BackTrack Review ***** October 2008
(Reproduced with the kind permission of the Editor of BackTrack)
Percy William Pilcher, born 1866, was amongst the most outstanding pioneers of "amateur" railway photography. His earliest photographs appear to have been taken in 1881 in the Boston and Grantham areas but his arrival as a teacher at Shrewsbury School in 1892 seems to have been a particular spur to the development of his hobby, with the profusion of locomotives to be seen at and around that jointly owned station.
This superb compilation by the LNWR Society shows many of the Premier Line’s locomotives photographed at the station and shed or on the lines radiating from the town: from 'Jumbos' to Compounds, 0-6-0s to 'Experiments', 0-8-0s to 'Claughtons'. He was notably skilled at recording moving trains, never better illustrated than in his many dramatic shots on Whitmore troughs on the West Coast Main Line. Although not surprisingly favouring the LNWR, the book includes some of Pilcher’s cracking Great Northern subjects while by no means overlooking the GWR’s presence in the Shrewsbury area. Among the more unexpected pictures are a GWR broad gauge train, the Festiniog Railway’s double Fairlie James Spooner at Tan-y-Bwlch, a Midland Railway 'Yankee' Baldwin 2-6-0 in action and an 'ROD' 2-8-0 near Colwyn Bay. The quality and sharpness of the photographs is remarkable for the time, a tribute to Pilcher’s skill with glass plates. A useful inclusion is a full listing of his negatives, with reference numbers, which will aid anyone eager to obtain copies of the photographs from the National Railway Museum where the Pilcher negatives now reside.
This book puts many of the albums of more recent photographs to shame, the reproduction is first rate, the captions are detailed and the whole thing is great value at the price.
***** MB
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