Catalogue description Paddington Station official photographs

The publicity photographs are primarily contained in four main collections, the 'A', 'B', 'E' and 'B-Box' series, and to a certain extent their subject matter overlaps, for all are concerned with operations and events. The A series negatives date from about 1896 to 1925 and include many evocative scenic views, images of bridges and viaducts, some station scenes and a small number of photographs of shipping, locomotives and other vehicles. The B-series also includes many fine scenic views taken for the annual Holiday Haunts brochure that publicised locations served by the Railway in the West Country, Wales, Ireland, the Channel Islands and even Brittany. The B and B-Box collections both include images of the company's hotels, particularly the Tregenna Castle in St Ives, the Manor House in Moretonhampstead and Paddington's Great Western Royal. The C-series negatives cover a wide range of subjects, from publicity images and scenic views of places to railway infrastructure, signalling and locomotives. The E-series negatives also cover publicity subjects and scenic views and feature images of places, locomotives and events, such as the wartime evacuation of children from London and Home Guard parades held in 1944. The B-Box collection contains the majority of the civil engineering photographs, with images of work on bridges and viaducts, tunnels, stations and even company housing. Major projects covered include the Ealing and Shepherds Bush extension and the strengthening of the sea wall at Dawlish. The final years of the B-Box collection concentrate almost exclusively on construction work.

Negatives from the B-Box and C-series collections relating to GWR and British Railways (Western Region) operations in Wales are currently on loan to the Welsh Industrial & Maritime Museum, Bute Street, Cardiff, CF1 6AN that provides a print service.

Great Western Railway

• Railway transport

Registers for each series, ordered alphabetically by subject. Part listed by the Railprint Joint Venture scheme that marketed these images in the late 1970s and early 1980s. See Railprint lists P5, P9, P15, P16 and P19. Welsh material separately listed by WIMM. Neither negative sequence is complete.

The GWR's publicity photographers, who were based at offices in London's Paddington station, had a wide ranging brief to cover operations throughout the company network, from Penzance in the west to Birkenhead in the north. The images they created covered railway staff and officials, passenger and freight train services, road vehicles, stations, advertising, shipping and the people who used the railway. Views of locomotives and workshop scenes are comparatively rare in these collections, but photographs taken to support safety awareness programmes provide a good coverage of everyday working life on the railways, including some dangerous practices that the company wished to stamp out. Major events featured include the General Strike and both World Wars, with extensive coverage of ARP precautions and bomb damage suffered between 1939 and 1945. The photographers' role remained unchanged on nationalisation in 1948, for they continued to cover operations on British Railway's Western Region.