An Evening with Father’s Slides

Presenter: David Cross

Meeting Held at Shenfield Parish Hall

David is the son of the late Derek Cross, known to most if not all RCTS members for his fairly prolific photography.  He accompanied his father from an early age on his outings, initially as chief bag-carrier!  This was the era of rapid steam replacement and these interlopers (to this writer’s eyes) were the subject of David’s presentation.  David made the interesting observation that, viewed from today’s perspective, trains ran in the sunshine.  Of course what we tend to forget is that film was very slow back in the 50s and 60s, and colour especially slow, so it was very much ”weather permitting”.  Also, those of us who tried our hand at capturing the railway scene had no idea until we got our processed images back how, or even if, they had come out.  So we are fortunate that enthusiasts like Derek had the expertise to overcome most of these difficulties, and even managed a few night shots.

The presentation covered the period from 1959 until 1984.  David told us that Derek was somewhat unusual in those days for featuring modern traction.  There was much of interest to see as we “toured” the country from Weymouth and the SR, the WR at Westbury and Bristol for example to the ER at King’s Cross.  After the break we visited the LMR and Scotland.  We had a little glitch at the start of part 2 when the lightbulb in the slide projector, which our President informed us had served without trouble for countless years, failed.  A change was quickly effected however by our IT crew.  Apart from the many types of diesel, many no longer with us, we enjoyed the pre-electrification scene of beautiful railways in their landscape, with well-tended –often prize-winning – permanent way; although David did point out that telegraph poles – you remember them, sometimes got in the way.