GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

Hatton Bank: gwrhb3888

Ex-GWR 4-6-0 King class No 6012 'King Edward VI' on the down 4:10pm Paddington to Birkenhead service on 4th June 1962. The King had only been transferred from Old Oak Common to Stafford Road two months prior to this photograph being taken although it seems shed staff haven't yet got around to affixing its new shed allocation plate. Built by Swindon works in April 1928, No 6012 was to remain in service until September 1962, just for months after this photograph was taken, when it was withdrawn from 84A Stafford Road shed in Wolverhampton.

Cover photograph to 'T.E.Williams: The Lost Colour Collection Volume 2’ which is currently in production. Published by Irwell Press Ltd with a publication date estimated late November 2017.

These are the notes on the Jacket Sleeve: The late Tom Williams, Great Western enthusiast and photographer born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1930, is best known for his extensive black-and-white photographic work which was donated to the National Railway Museum in York by his family after his untimely death at the age of forty nine in 1980. His little-known 35mm colour transparency work, however, was retained by his youngest son, Owen and is currently under restoration by his eldest son, Phillip. Seen in print for the first time in the book 'T.E.Williams: The Lost Colour Collection Volume 1' published in March 2017, this second volume dips again into Tom’s unique slide archive to concentrate on the decade 1954 to 1964. It unashamedly centres around the Western Region of British Railways, as this was the photographer’s primary interest, with sections devoted exclusively to the ‘King’ Class and Swindon Works, but we are also given a taste of the fruits of Tom’s eclectic travels up and down the country, across the regional boundaries. We believe that this volume will sit seamlessly next to the first on any steam enthusiast’s bookshelf and will provide a unique insight into the world of a passionate and talented photographer, who wasn’t afraid to experiment with colour film at a time when most of his peers believed that black-and-white was the only route to successful railway photography'.

back