Catalogue description R H and R E Bleasdale collection of railway photographs

Photographs of many companies' locomotives and of Swindon Works in the 1880s appear in two albums of Bleasdale's prints, and in two further albums donated by the Smithsonian Institution.

R E Bleasdale negatives are listed.

Bleasdale, R H, fl 1897-1892, railway photographer, of Warwick and Birmingham, father of R E Bleasdale

Bleasdale, R E, fl 1905, son of R H Bleasdale

• Railway transport

R H Bleasdale's railway photographs are among the earliest that survive, and are also remarkable for the range of subjects they cover - he is believed to have taken some 3,000 photographs. It is thought that Bleasdale, who lived in Warwick and later Birmingham, began taking photographs in about 1857, and over the following years he paid visits to the works of many of the main railway companies. He photographed many of the early engines of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, including 'Locomotion', as well as other well-known engines now in the National Collection, such as 'Puffing Billy' and 'Agenoria'. The majority of his negatives however, are held, uncredited, in the archives of the Locomotive Publishing Company. (Further references to the LPC are to be found in other NRM collections)

R H Bleasdale stopped taking photographs in about 1892 but the NRM collections contain nine negatives credited to Bleasdale which date from about 1905. These images of static Great Eastern Railway locomotives were probably taken by his son, R E Bleasdale.

A further collection of some 200 of R E Bleasdale's negatives is held by the Manchester Model Railway Society.

R H Bleasdale negatives in the LPC collection are listed, but not credited to him. A catalogue, dating from about 1890 and held in the NRM's archives, lists many of the images once marketed by the Bleasdales and some of these photographs are now in the NRM collections.