11th October 2022: The Masked Gricer

What did you do in Lockdown? We found out what Simon Colbeck had done at our meeting on 11th October 2022: he had spent quite a bit of his time scanning slides into digital pictures, using a batch scanner, which took a magazine of 50 slides and, in a few hours, transferred them onto the computer.

Simon then began to show us the fruits of his labours, together with some of his interests, starting with Road Traction Engines. Regarding railways, steam was the main interest, with night photography in particular. East Germany, before and after the wall came down, and China were the source of quite a few years worth of pictures. Mornings in China with a temperature of -36 certainly showed the smoke from steam engines well!

As well as his own collection, Simon had worked on converting the collection of Lance King to digital. Lance had worked for the railway and took his camera to work every day in the 60’s. Among the many gems were Eastbourne in 1959 and Lymington in 1966.

It was becoming oblivious that Simon is a very accomplished photographer, especially when he turned his camera onto the modern scene. Starting with Jeremy Hoskins’s Class 40 we then saw Azuma’s, 50’s 37’s and many others always trying to show movement of the diesel and its train.

David William’s charters in Wales brought many images of Welsh railways in rain and shine (featuring many rainbows!), on the Festiniog, Talyllyn, Bala Lake and Rheidol railways.

Thank you Simon for coming and giving us an excellent show – a very interesting and entertaining evening’s entertainment. (Rob Burridge)