Catalogue description The Harry Townley collection of railway photographs. 1979.

This portion of Townley's collection is composed mainly of medium format film negatives covering the Southern Railway and its successor, British Railways' Southern Region. There are some posed images of locomotives, photographs of steam, diesel and electric trains in service, stations, electricity substations and views seen from trains.

A list is available covering the majority of the negatives. A small number of reference prints are available in the Reading Room.

Townley, Harry, fl 1890-1981, engineer, of Buxton, Derbyshire

• Railway transport

On leaving school Harry Townley gained a Premium Apprenticeship at Crewe Works, and also attended night school. A brilliant pupil, he left the railways and set up an engineering consultancy in Manchester, but his business collapsed in the economic depression of 1926. He then went to work for ICI at Buxton, where he rose to the position of Chief Development Engineer.

Townley began railway photography relatively late in life, in about 1933, and continued until the late 1960s. Life to him was a series of fascinating engineering problems, which he took delighted in solving. His experimentation, however, meant that some of his early photography was not of a high technical standard, as he liked to work out settings for himself rather than reading instructions. Townley was also a talented and enthusiastic modeller who is remembered for his beautifully crafted LNWR engines and his 0-gauge railway. Unfortunately, towards the end of his life blindness put an end to his inventive engineering pursuits. He died in 1981. The NRM acquired this portion of Townley's collection in 1979.