Catalogue description The Ransome-Wallis collection of railway photographs

The earliest material appears in two diaries chronicling railway events in the 1920s, but the collection mainly consists of film and glass negatives, and almost seventy albums of captioned prints. They provide a comprehensive coverage of railways in Britain, featuring the GWR, LNER, LMS and Southern, the engines of the pre-grouping companies and light and narrow gauge railways such as the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch, Ffestiniog, Corris, Tal-y-Ilyn, Snowdon, and Chattenden & Upnor Railways. The NRM also holds a great body of images amassed from Ransome-Wallis' explorations of continental and overseas railways. As well as photographic material, the NRM also hold a series of stamp albums showing railway subjects, recordings of his 'On Railways' broadcasts for the BBC, and boxes of magazines, cuttings, pamphlets, brochures and booklets on the world's railways.

The collection is not listed, but there are seventy albums of prints ordered by subject with images identified by the appropriate negative numbers.

Ransome-Wallis, 1906-1985, doctor of philosophy, railway photographer and author

Wallis, Ransome-, 1906-1985, doctor of philosophy, railway photographer and author

• Railway transport

In the post-war years he wrote many books and articles, railways providing most of the subjects. In the 1960s the BBC recruited him for their 'On Railways' series, and as "our man from the BBC" he was again able to indulge in his passion for travel and foreign railways. He never retired from his career as an audiologist, and died in July 1985 aged seventy-nine.

A member of the Railway Photographic Society, Pat Ransome-Wallis' approach to photography was 'technical rather than emotional', and his aim was to 'make good record photographs'. He believed that "clouds of steam and smoke, bits of foliage and 'arty' locations" were 'not essential or even desirable' though he was often obliged to please editors on this point and consequently produced some of the most striking images in the NRM collections.

The NRM acquired the Ransome-Wallis collection in 1985.