Catalogue description The W J Reynolds collection of railway photographs

Although his earliest photographs were of London, Brighton & South Coast Railway subjects, he is particularly associated with the GNR, living adjacent to the main line at Potters Bar in the years before the First World War.

There are published prints and lists in the LPC collection, but Reynolds' photographs are not separately identified.

Reynolds, William John (Josh), 1883-1957, railway photographer, editor of the Stephenson Locomotive Society Journal, of Margate, Kent

• Railway transport

Reynolds took nearly 7,000 photographs, which have rarely been credited to him. He specialised in portraits of stationary locomotives as opposed to moving trains and was responsible for many of the later photographs in the Locomotive Publishing Company collection (also held by the NRM). He used a Thornton Pickard half-plate field camera before 1914 and a Thornton Pickard Reflex fitted with an f4.5 Cooke lens thereafter, obtaining results of a very high standard. Technically, Reynolds was a pioneer in his attempts to obtain a more accurate tonal rendering of the subject than had previously been achieved, using Ilford Chromatic plates to capture LBSCR 'improved engine green' and switching to panchromatic film as soon as it was available. He was well known amongst enthusiasts as editor of the Stephenson Locomotive Society Journal between 1930 and 1945, and took many of his photographs on SLS shed visits.