The LNER Encyclopedia

Tomorrow will be the 75th anniversary of the record run of the Silver Jubilee trial trip. I have in my possession a picture purchased from Ian Allen in the late 50's of the train passing Potters Bar with spectators waving from the lineside (couldn't happen nowaday's). I've never seen it re-produced so I've scanned the photo and will try posting it. It is marked "Copyright Locomotive Publishing Company" on the back, but a check on copyright law indicates that copyright expires 70 years after the picture was taken.

You are probably right about that particular photograph not having been published, but there is another almost identical version which did appear. It seems that in the originsl version of the picture the LNER Publicity Department were concerned about the group of onlookers in close proximity to the trackside, so they asked the darkroom chaps to remove them from the image to mske it less alarming. Who says that the camera never lies?

It was in this altered state that the photograph was allowed to be published. I believe it has appeared in one or more of Cecil J Allen's railway books.

I notice that there are people waving from the train windows as well - were they also retouched? I wonder if the whole thing was set up by the publicity department, then as you say, they got cold feet. There are over twenty people on the embankment! Was there really so much interest?

Peter

The original photograph was taken by E R Wethersett and has been published both as taken and as 'cleaned up' many times. Wethersett's photos went to the Loco Pub Co before he died and are now in the NRM collection. They are out of copyright only if the print is pre Crown Copyright!

Incidentally at the spot where it was taken, there was a kink in the public footpath taking it within three to four feet of the Down Slow with a single wire fence, so they may not have been trespassing.

Silver Fox, thanks for the information. The print was purchased at Ian Allen's shop at Hampton Court in the late 50's and is on very thick paper and was certainly printed pre-NRM, I had to slightly crop the picture as the original was too large for my scanner.
I later had the pleasure of working with Jack Luty the fireman on Silver Link during the record run, when he was running foreman at Top Shed and later at K.X passenger depot. The picture later hung on my office wall for many years when I moved into management after 30 wonderful years on the footplate. I haven't purchased any railway volumes for many years which might explain why I haven't seen it in print.

I think you may find that the copyright of the picture expires 70 years after the death of the person who took it, not 70 years after it was taken.

The copyright date is (or what is more important was then) 50 years from the date when the photograph was first published i.e. printed or sold. As this particular print is very well known and ERW would have circulated immediately after the event, it has been out of copyright for years, although as mentioned before, it is now (i.e. with a modern copy) Crown Copyright. The copyright acts are not retrospective and up until the 1980's copyright was 50 years from publication for a private individual and 25 years for a corporate body.

the trial running of a silver train and matching coaches must have looked like a silver ghost running up the ECML.

Quite a shot.
Thanks
Simon

Found some very nice early original images of Silver Link at Cambridge on what we believe is a running in turn.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/10257146@N05/12464415074/

Any comments most welcome.

Simon

Hi,
And here is a link to a copy of Driver A J Taylors' account of the first run. I am not sure if it is widely available.
http://www.qldrail.net/lner/silverjubilee_sml.pdf

regards
Kimball

What a wonderful account - 'I was there', so to speak. It was like I was a youngster again reading that. And coal being put on "right side up" was a term I'd certainly not heard before - lovely trade talk, that.

You can feel the pride of Driver Taylor oozing out of his words, and I'd say you see very little of that these days. Thank you very much for putting this up, Kimball.