London Midland Region Album

Peter Baughan worked in the Parliamentary Department of the Chief Civil Engineer, London Midland Region of BR, at Euston from 1960. Starting at Euston, this photographic journey around the former LMR of British Railways takes us up to the Midlands and then on to the North East, the North West and finally across North Wales to finish at Holyhead. On the way, the pictures of Stephenson’s Britannia Tubular Bridge over the Menai Strait were taken just days before it was destroyed by fire. The photographs document the huge transition in the rail industry through the 1960s and ’70s, as the post-war modernisation programme began to take effect alongside the rationalisation of the network. Many of the stations depicted have gone, whilst those that have survived are mostly shadows of their former selves. The sweeping away of so much railway architecture was distressing, a fact emphasised by this photographic selection, the majority of which have never been published before.