Photos From the Fifties Collection: Variety on the Southern

NOWADAYS IT CAN BE DIFFICULT TO COMPREHEND THE TREMENDOUS VARIETY OF TRAINS THAT WERE ONCE A REGULAR FEATURE OF RAIL TRAVEL.

New locomotives and rolling stock intermingled with the products of yesteryear, the latter often relegated to secondary or special workings. 

‘The Photos from the Fifties’ collection features a wonderful variety of images of the Southern Region in the days before the words ‘corporate and bland’ became appropriate to describe a railway operation that is certainly more clean, efficient and reliable than it used to be, but which lacks the fascination that it once provided in full measure. 

Witness then the special workings, but also the regular freight and passenger traffic which could provide surprises of its own; the author recalls a typical week in the 1950s when his regular morning train to Waterloo was hauled by a different class of locomotive every day of that week. A time when life was perhaps taken at a slightly slower pace and there was the time to stand and stare.