New member intro

[Upney Sidings]

Hello One and All,

My interests lie entirely in the past but that doesn’t mean that I live there! As well as my own photographic efforts from the 50’s and 60’s I’ve been accumulating archive negatives for about five years with some interesting subject matter amongst them. Well, they’re interesting to me as they’re not limited to purely British material. My most recent scanning project included nearly 100 quality negatives of 50’s Australian steam. I also have a special interest in Dutch steam related material which doesn’t exactly grow on trees.

As well as the above I have more than a passing interest in buses from the half-cab era as well as archive trams and trolleybuses from whatever country.

A small proportion of my scanning efforts can be viewed in my web gallery at :
http://gallery62603.fotopic.net/

The road transport material in that gallery is gradually being moved to a separate gallery:
http://psvarchive.photos.gb.net/ and will be removed from the railway gallery once the transfer project is completed.

As if the above isn’t enough to take in I’m also a keen collector of luggage labels and have several web pages, all self-coded, on the subject with more to be added as and when time permits.

One hopes that I might at some time be in a position to contribute positively to this group.

Regards,

Mike M.

[Ian White]

Mike
Welcome to the forum i hope you enjoy it,if you have any question's give us a shout.
All the best and good luck,Ian

[andersley]

Welcome aboard Mike. You certainly have an amazing collection of photographs. I particularly like the Austrian Kreigslok in sunset at Breda.

[Shed Cat]

Welcome, I've just spent a happy half hour in your photo collection. The shots of locos being actually towed away at the end of southern steam are quite rare.

[Arthur Maunsell]

welocm Upney...i was going to be Wishing you Well but I had to put a Halt to that when i realised it didnt say Upwey.....

[paul miller]

Hi Mike,
Welcome to the forum.
You are obviously from my era. Have'nt we seen some wonderful things.
Regards,
Paul.

[robbo]

Welcome Mike !

I also have spent a fastenating hour looking at your fotopic site - some brillant pictures

john

[Upney Sidings]

Originally Posted by Arthur Maunsell

welocm Upney...i was going to be Wishing you Well but I had to put a Halt to that when i realised it didnt say Upwey.....

Nice one Arthur and unintentionally tinged with irony as I live only about 4 miles (7km for the modernists) from the site of that erstwhile location.

I've used the Upney sidings pseudonym ever since I became web connected and have a logo captioned with "A bit beyond Barking". Gerritt?

Cheers,

Mike M.

[Upney Sidings]

Originally Posted by andersley

amazing collection of photographs. I particularly like the Austrian Kreigslok in sunset at Breda.

Alan,
That was an amazing weekend with sunshine all the way. A steam tour in Germany on the Saturday that linked up with another such tour at Brochterbeck where the two trains swapped engines which meant that we had at various times haulage by classes 38, 41 and 44.

I lived near Amsterdam at the time which made the second day's trip a bit easier. So, back home at 0130 and then off to Rotterdam at about 0730 for a trip that involved runpasts, parallel running (a never-to-be-forgotten experience), the last overhead semaphore gantry in action (@ Bergen-op-Zoom), lively double-heading behind a 41 and a 52 all capped by a glorious sunset.

Rgds,

Mike

[Upney Sidings]

Originally Posted by Shed Cat

Your photo collection. The shots of locos being actually towed away at the end of southern steam are quite rare.

I've been amazed at how much attention they've attracted but you're right as they do seem to be quite rare. Let's face it, if that happened today the lineside would be lined with football ground sized crowds but back then they were almost totally ignored. The only reason I knew about them was because Len's of Sutton had access to working timetables and told me about the workings. I'm pretty sure that I was the only spectator as they passed me at Wimbledon on two occasions. It was a very different story the following year when Shepherd's locos moved to Longmoor and crowds of linesiders were on hand at every vantage point en route.