at the time – a couple of which I still have – and these were the only “pictures” I had to look at when away from the Station. Images were from magazines, comics and (as I acquired them) old ‘ABCs’ (books listing loco numbers, accompanied by data and pictures).
Pointing towards my graphic design career, perhaps, I made my own scrapbook in the early 70s using cuttings of a series in ‘Look & Learn’ Magazine, with loco data at an enlarged size. 7#####A01-MIS-BOOKS-MSTR1
The Eric Curnow Collection 