Hull & Barnsley Railway Albums
Digitising Railway History
There are many objects in the collections at the Streetlife Museum of transport which relate to the history of the Hull & Barnsley Railway, including medals, signs, war memorials, plans, and posters, but some of the most remarkable are two large photograph albums dating from 1882, showing the construction of the Hull & Barnsley Railway.
Each album is titled 'Views of Works on the Hull and Barnsley Railway / Photographed by A.W. Cox, St James's Street, Nottingham'. The images were taken during February 1882 three years before the railway opened, and show scenes all the way down the length of the line, which stretched from Hull to Cudworth near Barnsley. Workmen are photographed with picks and shovels digging out for bridges and cuttings, then loading the spoil up onto horse and carts or small locomotives, and depositing the waste onto huge tips. Some of the images are a health and safety nightmare, with men stood on small planks of wood across deep holes in the ground, or on top of rickety wooden scaffolding.
The albums were found in storage and it was felt that they were a high priority for digitisation due to their importance to railway history in the region. The problem was that unlike normal photographs the albums were much too big and heavy to place on a scanner, as there were concerns that this would cause damage to the albums themselves, which is always an issue with documents of this age. As such, each and every one of the 112 images were individually photographed so that they could be viewed by the public on our collections website.
If you want to see the images please search for 1957.75. High resolution images of these photographs can be purchased from Bridgeman Images by going to 'bridgemanimages.com'
